It’s every webmaster’s dream to go popular on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit. A front page feature on any of these sites brings a flood of new traffic – thousands of visits in a single day. Of course, that kind of reward attracts a lot of competition and the social sites are thus protected by tough voting algorithms. You not only need good viral content and a large network of friends to help you, but also a lot of luck. Hitting it big on social media does not come easy.

Enter the Reddit Self-Serve Advertising Program. A few weeks back, Reddit announced that it will be opening up its homepage for anyone willing to pay. How does it work? Advertisers bid for the space at the top of the Reddit homepage, where the adverts pretty much look the same as regular Reddit listings, only they’re labeled as “sponsored links” and have a border and blue background. The ads should get a ton of visibility. Here’s an example of what they look like:

The bidding process for the advertising space is actually quite interesting. Advertisers bid a certain amount per day, anywhere between $20 and $9,999.99. All of the money is then placed into a big pool, and advertisers get a proportional amount of exposure based on how much they bid compared to everyone else. For example, if you bid the daily minimum of $20 and there are 9 other advertisers, each bidding $20 as well, then your ad will show up 10% of the time.

Of course it’s be a lot more complicated than that. While this bidding system is great for Reddit’s income, it does add a bit of uncertainty for potential advertisers. How much can you expect to get for your money? There’s a lot of outside factors involved – including how many other advertisers there are and how much they’re bidding.

So how do you know whether or not Reddit advertising is worth your while? You don’t. Like with any other advertising, you just have to try it and see if it sticks. Getting in early while there are less advertisers will likely give you an advantage.

The Reddit self-serve advertising platform is not yet open to the public, but I did manage to get an invitation to the beta. I decided to throw $40 into it for a day and analyze the results. In the rest of this post, I’ll describe the process and outline my findings.

My Results with Reddit Advertising

Setting up a promotion using the Reddit self serve system was very easy. Just fill out a form with title, URL, duration, and bid amount and you’re good to go.

Once you create your ad, the Reddit team will review and approve/reject it. You do need to submit two days in advance of when you want to start.

I decided to promote a recent article I wrote here on Winning the Web called 3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive.  After $40 and 24 hours, these were the results.

In 24 hours, my listing was shown 26,050 times (to 3,187 unique visitors). The link in my ad was clicked 419 times, resulting in a unique click through rate of 13.15%. Not bad – that’s about $0.09 per click.

Let’s take a look at the quality of that traffic by analyzing Google Analytics data for Reddit in the same time period.

As you can see, there does seem to be a discrepancy between the visits in GA and the clicks in Reddit. It could be that the platforms are using different tracking methods and/or some of the clicks are not necessarily being interpreted as visits in GA. Regardless, you can see that the quality of the traffic from Reddit isn’t particularly great – an average time on site of only 19 seconds, although the bounce rate is low and visitors load 2.11 pages per visit. Furthermore, I did not gain any new RSS feed subscribers nor did anyone download my free Internet marketing e-book.

The lackluster results could be because I promoted a rather controversial Internet / tech article on the homepage of Reddit. Something more general and interesting for Reddit’s demographic would probably fare better.

Other Advertisers on Reddit

Since this new program involves a bidding war between different advertisers, the competition does affect prices. See the breakdown of statistics for all advertisers in recent days.

When there were 28 advertisers on 11/19, CPM was $0.92 and CPC was $0.13.  However when the number of advertisers decreased to 13 on 11/23, CPM went down to $0.43 and CPC to $0.04. It’ll be interesting to see how these numbers change when even more advertisers come on board.

There does seem to be a diverse set of advertisers so far in the beta program. Here are a few running on the Reddit homepage right now – including a promo for a giveaway, a social media article, an affiliate offer landing page for a free phone, reddit t-shirts, website software, and an ad for a DVD movie on Amazon.

Final Thoughts

Advertising on the Reddit homepage is a great way to get social traffic to your site fast without having to play the social voting game. The program is still in beta but it’s definitely worth a shot once it launches (in a few weeks). Since you get more for your money when there are less advertisers, it’s best to get in early (as an advertiser myself, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this). Based on my very small experiment, the traffic doesn’t seem very sticky or targeted, but test what works and scale up your campaigns once you find something that clicks with the audience.

What do you think about the Reddit self-serve advertising platform? A good model worth trying out? Leave your thoughts and experiences in a comment here.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Reddit Homepage Advertising Beta Test Results – What I Got For $40

• Why You Should Change Your Blog to Show Excerpts on the Home Page
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?
• Why I Use Private Advertising & How I Determine Prices
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch

• spreading brand awareness
• directly interacting with customers
• syndicating links to related content
• running special promotions

In fact, Twitter has its own Twitter 101 Guide for businesses and includes basic how-to, best practices, and even case studies. There are quite a few big brands effectively utilizing Twitter with new ideas to gain traffic.

However, almost all of the marketing being done on Twitter right now is direct through company profiles and viral marketing (retweets). What if businesses wanted to spread awareness by paying prominent and influential Twitter users to advertise for them to their own audience? Is that allowed..?

Twitter currently has no such program and many cringe at the idea of incorporating advertisements into tweets. However, I think it can be a win-win situation for everyone involved and the advertising doesn’t have to be so bad.

Advertisers get a ton of exposure by leveraging the audiences of the top users and seeding viral campaigns. Users get paid handsomely for a bunch of sponsored 140 character messages. And Twitter is finally able to generate some revenue. Sure, you might argue that incorporating advertising may turn people off and hurt Twitter, but which communication channel today isn’t attached with ads? (TV, print, radio, blogs, web mail, etc) People seem to deal with it just fine. Besides, if Twitter doesn’t do it, third party sites will.

