Twearch engine optimisation, the art of gaining large numbers of followers on Twitter.  OK, so I may have made the word up, but it seems these days to associate anything with Twitter you just replace the first letters(s) with “tw”.

The quest for Twitter followers is a serious one to hard core twitterers and they keep a constant eye on their follower numbers, and notice when they are up and down. Personally I couldn’t tell you from one day to the next how many followers I have but some people seem view it as a measure of importance and also the value you add to the twitter “community”. But how do you get more followers? What are the secrets to a large follower list? It is very similar to the world of search engine optimisation, here goes:

Have a Keyword Rich Domain User Name

This will help you show up when users search for people to follow related to a particular topic. So rather than choosing the username johnsmith, why not go for johnnySEO? It could boost your follower numbers from the SEO community.

Include Your Target Keywords in Your Page Tweet Content

Again this will improve your rankings in the Twitter search engine when users are searching for people to follow. You would be surprised how much a few keyword laden tweets can boost your follower numbers. But make sure you don’t keyword stuff your tweets as this will come across as spammy and have the reverse impact resulting in you losing your new hard earned followers.

Make Sure Your Web Pages Tweets are Search Engine Tweeter Friendly

When somebody follows me, I check out their profile to see whether they are worth following back. If they are consistently posting useful or witty information I am likely to follow back but if their timeline is full of self promotion, affiliate links or insight into their private life I just don’t need, I probably won’t bother.

Write Useful Content to Generate Links Retweets

Retweets mean that your message, and more importantly your username, reaches a much larger audience than just your own followers. If provides access to a much broader audience and opens up the potential for those following the person who retweets to find you, view your profile, and potentially become a follower themselves. They may even retweet themselves which further expands the reach of your message. Obviously to achieve multiple retweets you need to be saying something interesting and/or important, so think before you tweet!

Engage with Your Visitors Followers

Engagement with others is the whole purpose of Twitter, so make sure you do this with your followers. If they provide some useful information, retweet it. If they provide you something of interest, thank them and engage in a discussion about the particular topic. This will help you become a valued member of their network, and mean they will recommend you to others they engage with. If you are really good they may even include you in #followfriday!

Don’t Engage in Black Hat Link Follower Building Tactics

Randomly following large numbers of people in an attempt they reciprocate, or trying one of the growing number of scams which claims to get you thousands of followers will only see you rejected by the twitter community. People want to follow others who are going to add value to their network.

Make Sure You Tag Your Images Tweets

Tagging tweets makes it easier for people to find them in the various Twitter search functions. If you are providing insight or information on the tagged topic, you will pick up followers who are interested in the subject.

Link Out To Follow Other Quality Websites Tweeters in Your Field

If there are Twitter celebrities in your chosen field of interest then follow them, engage with them and become part of their community. Many people will view other people’s lists of followers to find interesting people to follow themselves. By following a high quality of Tweeters you are providing a resource yourself, which will result in more followers, and will also pick up more followers by appearing in the follower lists of others.

Did I miss any?  Let me know.

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Oh dear, a whole month without posting. Don’t worry; I haven’t shut up shop, just been a bit busy on the work front. As always, a lot has gone on in the last month so it seems best to start with a recap of the month gone by to get us back up to speed:

MIVA closes down operations – as suggested may happen by The Digital Lookout back in Sep 2008 MIVA has finally closed down operations. Once a reasonable addition to any search marketing campaign MIVA has failed to keep up with the pace of change in search engine marketing and has been on a downward spiral for the last 3 or 4 years and has finally packed up its SERPs and gone home.

Ask Brings back Jeeves – in a bid to regain some of its character Ask has brought back Jeeves as the face of its search activity. The former front man for the Ask search engine has had a facelift and returned as Ask continues its bid for a foothold in the search marketplace.

Adwords Launches New Interface – Adwords has launched into testing a new interface, and the initial reactions haven’t been good! It appears the “revert to old interface” button has become the most used button in Google’s system! Of course there will come a point when it is forced upon us and we will be force to use it. No doubt in a couple of months we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

Microsoft and Yahoo Continue to Court – without any seeming progress being made Microsoft and Yahoo have continued to court each other over potential mergers and partnerships in the battle to compete with Google. No solid progress appears to have been made but the feeling within the industry is that Microsoft will be powering Yahoo search by this time next year.

Everyone Still Loves Twitter – Twitter is still the darling of the social media world and its user numbers continue to grow every month. Question marks still remain as to what its long term revenue model will be with some suggesting it will be apps, not ads, which will be the focus of their efforts to make money.

Google Adds Further Functionality to Their SERPs – Google released details of a number of new features to enhance the SERPs including:
• Rich Snippets and microformats
• Date based searches
• Chameleon
• Spellmeleon
• Wonder Wheel

Read about what this means at the Latitude Group Search Marketing News Section

Google Changes its US Trademark Policy – a year on from opening up trademarked keywords to Adwords bidders Google has further expanded this policy and from June is going to be allowing non brand owners to use the company name in their ad text, increasing the cost of brand clicks and making the brand SERPs a very confusing place!

