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09 September 2011 / , 422 ReTweets

Twitter SEO? Think Twylah.

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Twitter Tweets SEO Twylah Official Company LogoEvery person or business has probably had that “Aha!” moment when they see their tweet show up in a Google Alert.  Of course, with Google Realtime Search probably relaunching with Google+ data to replace tweets, your tweets may not appear on Google but are still being indexed by all of the other search engines.  Every time you tweet, there is a chance that your message will be retweeted or even linked to, but a majority of the time your tweet becomes a fleeting piece of data that is lost in time and buried together with the billion other tweets that exist.

Many businesses, through proactive content curation and a social media strategy that guides them into becoming the resource for their industry by sharing a lot of content, send out a lot of tweets on a daily basis.  Is there a way that these tweets can somehow be used in a way to not only better brand their Twitter presence but also receive some SEO benefits?

Yes, there is.  And it’s a service that you might not have heard of but should be signing up for if you’re excited about the prospect.It’s called Twylah.

Don’t be confused when you see their home page, as their current marketing pitch is that Twylah allows you to create a custom branded page for your tweets.  There is no doubt that this can be done.  But after kicking the tires of Twylah for several weeks and getting to know their founders Eric Kim and Kelly Kim, who graciously agreed to be interviewed as part of this blog post, I can tell you that Twylah is about much more than just that. And it can be an absolute game-changer in terms of harnessing the potential SEO value of your everyday tweets.

Let’s first start with the question: What is Twylah?

The founders of the company put it this way:

Twylah helps you significantly leverage your Twitter efforts.  Currently, individuals and brands are spending a lot of time on Twitter, and not necessarily seeing direct returns on their investment.  Twylah is a tool that captures the value of your Twitter efforts and allows you to realize true returns.  We do this by creating engaging, navigable websites of your tweets, which we call “Twitter Brand Pages.”

Here is what a Twylah Twitter Brand Page looks like:

Twylah Twitter Brand Page SEO

What you’re looking it, in essence, is another completely branded Twitter profile page.  The background is a JPG image similar to how you can customize your own Twitter background.  But if you look closer, you begin to see what else this branded page of your tweets offers:

  1. Your tweets are being dynamically categorized based on what you tweet most.  I tweet a lot about social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, business, and social media books, so these tweets have now been categorized on these category pages.  In other words, if one of my followers wants to see what I’ve been tweeting about relating to LinkedIn, they can get that information much more easily on my Twylah page than doing an advanced Twitter search.
  2. The tweets are being displayed very attractively by visually promoting any image or video that is contained in the website where the link is leading to.
  3. It is possible to engage with any tweet easily through the convenient reply and ReTweet buttons that are provided.
  4. For any topic I can see which are both the “trending tweets” as well as the most recent tweets to easily navigate and find the types of tweets that I am looking for.
  5. Your Twylah page promotes YOU by including links back to your homepage, a follow link, as well as Google+, Facebook Like, and Tweet buttons at the very top of your page.
  6. I saved this for last, but you’ll see there is a box at the bottom righthand corner that includes an advertisement for my new LinkedIn marketing book.  Can’t customize your Twitter profile with an advertisement, can you?

Hopefully, if you’re one of Twylah’s targeted users, you’re already getting excited.  As Twylah said, “We are targeting Twitter publishers (brands and personal brands), who consistently create and curate valuable content on any topic.”  Hopefully, if you’re active in social media, that would include you!

Let’s now take a look at understanding what the prime business benefits of using Twylah are.  As the founders of Twylah eloquently said,

Tweets on Twitter vanish in a matter of minutes, maybe an hour if you are lucky, so all of your returns or rewards for your Twitter efforts vanish within that timeframe as well.  If you create a Twylah page, however, we capture this value for you, giving your tweets a second life.  We actually transform tweets into real monetizable assets.

And there already some early adopters singing the praises of Twylah:

Robert Scoble: “Twylah lets media brands and celebrities monetize their Twitter stream”

Jeff Bullas: “How To Send A Power Tweet That Increases Engagement by 400%”

The founders of Twylah shared with me just one of many anecdotes of Twylah success stories:

Our favorite story is how a one-month old tweet was found on someone’s Twylah page via Google, then “liked” on Facebook, which in turn, drove about one hundred additional visits back to this user’s Twylah page.  As we all know, a one-month old tweet on Twitter is long since dead and gone, and therefore has exactly zero value.  On Twylah, this same tweet drove a lot of traffic to someone’s site, which added significant value.

Let’s concentrate now on the 3 major business benefits of using Twylah:

1) You can potentially monetize your tweets through placing ads on your Twylah page.