Which brings me to my next point…

Make Money with Advertising in Your Tweets

There are already a handful of startup ad networks that specialize in connecting advertisers with Twitter users willing to publish sponsored messages to their followers.

The networks with the most promise so far are ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets. ad.ly has received a considerable amount of funding and has the support of celebrity publishers like Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew, and Brooke Burke and top advertisers like Microsoft, Sony, NBC, and Universal Pictures. Sponsored Tweets has Kendra Wilkinson, Bethanny Frankel, CarrotTop, and many more.

So how exactly does it work?

Advertisers on the ad.ly platform choose which Twitter users they’d like to pitch their advertisement to and submit bids. Users then have the option to either approve or deny the bid. If accepted, the advertisement message is automatically sent out, usually 4 times over the course of a week. Of course, the messages are marked as ad.ly ads as shown in the example below.

As for tracking metrics for advertisers, there’s a dashboard that displays clicks and estimated impressions for all targeted publishers. Of course, each campaign would need to be tested and tweaked to achieve maximum results.

How much money can you make?
After signing up as a publisher for ad.ly, the system gave me a suggested weekly price (~4 tweets) of $67. My personal  Twitter account @gyutae has around 5,000 followers.

This is based on a quality score that doesn’t necessarily rely solely on the number of followers. For example, a Twitter user with a loyal following of just 500 could make more than someone with 5,000 random bot followers.

The rate that I got from ad.ly is considerably better than what Sponsored Tweets offers me per tweet – $6.05.

Obviously, the more followers you have and the more engaging you are on Twitter, the more money you can potentially make. Another reason to build up that Twitter account!

Money making examples

To give you some examples of what’s possible, John Chow recently made $1,000 for his first tweet (he has 50,000 followers) on ad.ly. Shoemoney made $15,000 in one month for tweets he sent out using ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets.

Very impressive – and these guys are very small compared to the celebrity Twitters out there. I don’t even want to know how much Kim Kardashian gets per tweet (a user with millions of followers gets 5 figures per tweet).

Sign up for ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets as a publisher, and try them out. How much money do your tweets command?

Advertising on Twitter – Does it work?

Personally I have not tried out any of the pay per tweet services as an advertiser, but I think it could bring interesting results. After all, if publishers are making a lot of money it means advertisers are making even more, right?

The main benefit that I see with Twitter advertising is that sponsored messages could lead to organic retweets and sharing. In other words, you could potentially get a lot more for your money by igniting a viral campaign starting with the ad networks. Of course this will require a lot of trial and error, but the strategy is definitely on my to do list for marketing my sites.

Check out some of the experiences other marketers have had using pay per tweet advertising from Sponsored Tweets and ad.ly:

• Is Paying For Tweets Worth It? – Shoemoney
• Sponsored Tweets: Results as an Advertiser – Ian Fernando
• Sponsored Tweets: a case study in Twitter marketing fail – eConsultancy
• Sponsored Tweets Review – Eric Nagel

Results are mixed so far, but like I said, Twitter advertising requires quite a bit of testing before finding something that works.

What do you think about ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets, and the other pay per tweet ad networks? Would you use them as either a publisher or advertiser? Leave your experiences and thoughts in a comment here!

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?

• How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• New FTC Guidelines for Bloggers & Internet Marketers – The Good, The Bad, and Everything Else You Need to Know

As you know, Google is the search engine and controls an obscene amount of traffic on the web. In fact, it’s not uncommon for many users to spend at least 25% of their time online on Google properties like Gmail, Google maps, and news. With a cash cow business model (a monopoly in search advertising) and a killer brand (“google” it), Google is living large and seemingly invincible. But is this really the case? Is the Google search engine as stable as it seems?

With the rise of social media, the search game has changed dramatically. Users no longer just want a single source telling them what to look at. Instead, they want recommendations from real people with similar interests and experiences. That’s precisely the reason why social networking is so hot right now and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Social media isn’t just a fad – it’s here to stay and will revolutionize the web in the process.

Twitter, in particular, is interesting. I’ve written before that Twitter is the future of search and I still stand by that claim 100%. In fact, both Google’s and Bing’s recent partnerships with Twitter to incorporate real time status updates into the search results is a clear step towards that direction. More and more people are starting to use Twitter, and the social platform will play a pivotal role in shaping the web and the online community. And no, not even the mighty Google is immune to the coming changes.

Mark Cuban explains it well…

TWITTER AND FACEBOOK are platforms that allow the news sources, like newscorp to post breaking news and gain value from their brand. Google does not. In other words, if I trust a newspaper, tv or any brand, I can follow it on twitter and expect the news to come to me. The concept of “If the news is important, it will find me” works better by the day. If it matters to me, chances are very good its in one of the twitter feeds I follow.

Having to search for and find news in search engines is so 2008.

The solution for Google? If it wants to remain the dominant online powerhouse that it is today, it needs to adapt to the shifts in the social landscape and buy up Twitter before it’s too late. Sure, Google’s own social innovations like Wave, Social Search, and Search Wiki are nice – but they’re way too late to matter, especially during this critical stage of shifting user behavior.

Back in March 2009, Google CEO Eric Schmidt questioned the usefulness of Twitter and called it the “poor man’s email”. Boy, was he wrong. It’s a mistake that could cost Google $6 billion or even more, especially if they fail to swoop up Twitter any time soon.  Google as well as Facebook have tried to buy up Twitter in the past, without success. Twitter is resistant to a sell off, even at $1 billion, but anything can be bought if the price is right.

Here are the 3 main reasons why Google needs to buy Twitter in order to survive. The price tag will not be cheap, but if there’s any company that can afford it right now it’s Google.

1. Twitter gaining fast – huge amount of data

Twitter is mentioned and promoted everywhere these days – CNN news broadcasts, popular radio stations, celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal, the majority of blogs big and small, and even the ESPN homepage.

