I am definitely not the first person to have written on this subject and surely not the last. However, recently I experienced the SEO value of Twitter first-hand and felt compelled to share my findings. Unfortunately I don’t have hard evidence to support the following claims, but I do have several theories as to how Twitter has directly added SEO value to a web property that I directly manage.

First, it is important to put Twitter’s direct effect on SEO value into perspective.

As many SEO Strategists have noted, the most popular URL shortening services including TinyURL and Bit.ly both use 301-redirects (permanent redirects) which tell the search engine spiders to both index and pass link value to webpages sent in Tweets with URL shorteners. This is a great thing! However, the downside is that Twitter utilizes the nofollow attribute on user submitted hyperlinks which tells search engine spiders to ignore the hyperlinks. Yahoo! and Google search spiders follow nofollow links, but exclude the links from their ranking calculations. MSN (Is it cool to call MSN Bing now?) ignores these links completely. Simply put, links shared on Twitter will not be counted as added backlinks for your website in three of the four major search engines – Yahoo!, Google and MSN.

So what is the SEO value of Twitter?

Ask.com passes link value on Twitter! Woohoo. Ask.com follows links using the nofollow attribute. Many people are quick to write off Ask.com as a major player in search. Why care about a search engine that has just under 4% search market share? Well, it is important to remember that a 4% market share is equivalent to about 375 million search queries per month. Depending on your company’s vertical, this could translate into a fairly significant volume of traffic to your website.

More importantly, though, is the added usage data to your website from Twitter users. There has been speculation that search engines factor in usage data when weighting the overall quality of your website, which ultimately effects your rankings. However, last year Google down played this speculation. But with the rise of shared links across social media platforms, I struggle to believe that usage data plays no role in how a website ranks. Examples of usage data variables include referring sites, number of unique visitors, number of page views, time on site and bounce rate. These variables are effected each time you share a link on Twitter and drive new visitors to your website. This is why it continues to be important to know your audience. If you know your audience and know that the content you are sharing from your website appeals to them, you will have favorable usage data. Google in particular has access to this data not only through Google Analytics, but also from users who have downloaded the Google Toolbar and Google Web Accelerator. There has also been speculation that other search engines purchase clickstream data.

Note: I prefer to use Bit.ly to track how a given link has been shared across Twitter. Simply add a plus sign to the end of any Bit.ly link to see the URLs analytics. Example: http://bit.ly/cxIRl+

Perhaps the greatest SEO value that Twitter has on any given webpage happens without you even realizing it. There are countless services that monitor Twitter for links and then aggregate the links in real-time. Many of the most well-known Twitter link aggregators, such as Tweetmeme and Twitturly, rank links based on how many times those links have been shared on Twitter. In other words, Digg-style votes come in the form of tweets or retweets of a link. Not only do some of these aggregators send significant traffic, but many of them do not add the nofollow attribute to the links they aggregate – meaning they pass link value to your website. This is not to say that all such aggregators and applications that monitor Twitter for content don’t utilize the nofollow, but there are countless websites that monitor Twitter for content that pass link value.

Share Content!

While Twitter itself doesn’t have much direct SEO value, the secondary effects of added usage data and passed link value from third party websites are worth paying attention to. Share relevant content that you know your audience will appreciate and share with their followers. As always, content is king!

For further reading on The Power of Passed Links through social media, Fred Wilson has some great data.

This article was originally published on The JAR Group blog in July of 2009.

This is a presentation I gave to a team at Time Inc in 2008 as part of The JAR Group.

Topics covered include research, social media, search engine optimization, paid search, and analytics. This presentation was given in consideration of specific client needs and geared towards an audience of traditional marketers that was relatively unfamiliar with search.

Like many, you probably have no idea what FriendFeed does. FriendFeed is currently ahead of the pack of a number of recently released web applications that give users the ability to get up-to-date information on what their friends are uploading, sharing and commenting on across the internet. Add your Del.icio.us, Facebook, FlickR, Youtube, etc. accounts to FriendFeed and it consolidates your recent activity. You then add your friends to FriendFeed, and you can follow them as well.

For other examples of this see:

FriendFeed.com
Correlate.us
Iminta.com
LuveZuu.com
MyBlogLog.com
OneSwirl.com
Profilactic.com
Socialthing.com
Secondbrain.com

But who cares? All the geeks are raving about FriendFeed. The geeks being the Internet celebrities (Just to name drop and hit those Google Alerts: Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, Michael Arrington, Pete Cashmore) who’s personal brands rely on being way too active on the major social networks, Twittering way too much, and being way too connected to way too many people, as well as the web 2.0 crowd and the overly connected internet user.

I would consider myself as being in the web 2.0 crowd and being an overly connected internet user. I experiment with every new web application that looks remotely interesting, I have an account on just about every website that FriendFeed allows you to import, and I am still not convinced that FriendFeed will ever reach a mainstream audience.

Maybe its not FriendFeed’s goal to reach a mainstream audience, but there has been speculation as to whether or not FriendFeed can reach the tipping point, resulting in a user base that reaches “critical mass,” and I don’t believe it will unless the service is enhanced with reality mining.