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Patrick Altoft has noticed some changes in the referrer string used for Google natural search results this week which will change the face of position reporting technology. Reported on Blog Storm Altoft analysis the elements of the amended referrer string seen from Google natural search results and points out a variable in the new Google referrer string which indicates the position in the search rankings the website appeared in when the click occurred.

This is major news in the world of SEO as it aids in the tracking an monitoring of search engine positions. Currently specialist tools are utilised for the tracking and monitoring of natural search positions but this change in Google referrer strings could be the beginning of the end for these tools. There is always an element of inaccuracy in position monitoring software due to the various data centres used by Google for serving search results. An update in one data centre means that users of Google would see your website in different positions depending on where and when they search. This issue has been magnified as Google has begun to introduce personalised search results and also the wiki search results for users signed in to Google services. Google has also made a step change recently to less major, more frequent updates to its algorithms which means that smaller variances in search results are more likely, but on a more frequent basis. Add in with this the introduction of universal search elements in sporadic testing stages on various results and the monitoring and predicting of positions has become a minefield and one which many softwares have struggled ot adapt to.

But with the introduction of this variable into the referrer string Google has provided users with a static, standard variable for use in monitoring SEO performance. Regardless of where you are seeing the website today, tomorrow, or yesterday you know exactly where it appeared when that particular click occurred. By including it in the referrer string with a clear indicator Google have also opened the door for analytics packages to begin including the position in their traffic reports. And you can be sure of course, that the Google Analytics team, as well as developers at all other major tracking and analytics tools, will be beavering away to release this functionality imminently.

With all the changes in SEO, and the emergence of universal and personalised search, over the past couple of years, the focus of any most professional SEO experts and companies has moved away from pure positions, and towards traffic volumes and resulting business. This move by Google follows on nicely and in a way is there way of acknowledging that your positions are going to change on a more frequent basis.  Where you see your website will be different to where your customers see it, effectively making the position at any one point in time, unimportant.  What becomes important to know in this ever changing landscape is knowledge of the position it appeared in when a click, ultimately a transaction occurred.

RIP position reporting tools, welcome the new age of SEO reporting.

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There has been more evidence of the dreaded R word hitting the digital world in the past few days as previously untouchable companies face the harsh reality of a less profitable future. The irony is that these companies are seeing the pinch in the way of less than huge profits, where as smaller businesses are seeing the impact come in the form of zero profit and the prospect of going out of business. It goes to show however, that the difficult economic times are hitting companies in every sector, including Internet marketing, and of every size.

Google Feeling the Pinch?

Today, Google is set to post its Q1 figures and experts are predicting a sequential drop in revenue for the first time in Google’s history as a public company. And with 3 rounds of redundancies already in the first quarter of 2009, some cracks are starting to show in Google’s bullet proof exterior. The reality of the situation is that Google will still post huge profits and huge revenue and its biggest concern is appeasing investors and maintaining share price, there isn’t much danger of them going out of business any time soon. It does show however the severity of the situation however that it is hitting even the biggest and most profitable of Internet companies.

Ebay Going Back to its Core

Another Internet giant, Ebay, has announced measures this week which suggest they too, are conscious more difficult times may be ahead and they need to focus on their core business. After selling social content discovery website Stumble Upon back to its founders they have also announced they are planning to take Skype public in 2010 due to a realisation of its “limited synergies with Ebay and Paypal”. Ebay bought Stumble Upon just 2 years ago and Skype in 2008, and despite both posting impressive growth Ebay has since decided neither is a close enough fit to their core business. Both these purchases are evidence of a more frivolous time when large Internet companies had deeper pockets and could make $75M purchases (the price paid for Stumble Upon) without worrying too much about how it would fit in with their business. Now the honeymoon period is over, companies are looking harder at their businesses and spotting the need to streamline and maintain a focus on core activities.

Time to Rip up the Script

With Internet giants such as these cutting back, what chance is there for the smaller business? How does the small website owner survive in difficult times? I think it has been proven in the past that those with a solid business model who react to the changing market quickly, will survive. Sure things will become more difficult and margins will be squeezed, but those who remain agile should be able to ride the storm. Companies need to rip up the playbook of 2007-2008 and make sure their strategy for 2009 is in fitting with what the market demands. Make sure you are meeting a market demand and providing something more, or significantly better than, your competition. Be prepared to change in line with the market, stay agile, and keep in touch with customer demands. Hopefully then, you should be able to survive the difficult times and possibly even come out the other side in a stronger position. There will be casualties, no doubt about it, but for the companies which can stay strong and adapt, there could also be huge opportunities.

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Google have enhanced their image search functionality this week with the inclusion of a colour selection option which filters the image search results based on the colour you select.  It should be a useful little enhancement for filtering the results displayed in Google image search as it will enable you to source images which fit the colour scheme of a particular document.  These are the sort of enhancements which I believe we will see more of in the fight for search engine supremacy (if anyone decides to put up a real fight anytime soon!).  Every major player should have the basis of a solid search algortihm nailed down by now, but an algorithm is only ever going to be so accurate, it can only work on the data inputted.  By allowing the user to refine the results which are displayed you are removing the need for that element of complexity in the algorithm and putting the control in the hands of the user, allowing them to build their own, bespoke results to their particular needs.

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