Everyone and their grandmothers are on Twitter and the rapid growth will only accelerate as Google and Bing incorporate status updates into their search results. In fact, we’re only a few years away until Twitter receives mainstream acceptance as a communication channel – just like email addresses, phone numbers, and website URLs. People are already placing their Twitter usernames on their business cards.

So why does this matter? Twitter is essentially collecting the daily life streams of millions of people around the world – breaking news, opinions and reviews, interesting links, connections between people, interests, etc. Once a larger percentage of the population starts using the service, it’s scary what’s possible. With the right technology, Twitter could potentially mine that data to pretty much find out about anything important happening in the public world. It could also figure out which websites are the most popular and trustworthy sources.

Hello…Google..?

2. Google’s ranking algorithm in danger of being outdated

Google’s current search ranking algorithm relies heavily on link analysis to determine what’s important and what’s most relevant to a given search query (e.g. a link from CNN implies that the page is important and worthy of high rankings). While this technology was revolutionary to the search industry in the mid 90’s, it’s in danger of quickly becoming outdated in the current landscape.

First of all, users now want information in real time – especially for things like breaking news. Because Google works by indexing web pages, the search engine is clunky and unable to keep up with real-time queries.

Secondly, user behavior is changing online and links are becoming less and less reliable in terms of determining the authority of a page. Webmasters represent only a tiny fraction of the overall population and some hobby bloggers are leaving their own sites for social media sites like Twitter. So why let the few in power control the rankings with their links? Link manipulation is a common tactic used by search marketers and a relatively new site with regurgitated content could potentially rank #1 for a competitive keyword simply by buying some under-the-radar links. It’s a glaring weakness in Google’s algorithm.

Once Twitter goes mainstream and is used by the masses (not just the tech savvy), imagine all of the data that Google could utilize to perfect its search rankings. Compared to links on actual web pages, links found in Twitter status updates represent a larger sample of people.

What does this mean? If Google were able to incorporate Twitter data into its current link analysis algorithm, search results would be better with less spam – something that’s integral to Google’s core business of search advertising. If that’s not a reason to buy, then I don’t know what is.

3. Play keep away from Bing – competitive advantage

Twitter has enormous potential – there’s no doubt about it. But while Google overlooks Twitter, what if it was bought up by Bing? Microsoft has already acquired Yahoo’s search business and seems a step in front of Google in the social sphere. If Google is smart, it’ll block Bing’s moves at all costs and prevent Twitter from springing up with its own search engine in the future.

Let me say it again in case you missed it – Google needs to buy Twitter.

What do you think about a Google acquisition of Twitter? Bound to happen? How would the deal affect the search industry? Leave a comment.

Also, just to clarify, I’m not necessarily for Google buying Twitter and taking over the Internet. In fact, I think it’d be a nice change of scenery and good for the Internet if Google lost some of its dominance and met some fierce competition from Bing and/or Twitter. Time will tell.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive

• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware
• 5 Crucial SEO Tips For the New Binghoo (Microsoft Bing Overtakes Yahoo Search)
• The Google-Digg Prophecy – 5 Ways a Deal will Change the Internet
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search

The exact details on implementation aren’t yet clear, but it’s likely that real-time Twitter and/or Facebook updates will be added to the regular search results – particularly for breaking news and queries where articles and blog posts have not yet been written (hence “real time” search).

The services probably won’t go live until at least a couple of weeks, if not months, but you can see an example of what’s to come on the Bing Twitter Search page. Pretty cool stuff.

So is this a game changer for SEO and Internet marketing? I vote yes. I’ve written before that Twitter is the future of search and this real-time search integration is clearly a step towards that direction. The addition of Twitter and Facebook updates in the search results will open up new opportunities to market yourself and your business.

What are the steps you need to take to prepare yourself for this Twitter and Facebook search integration? I’ve already gone over Twitter SEO and how to optimize your site for Twitter search, but this new development further adds to the strategy’s importance. Below is a list of ways you can get the most out Twitter/Facebook once the status updates hit the search engines.

1. Get on Twitter & Facebook and be active, duh
This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re not yet on Facebook and Twitter, what are you waiting for? You’re missing out on boatloads of opportunity. Set up branded accounts on both Twitter and Facebook and make your updates public so that the search engines can access them.

Integration of these tools into Google and Bing will further increase awareness of social media and usage should quickly become mainstream. What does this mean? You’ll be able to market to all kinds of people with different interests and demographics. No more complaining that Twitter’s audience is too tech-savvy blah blah blah. Same goes for Facebook.

2. Use your own branded URL shortener
URL shorteners like tinyurl and bit.ly are commonly used for Twitter and Facebook status updates to save space and track clicks. If you’re linking to your own site, however, this is less than ideal because you’re missing out on a great branding opportunity. How are people supposed to know what’s behind that bit.ly URL? This becomes even more important when status updates are integrated into the search results.

The solution? Use your own URL shortener hosted on your domain. Sure you might lose out on some characters, but in my opinion the branding exposure of having your full domain displayed is worth it. Check out this article for instructions on how to set it up for your blog: How To Easily Create Your Own URL Shortener With WordPress.

In Bing’s initial Twitter search demo, the source domain is shown in parentheses next to the shortened URL. Still, my guess is that having your own domain name in the clickable text of the URL is more effective for showing off your site.

For example, which of the links below do you think is better?

3. Do extensive keyword research for your updates
Much like SEO for your web pages, keyword research will be integral for optimizing your tweets and status updates to get them to rank in the search results. Are you using the best variation of your keyword with the highest search frequency? What other related topics and keywords can you include to maximize the search visibility of your updates? You’ll find the answers to those questions in your keyword research.

