How is Twitter becoming more and more relevant to SEO and internet marketing strategies today?

Let’s talk business strategy for a minute…

First off, and most obviously, there has been an overwhelming public interest and participation in online social media networks in the past few years (Twitter, in particular;) microblogging is arguably the newest phenomenon in high tech communication.   Commercial industries must and will cater their marketing strategies accordingly.  Every notable business today has a Twitter account you can follow, right?

Proof’s in the Pudding

Google has altered its indexing algorithms based on real time conversations as a result of Twitter’s growing influence on consumer opinion and product branding.   Since the public has a voice through these social media venues, marketing is becoming more and more tailored according to consumer wants, likes, and dislikes.  Google, too, has noted this gradual shift, and developed its real time and personalized search features as a means of specifying search results.  Services like Yelp, that allow users to give their personal input on a product or service, centrally locate businesses in online search results; public preference plays a key role in how Google optimizes site rank.

Google’s recently released caffeine update will further increase the value of link sharing and traffic building through social media venues like Twitter and Facebook.  Google Caffeine speeds up the search engine indexing process, allowing pages to be indexed more quickly; the caffeine update has essentially made “real time” search results possible.

Real time search results index live Twitter feeds at the top of Google search engine results pages.  Twitter makes “real time” link building possible—this is a quick and easy way to get a site ranked on the first page of Google.

Finally, expert predictions regarding what will be the most effective SEO strategies in the upcoming year all point to the incorporation of social media as a key.  Getting genuine incoming links from quality, relevant sites will get you the most “bang for your buck” in terms of link juice and effective search engine optimization; link building on blogs is becoming less and less worthwhile and effective because so many comment forums now have “nofollow” tags on guest post hyperlinks.

Love it or hate it, it looks like you might want to start embracing Twitter– if only for the sake of your business.