Twitter nofollow links [Archive]

seopo

01-15-2010, 06:35 AM

Bit late finding this out but in the last part of 2009 twitter links all became nofollow.

Forgetting viral marketing, brand, etc and from a Purely SEO point of view, is there any benefits to twitter or tweet links?

I was thinking there may be some benefit from twitter api feeds to sites, but most of those seem to be pure javascript.

Thoughts?

mjtaylor

01-15-2010, 09:09 AM

Twitter is about exposure. Exposure to people who are already interested in what you have to say. The traffic is targeted, and more loyal than many, and probably most other sources. If you are offering something of value, the traffic may result in a valuable, followed link.

seopo

01-15-2010, 09:35 AM

True - but ignoring all other benefits, and looking at it purely from an SEO stance, is there a benefit to be had.

AaronNeal

01-15-2010, 10:36 AM

Think of Twitter like billboards. Twitter won't help like link-building but like a billboard, it will drive traffic to your website/store. Just having your Twitter profile automatically tweet new blog posts could help. I tie Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and LinkedIn to my new blog posts.

seopo

01-15-2010, 10:40 AM

I agree that twitter is great at driving targetted traffic. It's fantastic at getting in front of new eyes and making blog posts go viral with retweeting. However, is it any good for SEO? Not traffic but pure SEO/SEM?

chandrika

01-15-2010, 12:06 PM

This may be contentious, but just because a link has a no follow tag, does not necessarily mean that the link is not noted by Google. I always assumed that the no follow was simply about the leaking page rank issue. Google takes note of urls that are not even links at all as far as I know, so a no follow link, well it is may not be of no value at all.

mjtaylor

01-15-2010, 02:42 PM

True - but ignoring all other benefits, and looking at it purely from an SEO stance, is there a benefit to be had.

Yes. As I explained above, content of value will attract links. And the more traffic you drive to your site - especially targeted, loyal traffic -- the faster you will accrue links.

Let me try and make this real for you.

Scenario #1: I post a fabulous article with exciting new content and wait until Google and other visitors to my site find it. Over time, it attracts some links, but it's slow and some of the content is stale before it's found.

Scenario #2: I post a fabulous article with exciting new content and rather than waiting until my information is stale, I tweet about it using a socially bookmarked URL. My tweet updates my Facebook status and a couple thousand people who know me or my work are exposed to the article while the information is fresh. There are some re-tweets and at least a couple of immediate links from other blogs and sites.

Which scenario is the more advantageous for SEO in your opinion?

inertia

01-15-2010, 03:24 PM

As MJ says, it exposes content and that exposure might lead to more natural links, which is good for SEO. But there is no direct SEO benefit from nofollow links, no matter where theyre from... IMO. Also, as far as using Twitter for client SEO and Marketing. It takes the right efforts and types of client for Twitter to be effective, IMO.

seopo

01-16-2010, 04:40 AM

ok, thanks for all of your comments

D79312

01-16-2010, 05:44 AM

Many times websites, forums, and services like twitter will initially allow do follow links to encourage contribution to their content. This helps with growth but can hurt their own rankings because the pass page rank along. After these sites reach critical mass they often times change the properties of all their links to preserve their own page ranking. Its completely at the discretion of the site operator.

Twitter provides loyal customers, and targeted traffic among other benefits. Not having a do follow structure sucks but should drive you away from twitter.

inertia

01-16-2010, 07:09 PM

Its nothing to do with preserving PageRank I'm afraid. Nofollow doesnt "preserve" PageRank. It's about stopping spammers...

JasonJersey

01-17-2010, 09:35 PM

inertia

01-18-2010, 08:29 PM

I found that in Google Webmaster Tools, allot of my 'no follow links' such as craigslist, twitter, wikipedia, etc are being counted as backlinks to my sites. So yes, there is still some off site seo tactics one can do on sites that have 'no follow links'. No follow from my experiences have simply restricted the flow of pagerank juice (eliminating a hole in the bucket). The more holes in the bucket the more juice will flow out, but the less holes you have the more juice will reside.. Just something for you to think about.

No, no and erm... no. GWT shows links with nofollow but that doesnt mean theyre improving your rankings. You shouldnt think of PageRank as water that leaks all over the place. It doesnt work like that. If i have a page with PR10 and put a million links on it, it wont end up as a pagerank 1, it will still be 10. Come on man... SEO 101 (http://www.webproworld.com/seo-101/).

dorothykinder

01-22-2010, 05:28 AM

Yes, Twitter Links are no follow and so there are very less chances of getting back links from Twitter and so its better to go for Do follow social media sites like Digg, Stumble upon,Reditt..

Ne0

01-22-2010, 03:27 PM

Twitter is a MUST for all SEOs In my humble opinion. Think about this... Google tells SEOs one thing and then does another. (just because it says no-follow doesn't mean that you should ignore it) As MJ pointed out - social media sites are a sounding board that allows you to announce to the world that you've just added some awesomesauce to your site / blog / etc...