Use the Google Keyword Tool to look into top keywords you’d like to rank for. Then use them often in your updates. This research might seem like overkill to write a 140 character message, but the subsequent exposure and visits to your site can make it worthwhile.

4. Write about hot topics and trends
In addition to keyword research, stay on top of the hottest trends related to your niche and write about them on Twitter and Facebook. If you have an authority account (more on this later) and your messages rank for hot topics, you could get a lot of exposure.

Google Trends is a great tool for this purpose. For even more, take a look at my post: The 3 Biggest Sources for Uncovering Hot Topics & Trends Online

5. Avoid duplicate content
Search engines tend to devalue duplicate content in the rankings (i.e. web pages that have the same or similar content to others on the web). That’s why as SEO’s we try to minimize duplicate content as much as possible. So why should status updates on Twitter and Facebook be any different?

In fact, the Twitter integration post on the Bing blog stated that “if a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.” In other words, the ranking algorithms will favor the original source (by timestamp, or by account authority) when it encounters any duplicate messages.

So how do you avoid duplicate content with your Twitter and Facebook updates?

• When re-tweeting updates, don’t just add “RT” to the beginning and repost. Instead, change it around a bit and add your own flavor. That way, your tweet or update is more likely to rank in the search engines (and avoid any duplicate content filters).
• Don’t tie your Twitter account with your Facebook so that the same updates go to both (i.e. duplicate content). Instead, write unique messages on the two accounts so that they have the potential to rank in Bing.

6. Build up authority for your profiles so you can rank
How Google and Bing will rank the fire hose of information from Twitter and Facebook is still a question mark. However, it’s likely that the following factors will be heavily considered.

• Relevance to queries
• Quantity and quality of followers (i.e. account authority)
• Quantity and quality of re-tweets for a specific update
• Links to Twitter profile

I suspect that re-tweets will be the currency of Twittersphere, much like links are the currency of the web. Google and Bing will look at who’s retweeting who to determine which updates are the most important. Your best chance at ranking? Build up a Twitter profile with lots of followers and retweets. See my post: How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps

What’s even more interesting is how Google and Bing will use the data from Twitter and Facebook to influence the organic search listings, if at all. For example, now that Google is easily able to index the entire Twitter stream, what’s stopping them from using the links on Twitter as a quality signal for web pages? More on that in my next post…

What do you think about the Twitter/Facebook integration into the search results? Big opportunity for online publishers and business owners? Leave a comment with your thoughts and any other notable strategies you have in mind!

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration

• 3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• SEM Rush Review – SEO Competitive Research at Your Fingertips
• 5 Crucial SEO Tips For the New Binghoo (Microsoft Bing Overtakes Yahoo Search)
• The Incredible Value of an Exact Match Domain Name

In this article, I’ll describe the role of the title tag in social media and in SEO and let you in on a little title trick you can use to maximize both your social media and SEO exposure.

Title Tag for Social Media

The ultimate goal in social media is to create compelling content that people will voluntarily share and spread virally via word of mouth (using various social sites). In order for this to happen, the title tag (and header tags) need to be optimized to spark readers’ attention and hook them in. The title is essentially the first impression of the article and many people will actually vote up stories on social bookmarketing sites like Digg and StumbleUpon solely based on the headline.

So what makes a good title for social media? The use of specifics, numbers, names, and descriptive power words always helps. For more guidance, check out Copyblogger’s article on how to write magnetic headlines.

Here’s an example. A current hot story on Digg is entitled “Electric Motorbike Does 0 to 60 in Under One Second!” Did that get your attention? It certainly got mine. That’s the mark of an effective headline.

Title Tag for SEO

Whereas title tags in social media should aim to get readers’ attention, titles tags for SEO should focus on incorporating highly relevant and popular keywords for the search engines. The title tag is by far the most important on-page SEO attribute and if you want to rank favorably for targeted keywords, you have to be sure that they’re strategically placed in the beginning of the title tag.

For example, using the previously mentioned Digg story, a better title for SEO purposes might be “KillaCycle Review – Fastest Electric Motorbike”. It’s descriptive with a lot of keywords, but it just doesn’t get your attention like the social media version, “Electric Motorbike Does 0 to 60 in Under One Second!”.

This presents a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, you want to optimize your titles for spikes of social media traffic, but on the other hand you want to optimize your titles for the search engines. What do you do?

The Solution – One Two Punch

Here’s the trick. When you first write an article, write the title (including both title tag and header tag) for social media. Be shocking or controversial. Do whatever you need to do to craft an interesting title that will be sure to get people’s attention. Once you have that in line, promote the article on social media sites. Get the word out and give it a chance to spread on sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc.

If you do a good job, you’ll get a big influx of traffic and links. However, after a few weeks, the traffic will inevitably die down and your article will be buried in the archives.

Once this happens, change the title tag on the article to be more SEO friendly by incorporating descriptive keywords with high search frequency (use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool). Leave the header tag as is with the social media version to entice search visitors to further read the content.

What does this do? You maximize sharing on social media by writing compelling titles – which aren’t always descriptive and search friendly. Once you get the traffic and links from that effort, you then maximize search traffic by changing the title tag to incorporate more keywords – and thus increase rankings. Make sense?

Have you used this tactic to increase both social and search traffic to your articles? If not, you may be missing out on a lot of new visitors you could be driving to your site.

Leave a comment with your thoughts. I’d love to hear more about additional strategies you’ve employed to maximize both social and search traffic to your sites.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch

• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• The 3 Biggest Sources for Uncovering Hot Topics & Trends Online
• Improve Your Productivity with the 80-20 Rule
• 6 Spicy Ways to Use Hot Topics & Trends to Explode Your Traffic

What exactly is the Diggbar?

