Most newcomers to your website are going to find it either by clicking on a link or seeing it listed in search results. And since the number and quality of links to your site is the biggest factor in determining search rankings, getting visitors to your site largely comes down to link building.
One way to build quality organic backlinks is to utilize the power of social media. Twitter can be particularly useful in this regard, because it tends to attract content publishers and other influencers, and it is an easy platform for making connections.
So how can you best use Twitter for link building?
Building Twitter Relationships
The first thing to keep in mind is that you want to build relationships with people who might link back to your site. Without the relationship, any hint that you are looking for a backlink will come across as unsolicited spam.
We're not suggesting that you are going to find a new @BestFriend, or that you even need to. The primary goal is that they would know who you are, and have some reason to value or appreciate you. There are multiple ways you can build this social capital on Twitter:- Following them, for starters. One benefit of this process is that many people will follow you back.
- Share their content. You are looking for people who produce content, after all, and who can link to you from that content. Retweets are nice, but customized retweets that comment on the link and acknowledge the publisher are much better. Show that you like and/or respect them.
- Provide value for them. Perhaps you can answer a question they post, for instance. Better yet, if you have content that answers their question, you can provide that content, and they may end up referencing it and linking to it.
- Along with that, get to know what they are interested in, so you can provide information that matches their interests.
Once you have built some kind of Twitter relationship, it will be natural enough for you to share relevant content with them and have them link to it.
Finding Relevant Influencers
You want to spend your time developing these relationships with the right people: those who are capable of publishing a link, those who would be interested in what you have to say and those who have some level of influence or following that would drive traffic or look important to the search engines.
You can find such people on Twitter by:- Identifying websites or authors that you would like to get links from. Many such websites or articles will list a Twitter handle for you to follow.
- You can expand the above list by looking at links to or from those sites in order to find related blogs.
- Search Twitter itself. Publishers will list their web address within their Twitter profile, so you are looking for people who use relevant keywords and have a website listed. There are free apps and websites that will make searching Twitter bios easier.
Develop your target list, and then (over time) work at naturally building relationships with them. Some will never give any response or show any interest, and eventually you will want to cut your losses and focus on those who do reciprocate.
Yes, the process does take time. But it is more effective, fun and rewarding than trying to build links without building any relationships first.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