Reality mining will make the concept of lifestreaming much more appealing to a larger audience. The rise of location based services combined with connected mobile devices will make reality mining not only possible, but efficient. Reality mining will provide an ongoing social graph of real information, instead of updates telling me that a friend has added the new Kanye West video as a favorite on YouTube.

By pairing online activity with reality, the data becomes much clearer. A service that meshes these two concepts together will be wildly successful.

My lifestream should tell me the cities I visited in 2008, the people I hung out with the most often, the music I listened to and found most appealing, the concerts I attended, the girls I dated, and the restaurants I went to. Some of this information is online, some of it isn’t, but the information that is online, aggregated by services such as FriendFeed, will be a part of this larger organized lifestream. It doesn’t all have to be made public either, however you should want to share certain parts of your life with those people who helped make the moments what they were.

With the rise of services such as Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which allows you to share your location information with services and applications that you choose, and MyBlogLog’s recent addition of the ability to bind your bluetooth address to your account, the technology now exists to bring real meaning to your lifestream. Just this past week I got pretty excited using SkyDeck, a web application that downloads all of your cell phone bills and generates statistics on who you communicate with the most often, showing the complete breakdown of voice minutes and text messages to that person. The people are then ranked, and you are given the option to add more details to the contact’s profile. Enough API’s exist for services such as SkyDeck to allow for the creation of a meaningful lifestream.

Who is going to win the race and do it right?

his article was originally published on The JAR Group blog in April of 2008.

Now, who do you think the artist is behind that angelic voice? Her name is Yael Naim, and she was singing her new song “New Soul!” I would put money on the fact that you had no idea who she was, unless you were one of the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people to search for her in reference to the MacBook Air commercial, likely in one of the following ways (Wordtracker):

macbook air commercial
macbook air commercial song
macbook air song
macbook air commercial music
macbook air computer
who sings song from macbook air commercial
apple macbook air review
i’m a young girl macbook air
macbook air + commerical + song
macbook air , commercial
macbook air music commercial
macbook thin air song commercial
singer macbook air commercial
song in macbook air commercial
what is the song on the macbook air commercial
whats the song in the macbook air commercial
who sings commercial for apple macbook air

The official Yael Naim website has absolutely no paid or natural search presence for any of the above keywords. Nowhere on the website does it even mention that Yael was featured in the MacBook Air commercial. Even a very basic page with a video of the commercial, a paragraph of text, and a strong call to action with an affiliate link to the Apple iTunes store would suffice as link bait, getting the website to rank well across the board for related MacBook Air commercial searches. The next step is to retain interested consumers with a mailing list or a MySpace friend sign-up. By failing to fully engage with consumers as they are actively looking for her song (product), Yael is failing to turn “consumers” into “fans.”

Yael Naim did still manage to make it to #2 on the iTunes Top 100 downloaded songs chart on February 2nd, so I will give her some credit. However, by failing to optimize for the way people are actually searching for her and her music, and then failing to capture fans, she is more likely to fade into being a one hit wonder, rather than gaining a cult following and possibly being propelled into worldwide stardom.

I don’t mean to pick on Yael. She is definitely not the only artist or brand that has recently failed to capture the full investment of an on going marketing campaign. Did you watch the Super Bowl? Did you go online to search for the commercials and come to realize how poorly integrated the search campaigns were with the TV campaigns? That is a different post, for a different day!

This article was originally published on The JAR Group blog in February of 2008.

DUMBO use to be most famous for producing cardboard boxes and Brillo soap pads but now the area is perhaps most famous for its innovation in digital media and technology.

In December of 2008 Kristin Maverick (AttentionPR, Ex-Carrot Creative), Maury Postal (Carrot Creative) and myself (The JAR Group) were attending the First Thursday’s gallery walk in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. I was lucky enough to have recently met Kristin through Soccer 2.0 – the soccer team organized via the NextNY mailing list. That night, we had no intentions of founding a meetup but we found ourselves expressing the same desire to have a social event where on a regular basis the digital thought leaders of the neighborhood could come together to meet, share ideas, and build stronger relationships.

We knew the neighborhood had a vibrant tech scene, but for the most part that tech scene was somewhat underground except for a few occasional events from Drop.io, HUGE and Outside.in (Yes, these companies are in DUMBO!).

We decided to take the initiative and Digital DUMBO was born.

Collectively, Kristin and I built a list of initial contacts to notify and announce the first event to be held the last Thursday of January, 2009 (Chrysanthe Tenentes of Outside.in should not go without mention either!). As I recall, the first list we built only included about 30 people.

We secured space at ReBar, EventBrite was setup, emails were sent out and we waited. We thought maybe 50 people would show up…

January 29th rolled around and Kristin and I waited in the side room of ReBar for guests to arrive. A few people strolled in…and then, after an hour, the room was absolutely packed. Around 120 people showed up to the first event! We were absolutely stoked.