The Twylah founders shared with me that ads and sponsorships on Twylah pages really work. In limited client pilots, they’ve seen click-through rates on ads 10-35 times higher than the industry average.

I tested this out with the link in my own advertisement box.  Although the data sampling was small, it turns out that I had a click-through of 1.7%, which is several times the CTR for Google AdSense ads that appear on my website.  Either way these are clicks that would have never happened if the tweet was seen on Twitter.

2) Power Tweets give your tweets a while new life by bringing visitors to your Twylah page.

It’s great to be able to show adverts on your Twylah page, but how do you attract people to visit the page?  That’s where the “Power Tweet” comes in.

A “Power Tweet” is a bookmarklet that Twylah provides you to add to your browser as a shortcut to allow you to create a tweet from any web page, similar to how a “Hootlet” from HootSuite works, and creates a special link that will lead the visitor not directly to the content, but indirectly to a link to the content on your Twylah page using the twy.la shortener.  Of course, once there, readers are spending a lot of time looking at more than that one tweet, especially if it falls into one of the categories that is “indexed” on your Twylah page.  This gives your tweets a whole new life, and when people start engaging with your Twylah page, they are doing it on your domain, not Twitter.com.

Of course, if every tweet that you sends out leads to your Twylah landing page instead of the actual content, some of your followers might get perturbed.  That’s why it’s important to use the “Power Tweet” often enough to drive traffic but not too often.  I aim for one such tweet a day, and I try to make sure that the copy is keyword/topic rich to pull in related tweets on my page.

If you’re curious, here are some sample Power Tweets curated personally by the co-founder of Twylah, Eric Kim!

3) The SEO benefits of Twylah are real.

A Twylah page, and all of the tweets within it, get indexed by Google even though your tweets don’t.  But it’s when you add Twylah to your website, through setting up a CNAME on your domain (e.g. tweets.windmillnetworking.com) and pointing it  it to Twylah where the fun really starts.

This may not be a popular search term, but typing in “LinkedIn trending tweets” brings the following results:

Obviously, when someone clicks on that, they are then on my domain with my branding, making it easier to engage with them and get them to come to my own website.  These are also additional views on my tweets NOT coming from Twitter but SOLELY from the SEO benefits of Twylah!

But am I getting any visits from search engines because of Twylah?  Below are my Google Analytics for my Twylah page from the past month:

Twitter Twylah Tweets SEO

Now, I haven’t been sending out Power Tweets on a daily basis but my Twylah page hits are already comprising 1.4% of my entire Pageviews.  Furthermore, my web visitors are engaging with my tweets with an average time on page which is six and a half minutes, more than double my current average.  Should I also mention that the bounce rate is more than 10% lower than my current one?

But if we are to see SEO benefits, how many of the above are coming from Google?  The answer is:

Twitter Twylah Tweets Google SEO Search Engine Optimization

More than 10% of the hits to my Twylah page are coming from Google searches.  These visitors are engaging more than twice as long as the average Twylah visitor and are exhibiting a similar bounce rate which is 10 points lower than my current one.

I am confident that, with working Power Tweets into my daily social media routine and the power of Google indexing, this number will continue to go up.  You too will be amazed at how your Twitter content can getting ranked in search engines much more quickly that you ever imagined with Twylah.

To prove this fact, let me share some conversations I had with Alan Berkson, founder of the business strategy advisory service Intelligist Group, about his experience with Twylah.  In his words:

Do a google search for “Influence Measure Optimization”. How far down is tweets.intelligistgroup.com? That subdomain has been around for a week.

Now do a search for “Alan Berkson”. How far down is my twylah account? It’s only been around < 1 month yet is better optimized than content that has been around for years.

The value proposition is interesting….the Power Tweet, which creates a landing page for that tweet AND related tweets is really the heart of it. I’ve already seen higher response on blog and link hits, as well as search engine response.

Hopefully you’ve already created your own Twylah page by the time you’ve read this, so I wanted to conclude with one nugget of advice that the founders of Twylah wanted to give you all, in 140 characters no less, what Twylah’s advice would be on how businesses should be better leveraging Twitter:

Create valuable content consistently. Keep your promotions out of the stream (it doesn’t work anyway). Promote your Twylah page instead.

Have you set up your own Twylah page?  What have your experiences been?  What about those who have clicked on a Power Tweet and engaged with a Twylah page?  Please share your thoughts with us!  Thanks!

(if you just can’t get enough about Twylah, here’s an added bonus for you below, a video that Robert Scoble did with Twylah co-founder Eric Kim)

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