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, the DiggBar basically acts as a URL shortener and frames all external pages underneath the bar. This way users never leave Digg and and are encouraged to visit more Digg pages, vote up stories, and share content.

You can see a screenshot of an example page below:

Muhammad Saleem has a great writeup on the DiggBar over at Mashable. Check out the article if you’re interested in learning more about what the DiggBar is and what it’s not.

Implications for Internet marketers

Users never leave Digg you say? If you’re an online marketer promoting your content through Digg, this means a number of things. First of all, you won’t receive any SEO link value should your article hit the front page of the Digg. All those links that were once valuable are now nothing but rubbish in terms of SEO. Furthermore, you also miss out on secondary links when you write a good linkbait piece. Lazy webmasters will inevitably link to the Digg URL rather than your own and of course you lose out on the link value. At least you still get the traffic and pageviews from Digg, right? Sure, but with the DiggBar taking up primary real estate, more and more people will go back to Digg rather than navigating your own site. Again… good for Digg, bad for you.

Now that you know how the DiggBar affects your marketing efforts online, I want to present you with four different options that you can take. What you do is up to you, but it’s pretty clear that a lot of marketers are not happy with Digg right now.

4 Possible Reactions to the DiggBar for Marketers

1. Embrace the DiggBar – proceed as usual
The DiggBar is a big change with negative effects for marketers, but you can’t deny the fact that Digg still sends boatloads of traffic. One option is to ignore the SEO benefits and promote on Digg for its social traffic potential. If everyone leaves Digg, then hey, maybe there will be less competition and it’ll be easier to hit the front page.

2. Abandon ship – Digg just isn’t worth it anymore
Sick of the DiggBar? It might be a good time to abandon ship and focus your marketing efforts elsewhere – like Twitter. Patrick Altoft expresses this sentiment pretty well in a post entitled Digg just totally killed linkbait.

Here are some noteworthy comments from the article:
I’ve been saying this for over a year – why are marketers marketing Digg? Clearly, Digg doesn’t give a damn about you guys.
-Tamar Weinberg

Digg is trying to do everything in its power to be profitable and if that means screwing everyone but them on the way they will do it. I haven’t relied on Digg for links for over a year, plus the links I see from SU or Reddit or Twitter users and their blogs are far more quality than 99% of the lazy blogger links you get from Digg users. I have had articles get 1,000 links just from Twitter passing it around and people finding it that way. We don’t need Digg anymore.
-Chris Bennett

3. Fight back – block the DiggBar
Digg may be trying to take advantage of your content for their own gain, but there is a way to fight back. Inserting a simple frame-busting Javascript code into your pages breaks the DiggBar and prevents it from loading. There’s even a Frame Buster plugin for Wordpress to make it easier to implement (tip: All Things SEM). If you want to protect your content on Digg, then it might be a good idea to go this route – even if you’re not actively promoting on the site.

4. Game the system – take advantage of the DiggBar
Finally, there’s always a way to take a bad situation and use it to your advantage. When life throws lemons, you gotta make lemonade, right? Michael Gray has a great post on how to abuse the new DiggBar for both fun and profit where he basically suggests using the new Digg URLs to rank for keywords (based on domain authority – aka parasite hosting). The method works pretty well in general (e.g. see the top listings for buy viagra). However, at the time of this writing it looks like Digg implemented a robots noindex tag on all of the shortened Digg URLs. This probably means that none of them will get indexed in Google.

Nevertheless, if you have technical skills, I’m sure you can take advantage of loopholes like this and profit off of the DiggBar. Any other ideas?

The DiggBar is a game changer for social marketing on Digg. How will you react? Be sure to take part in the poll and leave a comment on this post!

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



DiggBar, the Game Changer – 4 Ways Internet Marketers Can React

• A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• Stop Building Invisible Links – 3 Ways to Find Them

Below are my 4 steps on how to optimize your site for big increases in Twitter traffic.

1. Optimize your Twitter account for your brand

Username and avatar:
Twitter is gaining widespread popularity, but even still it will always be just an extension of your online brand and website. Choose a user name and profile image that closely matches your site. For example, my own personal brand (Gyutae Park) is a big part of Winning the Web and it’s the reason why I use @gyutae on Twitter for people to interact with me. On several of my other sites, I use the actual brand name as the Twitter handle.

Also, don’t forget to include an interesting avatar that accurately represents who you are. Check out the 5 killer strategies to get your avatar noticed.

Name and website:
Once you create your Twitter account, fill out your name, location, and website information. Use your personal name if possible (it’s just more personable) and include a link to your targeted site. The link doesn’t pass much SEO value but it’ll show people the sites you run and drive some traffic.

Custom background:
Customize your profile background to fit in with your branding objectives (i.e. pictures, contact information, etc.). If you want something really professional, Hugh Briss at Twitter Image creates custom backgrounds for many of the top Twitterers. A custom background costs $100 and probably isn’t a bad investment considering that they look great and do wonders for your social marketing campaigns. I’m planning on getting one myself.

2. Build up your profile with targeted followers

Like everything else in Internet marketing, quality matters. Just because you have a ton of followers on Twitter, doesn’t mean that they’ll all be responsive to you and take notice of what you have to say. There are a lot of black hat Twitter techniques springing up that artificially pump up your Twitter count. They may work in the short term but they won’t leave you with rabid fans who are truly interested in what you have to say. That of course should be your goal, no?

Build connections online and use Twitter as a tool to develop relationships (hint: use TweetDeck to easily segment groups of people). Tweet out interesting related news and articles and don’t be afraid to let your personality shine. It’s what will make you attractive and follow-worthy on Twitter.

3. Pimp out your site with some Twitter gear

There are various Twitter-related tools and widgets that will help you to integrate your site and receive more exposure. Below are some of my favorites that I use here on Winning the Web.