Fast forward to today, 10 events later. We now have a mailing list of over 800 names and a continuously growing crowd – a crowd of people who are genuinely excited to attend when they can. Some people every month, others every 3 months – but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are excited to be there and glad to be amongst like-minded individuals. To be honest, sometimes I like being at Digital DUMBO more than I like hanging out with my own friends! My friends have no idea what I do for a living, but you do and you care.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times people have come up to me to tell me how much they enjoy Digital DUMBO because the people are “non-pretentious.”

For a group of innovators who are creating some of the most cutting edge interactive media, technology, and marketing companies to be described as non-pretentious is a huge compliment. It’s something to truly be proud of and a testament to what you all have helped Digital DUMBO become.

You represent the following companies (and more):

Agencies:

HUGE (JetBlue, IKEA, CNN, NutriSystem)

HUSH (Sony Ericsson, Cheerios, Hyundai)

BigSpaceship (AMC, Miramax, Paramount Pictures, Coca-cola)

Special Ops Media (Nokia, 1800 Tequila, Reyka Vodka)

Carrot Creative (NFL, Crayola, The Onion, Unilever, Dave Matthews Band)

The JAR Group (MTV, Unilever, Time Inc, TuneCore)

Domani Studios (Sears, Gucci, NASCAR)

Space150 (Starz, Toro, Dairy Queen, Target, Best Buy)

Purple, Rock, Scissors (First National Bank, TruTV)

Freedom+Partners (Comedy Central, Volkswagon, Toyota, Adobe)

Brooklyn Digital Foundry (Gucci, HUGO Boss, Viraline, Steiner Studios, Guggenheim)

Web Services:

TuneCore: TuneCore is a music delivery and distribution service that gets music you created (even cover versions) up for sale on iTunes, AmazonMP3, Rhapsody, Napster, etc., without asking for your rights or taking any money from the sale or use of your music.

Drop.io: Drop.io is an easy to use, online collaboration and file sharing service that provides users with a simple, real time and private way to chat and share images, video, audio, documents and other digital content through unique, user-created and controlled sharing points called ‘drops.’

Outside.in: Outside.in is the best place to discover news happening around you. We make it easy to find stories, events, and local discussions happening in your neighborhood, within your city, or even on your block. Thousands of sources—including local bloggers, newspapers, events databases, and even Twitter tweets—help you keep up with everything happening in your backyard.

Etsy: Etsy enables people to make a living making things, and connects the makers with the buyers.

FanFeedr: FanFeedr are a real-time personalized sports feed.

Sawhorse Media: Sawhorse Media builds Twitter-centric web properties, tools and also hosts the Shorty Awards

The Universal Record Database: URDB believes every person on earth has potential to be the world’s best ’something’. URDB’s mission is to become the database where all such achievements will live.

Waterfront Media: Waterfront Media is the largest privately held online health company and operates The Everyday Health Network, which attracts over 25 million unique users per month across 24 sites.

Not to mention all of our Manhattan friends that come every month as well! We love you too, but I would be here all day if I wrote you up!

Digital DUMBO matters because it’s a platform; it’s an API. Leverage the API that together we have created to collaborate, innovate, and educate to ultimately build a stronger economic fabric so that we can sustain the recent success that we’ve seen in the NYC tech community.

In the week of thanks, I’m thankful to all of you that continue to support Digital DUMBO.

Special thanks goes to Kelly Samardak of Just an Online Minute (MediaPost) and Matt Caldecutt of Paint the Town Red who write about us every month as well as Kaitlin Villanova from the Carrot Creative team who has done a tremendous job in spearheading organizational efforts since Kristin Maverick’s departure!

Last but not least, all of the companies that have sponsored past events with interesting and engaging presentations (and free booze)!

This article was originally published on my Tumblr account in November of 2009.

I joined The JAR Group in May of 2007 in my current position as Digital Strategist. Our core competencies are SEO, Paid Search (SEM), Affiliate Program Management and social media marketing – all of which work towards acquiring visitors and converting those visits into sales.

The JAR Group helps clients take advantage of the most powerful marketing tools on the internet to bring customers to their websites and convert visits to sales. By understanding how consumers use the internet and applying that knowledge to your marketing program, we deliver the results that ultimately impact your bottom line.

I founded 100 Best Rap Songs in April of 2009. The website has 80,000 visits per month and over 1,000 registered users.

100 Best Rap Songs is both a music blog and streaming music service allowing hiphop fans to listen to music from many hiphop blogs in one spot. Our streaming music web application monitors hiphop blogs and aggregates music in a continuously updated playlist. Songs are then ranked by popularity according to user favorites combined with our proprietary ranking formula. Users can vote, comment, create custom playlists and share music across the web.

I co-founded the Digital DUMBO event in January of 2009. The event was a grassroots movement to better organize the Brooklyn digital community. Digital DUMBO now has a mailing list of over 1,300 and monthly attendance of over 350.

Digital DUMBO was created to raise awareness and foster business for the local technology community. We do this through collaborative efforts with local organizations, companies and individuals to showcase local talent, educate the community, and facilitate idea exchange. The goal of our efforts is to drive future talent to the area, sustain business and solidify the community as a viable economic player in the New York Metro area.