By now you know that Twitter has been everywhere the past couple of years touted as ‘The Latest, Greatest Thing’ for both social and business users. What isn’t asked, though, is ‘How can your SEO benefit from Twitter?’ There isn’t a clear answer. Let’s first look at why that is below.

First, the links you place into your Tweets are automatically categorized as ‘NoFollow’ links. That means that search engines don’t give any link credit to the page or site being linked to. So those links don’t add anything to your off-site SEO.

Whether your link uses the actual URL or is the result of one of the link shortening services. They’re all ‘NoFollow’ so you cannot build any SEO from Tweet links. That also means that other Twitter users can’t pass any SEO benefit to you if they link to your site in their Tweets. It’s just the way it is. However, that’s not the whole story of what your SEO can, or can’t, gain from Twitter.

The SEO Benefits You Can Get From Twitter

There are still ways can get search engine optimization advantages from Twitter. For example, start by getting listed in Twitter directories. Those listings will give you a real ’Follow’ link to your Twitter profile. Many Twitter directories also give you a link to your website as well. A couple of places that give you both links, and are well indexed by Google, are Twibs and TweetFind. Use them.

Another way to get search engine benefits - Google does sometimes show Tweets in its search results. How do you get Google to show yours? It’s not easy to get up there, but a few tips to make it more likely:

• Use keyphrases you want to be shown for in your Tweets

• Try to get your message across in your Tweets while leaving some space to spare. This is so if other ReTweet them, you don’t lose any keywords due to lack of space once the RT is added in.

• Tweets from accounts with higher follower counts are given preference by Google

• Don't tweet too often as it could be seen as Spam by search engines. If you’re one of those people who uses Twitter like IM, you might want to have a Personal Twitter account for ‘discussion’ and a separate Business Twitter account.

• Keywords with the hashtag added get indexed by Twitter for that keyphrase, which almost might be beneficial in Google as well.

Lastly, tweeting new content you’ve added to your blog or website could bring SEO benefits down the line. Although the Twitter link is ‘NoFollow’, if your followers find the content beneficial they just might link to it from their blog or some other place that does give you SEO value.

Twitter is one of those areas that doesn’t necessarily have direct, measurable SEO benefits, but it's still very much worth pursuing those indirect rewards. Why wouldn’t you try to get every advantage possible in this competitive world?