Tweet favourites or re-tweets, how does it affect ?
-
We have a small blog, which posts around 5-6 posts everyday based on Web Development and we get a lot of social traffic, as many of our followers which costs of some big websites and tech blogs too re-tweets and favourites or tweets.
Almost 10-15 favourites happen everyday for our posts.
Does this help us on this new age of Google social search engine ranking ?
-
I think it's important to note that we currently have no strong evidence that tweets (favorites or RTs) directly impact rankings. Google cut off the Twitter "firehose" data and claims they don't factor in social as a direct ranking factor (even Google+). I think "direct" is an important word there, and that makes sense - social is relatively easy to manipulate, at least in terms of raw signals. They're still trying to figure out the right mix.
That caveat aside:
(1) I agree with Ratan that RT's are generally more advantageous indirectly. They expose more people to your tweet, and those people will click through, drive up engagement, and potentially link to you. Eventually, this can have an indirect but very real impact on SEO. It's unlikely that favoriting has much impact even indirectly, IMO.
(2) Social signals, like RTs, can definitely be used by Google for indexing new content. Content posted on G+, for example, is indexed incredibly fast from decent accounts (not just big names, but any account that's clearly real). This isn't "ranking" per se, but you can't win if you don't play, so it matters.
(3) I strongly suspect social will be a corroborating layer, if it isn't already. In other words, if you have a piece of content with 500 +1s but no tweets, not Likes, and no links, that's going to look like spam to Google. If that same piece shows signals across very dimensions, then those 500 +1s may have an impact. RTs may eventually be part of that equation (personally, I don't think they are right now).
-
Hi Keri,
You, yourself, have answered the question for me. Thanks for the same. You agree that a 'retweet' creates far more visibility to the user. Yes, it does. Practically, retweet means you are sending someone else’s tweet to all of your followers. While 'favorite' is like saving a tweet for reading/referring later. So quite obviously, retweets create more emphatic social signals in comparison with a favorite.
This is where the answer lies. The better the social signal is, the more the benefit it will bring to SEO (at least as per current ranking factors).
You asked for reference, you can refer to a very good article by Jayson at Moz itself http://moz.com/blog/your-guide-to-social-signals-for-seo
"retweets serve as a new form of link building. Get your page mentioned in tweets by authoritative people, and that can help your ranking in regular search results, to a degree..."
Thanks
-
Hi Ratan,
I can certainly see where visibility to the user is different for a favorite versus a retweet. Can you provide some more information about how you've found a difference in SEO between the two?
-
Hi Monali,
'Re-tweets' are more powerful than 'favorites' when you talk about it in terms of SEO. The reason is that when some favorites your tweet, only you are notified for the same. Such tweets do not reach followers of the person who did the 'favorite'.
On the other hand, when somebody retweets your tweet, it reaches out to all the followers of the person who did the 'retweet'. In short, it creates more powerful impact in terms of creating social signals that a search engine can sense.
About 'favorites', there are many spam activities on twitter these days where spammy users do the 'favorite' just to send you the notifications. Why do they do it? Because, you come back to their profile and follow them. Such users do not generally return a follow. It's a trick by spammers.
On a tweeter account I manage, I have noticed many similar activities. But when I go to check whether they really did the 'favorite', in most of the cases I find nothing. They actually do the favorites and undo it. The game is just to attract new followers.
So the crux is, focus more on posting useful tweets so that you can attract more and more retweets.
Thanks
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there a functional difference between the "google +1" button and the "G+"? Has there been any conclusive research done regarding their affect on SEO?
Google used to offer a +1 button but that seems to have gone away in favor of the new google +1 button or the G+ buttons. I am trying to determine which button I should add to pages on our site but since I am most importantly doing it for SEO impact, i want to make sure I add the correct button...if it matters. Thanks
Social Media | | djmay0 -
Google negatively affect the positions in the Bing.
the longer time observed that acquiring links from google+ which is quite pleasantly accepted by Google, it is rather negatively affect the positions in the Bing. Has anyone experienced a similar problem?
Social Media | | Unigenitus0 -
Facebook description - How it affects SEO
Hello MOZ community, Today my SEO team and I talked about the activities we do in the social media. And one of the things that we discussed is the post description/caption. We upload a lot of unique, fresh and high quality content to our website on daily base, so we want our customers to reach these articles by sharing it on our social media channels. My question is: what is the best way to share a post in Social Media Channels and specially on Facebook ? what description should we use ? is it better to use the article's title? or new text with CTA (call to action) and ask the users to click on the link to read the article in our website ? Another question: how can we use the keyword targeting in the Social Media ? Thanks 🙂
Social Media | | JonsonSwartz0 -
How Social Shares on One Page Affects Sitewide Authority
If you have a great resource on your site that earns a lot of social shares, does that improve the authority of your entire site or just that single page in the eyes of Google?
Social Media | | Charlessipe0 -
Do Your Social Metrics Such As Tweets Transfer With a 301?
Got asked this today, and I don't know the answer, so throwing it out there to all your mozzers! If I 301 redirect a page that has built up a lot of tweets, likes, shares, even +1's, does that social data get transferred over to the new page in as far as social strength/ authority is concerned? Would Google still be able to see the previous version of this page had x amount of tweets etc, and take this into consideration when ranking the new page?
Social Media | | PerchDigital0 -
IFrame facebook fanbox and tweet blocks
I am looking for a Facebook fanbox display, and a recent tweets display which looks nice and uses an iframe. The reason I desire an iframe is to eliminate these otherwise followed links which I do not necessarily endorse. When you use a facebook fanbox, if 12 users are displayed then you have an extra 12 links added to your page. When you use a recent tweet display then each tweet, depending on your configuration, can offer many links. The tweeter's avatar is a link along with the sender's name and any links added to the message.
Social Media | | RyanKent0 -
Tweet Archive
I'm planning to create a Tweet Archive on my WordPress install. Ideally each tweet would be a separate entry in the database. That would mean that each one could essentially have it's own page. I think that if each had it's own page though, it would just create a very deep site with super shallow almost non-existant content. I am pretty sure I know the answer to this, I'm just looking for some substantiation... Should I just keep it as a list and not have each tweet exist as a separate page?
Social Media | | WilliamBay0 -
How do you believe Google's +1 service is going to affect SEO? What can we do?
So Google just announced the +1 button, which is there answer to Facebook 'likes' button: http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook-like-button-70569 http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/google-plus-one/ They should begin showing up now on Google US. If you aren't seeing them, you can turn them on here: http://www.google.com/experimental/ I want to know? What affect do you predict these are going to have? Is there anything we can do from an SEO point to begin leveraging +1 right from the outset?
Social Media | | Tom-Anthony1