Follow me on Twitter link
Add a link to your Twitter profile on your homepage, in your posts, and on your About page. You can use one of the catchy Twitter buttons or you can use the Twitter counter widget for social proof (if you already have a few thousand followers). Give you visitors various ways to find your profile and follow you.

Display most recent tweets
Twitter Tools is a Wordpress plugin that pulls your tweets into your blog (in a sidebar or in posts). You can even create new tweets based on new blog posts that you create. If you’re serious about using Twitter as a marketing tool for your blog, download and install this plugin.

Tweet This plugin
Another crucial Twitter plugin for Wordpress that I recommend is Tweet This. It automatically adds a re-tweet link on every post and shortens the URLs in advance using a service like bit.ly. The links actually perform very well and I’ve received a nice bump in re-tweets after installation. Best of all, the process is completely automated and there’s little you need to do after you set it up. You can see an example at the bottom of this post (be sure to test it out by re-tweeting )

Tweetmeme re-tweets widget
The Tweetmeme button is a Digg-style widget that shows how many times an article has been re-tweeted and shared on Twitter. Not only is it a great way for you to keep track of your hot articles, but it also serves as social proof and encourages people to further share your content. You can see an example of the button on the top of this post.

4. Promote your content on Twitter

Once you’ve optimized both your profile and your site for Twitter, it’s time to get active and promote the heck out of your content. Below are some of the steps you can take to seed a viral campaign.

Ask for help
Contact some of your friends and contacts in your industry and ask them to send around your article, via re-tweet and other means. Just one big player can make a huge difference (as you saw with TechCrunch in my case study).

Tweet out the link yourself
If you have a large following, tweeting out a link to your article is a good start (mixed in with non self-promotional content). You can either do this manually or automatically using a plugin like Twitter Tools. I like to tweet out my links manually because I can customize the message and test different variations. If you’re seeing good results with this method, tweet out followup messages that encourage user interaction (e.g. questions, replies to individual people, etc).

When all is said and done, Twitter is really about building good content and maintaining key relationships (which is true of pretty much everything related to online business – see a trend?).

How are you using Twitter to drive traffic back to your sites? It’s a powerful tool that can potentially lead to a huge viral wave of exposure. Are you harnessing the power of the Twitter yet?

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps

• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?
• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• 5 Killer Strategies to Get Your Online Avatar Noticed

Today, I’m going to show you a case study from my own personal experiences of how I leveraged Twitter to send boatloads of viral traffic to my site – 35,967 pageviews in 2 weeks to be exact. I’ll include real evidence straight from my analytics that clearly displays the undeniable truth. That ought to silence the critics.

Twitter is a serious social media tool that should be on the same level as giants like Digg, Delicious, and Reddit (if not higher). If you’re not using it as a part of your social campaigns, you’re missing out on a ton of traffic.

Now here’s what I did…

Content development strategy – what to write about?

When news broke out that Twitter implemented a search feature, there was much controversy on the role it would play in the search industry. Would Twitter be a Google killer? A supplement? A fad? There was heated debate on both sides of the argument and that’s when I knew I had a great post idea on my hands. The news was still fresh so I was able to capitalize on the controversy and add fuel to the fire. My article was born: 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware. What better way to go viral on Twitter than to stir up controversy about Twitter itself?

Seeding the articles, getting initial exposure

Ok, so I had my Twitter piece ready to go and I knew it had the potential to do well on the social networks. The problem was that I couldn’t just let it sit and expect people to pick it up and share it. I had to be proactive and tell them about it. So what did I do? I talked to a bunch of friends online and asked them to share it on Twitter (via re-tweet) and promoted it on social networks like Digg, Reddit, and Sphinn. Ah, more eyeballs… on the right track.

A crucial step that paid huge dividends for me in this effort was the implementation of the Tweet This Wordpress plugin. Basically what it does is automatically append a re-tweet Twitter link at the end of all posts (complete with a shortened URL). The results were very surprising and readers used the link a lot more than I thought they would. I recommend everyone install the plugin and test it out. You can see an example at the end of this post (completely automated).

Mild success and followup

After my initial promotion, the article saw pretty good success. It reached hot status on Sphinn and received a good amount of traffic in just a couple days through sharing on social networking sites. I decided to write a followup article, Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search, which saw even better results and traffic using the same strategy.

After a week, both of my Twitter articles slowed down quite a bit in terms of traffic and re-tweets. I thought that that was the end of the run, and to be honest with you I would have been perfectly fine with the results. I definitely didn’t expect what was to come…

Viral traffic explosion

Now for the fun part – which will show you the explosive nature of Twitter. About 10 days after publishing my 6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search post, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (335,604 followers) tweeted out the link and that opened up the floodgates. Pete Cashmore of Mashable (368,239 followers) did the same and the link was then re-tweeted over 700 times more by people who found the article interesting.

The article was featured on the front page of Twitturly as one of the most re-tweeted links and was placed on the popular pages of both Delicious and popurls. Not only that but the success on Twitter led to the link also being shared on many other social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, and more.

That day the article received 9,946 pageviews and 6,179 the next. In fact, all of the simultaneous database requests crashed my server several times during the spike (teaches me to leave my cache plugin activated). What a rush. The awesome thing about it is that I’m still seeing re-tweets of the article to this day, more than 3 weeks later. Like Twitter now?

Results revealed

Below are some screen shots of the stats from March 12-25.

