There has been a lot of confusion on whether social signals from Facebook, Twitter and other social channels influence Google’s search algorithm and results.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, previously had stated that, “If something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we’re able to crawl it, then we can return that in our search results.” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=udqtSM-6QbQ)
A little over 2 weeks ago, Twitter and Google reached a new partnership allowing the search giant access to Twitter’s “Firehose” tweet stream, which is generated and viewed by over 284 million users.
The new alliance between Google and Twitter will present more opportunities for Twitter to convert new users, while enhancing user search experience for Google with real-time user generated content.
For years, Twitter has not been a medium for organic reach; however, the outcome of the deal between the two tech giants will have the following affect:
- Tweets will start showing in the Google’s search results
- Hashtags will be searchable in search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Twitter will increase its organic reach and user base activity
- Further validates the importance of social and content marketing
- Impacts a hotel or business’s search visibility and branding
As this partnership further validates the importance of social media marketing to your overall hotel search engine optimization strategy, here are a few quick tips on how to improve your SEO using Twitter:
- Create and verify a Twitter profile for your business
- Generate compelling and engaging content that you can tweet about " i.e. event and local attractions, property events, etc.
- Tweet regularly " approximately 1-3 tweets a day
- Link to your blog posts or webpages such as hotel specials and packages.
- Include trending keywords and hashtags to drive engagements as tweets with hashtags generate more engagement
- Add images or short videos (30sec) as posts with images receive higher engagement and visual content is easily sharable
- Show excitement and urgency of the post
Twitter and Google’s new partnership only strengthens the role that social signals play in SEO. Search and social media strategies should not operate in silos, but rather integrated together to ensure optimum marketing results.
If social media marketing is not part of your overall SEO strategy, now is the time to renew your focus on social channels. Happy tweeting!
For more information on how Milestone can help you with your hotel’s social media marketing and SEO strategies, contact us today!
Contributed by: Genoveva Petrova, Senior Manager " Social Media, Milestone Internet Marketing
