Would Twitter be better for SEO without URL shorteners?

Alice’s last post on the changes in search engines as well as the advent of real time search in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) triggered a specific question: how to maximize the use of Twitter posts from an SEO point of view? We are today working towards Social Media Optimisation but the objective here is to have a reflection on how such a tool can become a stepping stone in an SEO strategy.

Anchor text.

All SEO experts will stress on the importance of anchor text in net and deep linking strategies. If you’re not at ease with SEO, here’s a quick overview of the use of anchor text. Anchor text is the text generally used in linking. Most of the time it looks like: read more here/more here etc… One of the core elements in search engine rankings is the number of incoming links. However, search engine robots do not only evaluate if the incoming link is from a high PR page or from a homepage but also what the link tells it before it scans the landing page. Thus a “read more here” text gives less information than, e.g., “web design company” in the link. This IS the anchor text. The robot will evaluate it and have a first information about the theme of the landing page. It is therefore interesting to optimise this anchor text when you’re building your linking strategies.

The Twitter case.

Any Twitter user will have spotted the issue on the basis of the anchor text definition. There are 2 issues concerning Twitter:

• As shown lately, url shorteners have been a problem (not huge but still) as viruses or phishing/malware pages can be hidden behind these urls. The problem does not come from hiding something behind a link itself, it can be done with any link. However, some users might be frightened of clicking on links now (which is the exact contrary of the current usage of the tool).
• As an SEO expert, if Search Engines provide real time content by showing Tweets in SERPs, it would really be interesting to have real anchor texts which will increase the visibility of the landing page be it for a user or a search engine robot.

Anchor text, a solution?

Today, the usage is url shorteners but it might be a good thing to add (or replace) this with the possibility of adding links to anchor text in one’s tweet. This would have some major advantages on the marketing front:

• As stated earlier, a major help in terms of SEO and link building.
• A better use of the 140 characters available as space will not be eaten up by the url sent out.
• The follower might have better incentives to click on a link if the latter has explicit anchor text.

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Category: Social Media