6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware – 24,725 total pageviews

Trending graph

Top 10 sources
Keep in mind that (direct) includes URL shortening services and 3rd party Twitter applications (e.g. Twhirl, TweetDeck, etc)

Followup article: Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search – 11,242 total pageviews

Trending graph

Top 10 sources
Keep in mind that (direct) includes URL shortening services and 3rd party Twitter applications (e.g. Twhirl, TweetDeck, etc)

Important Lessons Learned

I need you to understand that I’m not sharing these results to brag or anything like that. In fact, these stats are miniscule compared to the enormous viral campaigns some of the best social media gurus have pulled off. Rather, I hope that through this small case study you’re able to better use Twitter as another social media channel to send viral traffic to your sites. Learn anything new? I know I have. Here are some of my key findings I discovered through this experience.

1. Get the right people to notice you. Power tweeps with hundreds of thousands of followers will send you a ton of traffic. Remember that 20% of re-tweets send 80% of the traffic (probably closer to 10-90 in this case).
2. Re-tweets are extremely important on Twitter and could lead to a gigantic snowball effect. Be sure to install the Tweet This Wordpress plugin to make it easy for your readers to re-tweet your links.
3. Use Twitter to jump start sharing on other social media sites. As I discovered in this case study, popularity on Twitter easily translates to viral sharing on other sites like Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.
4. Never give up on your social marketing campaigns. If you truly believe you have a great idea that’s worth sharing, keep going at it. My Twitter article only reached mild success before finally taking off 10 days later. Sometimes all you need is another day or another person to help for your story to catch fire.

What do you think? Will you be using Twitter to launch your viral social marketing campaigns? Leave a comment with your own Twitter stories and take part in the poll below.

My friend Derek Halpern over at Prevential has a similar Twitter success story and explains how you can go viral on Twitter. Check it out.

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days

• How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?
• A Headline Title Trick to Maximize Social and SEO Traffic – The One Two Punch
• How to Ignite Viral Marketing Campaigns For Your Site

In this article, my goal is to describe to you how the SEO game is changing and how you can most effectively take advantage of Twitter and its social conversation search features to increase your traffic and build your brand.

But before we dive into the tips, take a quick look at this article by Patrick Altoft entitled If Google did Twitter search. It does a great job of explaining how Twitter can improve its search algorithm and mimic the factors used by Google to determine the relevancy and authority of a page. Twitter has a tough road ahead, but with the right people and technology it definitely has the potential to be the “next big thing” and gain enough market share for certain social queries to put a dent in Google’s search business.

So SEO’s, how do you prepare for the social search revolution and optimize for Twitter? Below are some of the best things you can do now.

6 Tips to Optimize for Twitter Search

1. Keyword research is still important
As long as search engine optimization exists, keyword research will always be important. In optimizing anything for search online, understanding the language of your potential customers and audience is crucial. It will help you not only to improve your search traffic but also to tweak your marketing message and better relate to the people you are selling to.

That being said, tweeps (people on Twitter) are no different than searchers on Google. They use the language that they’re used to, both in their Twitter conversations and in search queries. Use tools like the Google Keyword Tool and Keyword Discovery to better understand the most common keywords and incorporate them into your own tweets and page copy.

The great thing about Twitter is that you can easily use it as a market research tool to better understand the people you’re targeting. Use the wealth of knowledge existing on the site to look into popular keywords and market needs. Then work to fulfill those needs, both on Twitter and on your own sites (i.e. look at the questions people in your target market are asking on Twitter).

2. Brand yourself and your Twitter profile
Branding is extremely important, in SEO and in social media. If you’re using Twitter as a business tool to reach out to more potential customers and increase your traffic, then you absolutely need to have a strong brand presence. Rather than using the same Twitter account to target various audiences, set up multiple identities and use them to cater to specific audiences. For example, don’t use the same account to tweet about both SEO and gardening. It just doesn’t work. Brand yourself and stand for something. Twitter search will eventually give more weight in the search results to Twitter users who talk mainly about the specific niche being searched for.

Being focused will also help you to stay consistent with your marketing message and get the attention of your target audience. This in turn will increase the chances of people following you and paying more attention to what you have to offer (more on this in the next section) – which means you get better rankings in Twitter search.

It also helps to customize your Twitter profile to be consistent with your brand image. Use a catchy background with all of your contact information and write a descriptive bio that includes your name, location, and website. For examples, check out the list top Twitter users.

3. Build relationships and get more followers
Google uses factors such as domain age and the quantity and quality of inbound links to determine the authority of a site. In the same way, Twitter will probably do something similar and give more trust to users who have been using the service longer and have more followers. Tweets of trusted users will likely receive a boost in the Twitter search results.

So what does that mean for you, a Twitter SEO? You need to build relationships with other people in your industry and build your Twitter audience by collecting more followers. Make connections with other people, online and off, through whatever channels you have access to (e.g. other social media sites, blogs, conferences, etc). SEO is quickly becoming more and more social and it’s not necessarily what you know anymore – it’s who you know. The people who are most-connected will rise to the top and get the majority of the attention.

If you want to build your Twitter audience fast you can start some sort of contest or promotion (like John Chow, Shoemoney, and even Namecheap). Just be aware that whenever you run these types of campaigns your followers won’t be very engaged with you because of you. A lot of them want the benefits and prizes but don’t care about you or what you have to say, at least in the beginning. The best way to do it is organically through real connections but promotions do give a good jolt to your numbers.

4. Add to the conversation and be engaging
As you may know, Twitter is a giant online conversation where millions of users exchange ideas and information. Since Twitter search pulls information from this enormous pool, it’s important that you add relevant content and links where appropriate using the keyword research insights you learned in step one. Sure, you only get 140 characters of space but that doesn’t mean you can’t pack a punch and gain attention. Spark up debate and conversation in your niche, answer questions, and add relevant content and advice whenever possible. Be an expert and an authority and engage with anyone and everyone. It will pay off.