This year more than ever you shouldn't be going after exact keyword phrases in your anchor text... (why?) because the SE's can spot that. Q: How do webmasters that don't know a thing about SEO link to relevant pages? A: willy nilly - not w/ your desired anchor text. This is what / how the SE's think it should be... (your site earned that link because your content was important enough to link to - regardless of anchor text).

If you build a Twitter following around awesome articles / funny content etc... traffic / rankings / etc... will start to come naturally - just continue to build out from there.

.02

amabaie

01-22-2010, 05:39 PM

Twitter is a MUST for all SEOs In my humble opinion. ...

If you build a Twitter following around awesome articles / funny content etc... traffic / rankings / etc... will start to come naturally - just continue to build out from there.

.02

100% agree. The best links are the ones that you can get only by good old fashioned public relations. Take a bullhorn and announce your content. Whether the Twitter link carries link-juice is irrelivant. Ditto for Digg. Ditto for StumbleUpon. It's the bloggers and others who see your link on Twitter and post it elsewhere that matter.

ronochu

02-05-2010, 10:35 PM

If u need to communicate with a group of people instantly but not urgent matters, twitter is useful than phone conference. Since many people using their mobile online.

mickeyy

02-09-2010, 07:36 AM

Whatever it is i feel twitter very useful. Twitter, when used wisely, may be better than an RSS reader. Maybe it's not as information-rich, but it's loaded with important information coming from contacts you're interested in. Plus, you can communicate with your contacts directly. I think that ignoring Twitter as a business strategy is a bad idea.

Hafsoh

02-19-2010, 10:31 AM

Twitter links are no-follow. Forget them as they are not going to get you help in backlinking. Still Tweets are very helpful.However webmasters may like your post they found on twitter and then link to it, which provides links indirectly...

williamc

02-19-2010, 01:40 PM

This may be contentious, but just because a link has a no follow tag, does not necessarily mean that the link is not noted by Google.

Twitter is a MUST for all SEOs In my humble opinion. Think about this... Google tells SEOs one thing and then does another. (just because it says no-follow doesn't mean that you should ignore it)

Best 2 posts in this thread IMO.

SemAdvance

02-19-2010, 04:25 PM

I want to see the proof Twitter drives targeted traffic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I would like to see proof that the supposed "targeted" traffic converts to a sale!!!!!

If more than 10% of the posters here can offer proof, it would likely be a miracle......

A tall order I know.... but its to prove a point.

Jeffrey A

07-05-2010, 05:51 AM

SEMSpot

07-05-2010, 11:44 AM

Think of twitter as more of an online reputation tool and a way to communicate with the world. As dave said before, if you build a twitter following around awesome content then the links will come. Not to mention if you have built up that online trust factor with your followers and are offering a product that will benefit them, then your chances for a sale will increase. Spamming twitter with nothing but affiliate links will not get you as far as it once did. People are smarter and the automated twitter bots pimping affiliate links is no longer the golden ticket to success. Then again if you had 100 twitter accounts then you might see better results, but the hell with that.

keyon

07-06-2010, 05:56 PM

I have a client that has been maintaining a Twitter account for about a year now -
The Twitter conversion rate for us is between .003 (.3 percent) and .005 (half percent). Most other sources of traffic give us something closer to 1 percent conversion -- although I'll take 1/2 any time I can get it.

In regard to traffic alone, out of some 1200 different referring urls over the last 30 days, Twitter is in the top 10. That's not too shabby.

Zolesz

07-12-2010, 12:59 AM

Links from twitter are still useful even if they don't give you PR because they can still increase your traffic. Twitter can be one of the best traffic sources if you have a nice amount of followers. (like me, 3000+)

paulson

07-12-2010, 07:50 AM

Hi, A platform like twitter definitely helps you drive a good amount of traffic to your site, it depends upon how well you do it. But If you talk about back links, You don't get any back links from social networks like twitter, face book etc... .

nickoran

07-13-2010, 11:02 AM

I do SEO for a bunch of different clients and for some twitter and social media as a whole is great, for others not so. Personally I would say it depends on your target market, if your doing something local, or have an industry with interesting news going on all the time, then it can be great for driving traffic to yor site, if your selling wratchet spanners to the mining industry, id say look elsewhere.
twitter being a no-follow doesnt matter, if people get good info from your site they will naturally link to you from thier sites and that link is worth a wholelot more than if ll the gazillion twitter links were to count, there are so many of them it would saturate the link worthiness down to nothing anyway.

williamc

07-13-2010, 12:21 PM

People, think trust and authority...

incredible

07-14-2010, 11:25 AM

I use twitter and whilst (as people have mentioned here) its not great at driving traffic I'm just hoping that a few people do read it and link to my sites from their blog.

So I might start off with one no-follow link on twiter, to two do-follow links from people blogs who read twitter. Then if people read their blogs and link......

Same applies to facebook I think, I use them to spread the word and get others to link write about me rather than relying on the direct traffic it generates.