5. Start viral marketing campaigns
Whereas inbound links represent “votes” for a page in Google Search, Twitter is likely to incorporate re-tweets (another Twitter user broadcasting your message to their own audience) into their algorithm to better understand the popularity of content. As a Twitter SEO, this means that you need to maximize the number of re-tweets of your content. Viral marketing becomes extremely important and in order to do well in Twitter search you need to have people talking about you and sharing your stuff on a regular basis.

Write interesting tweets and link to exceptional related articles to share with your audience. It might be a good idea to use other social sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon to find good articles you can easily share. Build up your profile and get re-tweets to your content, especially when you’re linking to your own site.

6. Add links and multimedia where appropriate & use Twitter as a marketing channel
A Twitter search returns tweets, so you may be asking what benefit you get from ranking highly with a 140 character message. The answer to that question is that by getting exposure in Twitter you add a big marketing channel to drive traffic back to your own site and increase conversions. You not only drive traffic to your site through links but you also establish your brand and develop relationships with potential customers – which means a big boost in your bottom line.

Twitter SEO is a lot like email marketing. Your first priority is to develop a solid relationship with
your followers by offering interesting and useful content. Once you have that in place you can add your own links and promotional marketing to drive sales.

What are you doing now to prepare for the social shift in search engines like Twitter? Anything else you can come up with to optimize your sites and brands in Twitter?  Leave a comment below and let us know!  And oh yeah, be sure to follow me on Twitter @gyutae. 

Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search

• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• How to Harness the Power of Twitter in 4 Easy Steps
• Content and Links are the Bread and Butter of SEO
• Gasp! Advertising on Twitter with ad.ly & Sponsored Tweets… Is It Okay to Make Money?
• Case Study: How I Used Twitter to Generate 35,967 Extra Hits to my Site in Just 14 Days

This past week the tech world was abuzz with news of Twitter incorporating search functionality into its site. What this means is that you can now easily obtain trending data for popular keywords, take a deeper look at the topics people are talking about in real time, and find answers to pressing questions that others have already written about. So is this really significant? It depends on who you ask. Some think that Twitter is a Google killer while others argue that Twitter isn’t even a search engine at all.

Regardless of which side of the fence you stand, there’s no doubt that Twitter has a bright future with its eyes set on the search market. In fact, Twitter continues to receive millions in funding and recently turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook because of its planned business model of Q&A features and search ads. Who knew status updates could be so valuable? Meanwhile, Facebook has been adding Twitter-like features to try and keep up…

So really, what’s the big deal about Twitter? Isn’t it just a social media site used to socialize with friends? Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, goes as far as to call it the “poor man’s email system”. But the people who really get it understand the huge potential that lies within Twitter. Not only is it a way to connect and interact with others, but it also represent a huge pool of information based on everyday human life that’s ready to be mined to extract real value. Adding search functionality is just the first step in this process.

Not to mention that Twitter already has an impressive track record with various uses. For example, it helped President Barack Obama with his presidential campaign, got a student out of an Egyptian jail, documented plane crashes in real time, and made Dell a million dollars. Twitter has a huge cultish following and is promoted through a grassroots movement that we haven’t seen since…well, the beginning of Google.

Despite all of the hype, Twitter is still in its infancy and it’ll be years, maybe even a decade, before it develops the technology to accurately display search results and put a dent in Google’s market share. But regardless of all that, the point I want to make in this article is that Twitter has what it takes to get there. In other words, Twitter represents the future of search. Still not convinced? Let me explain…

6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search

1. Takes social to a whole new level
Twitter is essentially a continuous conversation that takes place online between millions of people. Imagine the insights you could gain if you were able to record and search through everyone’s conversations. Of course, it’s a lot less creepy than that but that’s the kind of tool Twitter is becoming as more and more people take part and share parts of their lives. Twitter search is the ultimate social media platform and will enable people to get the opinions of others and add context to relevant information. Searchers don’t just want facts. They want to learn more about the experiences of real people they can relate to.

For example, rather than doing a search in Google for “best restaurants in new york” and getting a bunch of review sites, you can do a search on Twitter to see which restaurants people are talking about in New York. If you don’t like the results, you can easily ask your network and get personalized answers in real time – which will then show up in future searches on the same topic.

Compare that to Google. They’ve been unsuccessful thus far in implementing social factors into the search results via Search Wiki. If you do a search in Google and can’t find what you’re looking for, what are you going to do? Probably ask around on Twitter.

2. Combats information overload
With millions of new web pages springing up every day on the Internet, who has the time or attention span to read through it all? We need filters, and that’s what Twitter provides in 140 characters or less. Twitter is great for searching for quick information and even if you’re looking for long articles, there are plenty of people who post links to relevant pages they like.

3. Real-time content
In this day and age, nobody wants to wait for anything. We live in a society where we get everything fast and can’t stand for anything else. The same applies to information and news. Until recently, we had to wait for journalists to write up reports and publish them online. Google would then index the pages and show them in the search results, but not after at least a couple of hours. Good, but not good enough.

Twitter displays real time streams of news and information. There’s no need to wait, and short of actually being there to experience the events, it’s the next best thing. Twitter has been a great tool for people to broadcast news live from their laptops and mobile phones (e.g. plane crash rescue in the Hudson River).

4. Represents the masses
Twitter levels the playing field and gives everyone a voice online. In the “Twitterverse”, information is a lot more representative of the masses rather than of big corporations and personalities who manipulate people with their ideas. Power is transferred from the controllers of the web (e.g. Google, big news companies, powerful Wikipedia editors, online publishers) to millions of everyday social media users. We’d be able to rely less on big news sources and drill down to the micro level (i.e. experiences of individuals rather than just in aggregate).

5. More trustworthy results
A big advantage Twitter has over Google is that it has the potential to be both a social media platform and a search engine. Users have the option of getting answers from their network of people who they actually trust. On the other hand, Google gives you a page of links compiled by their quality algorithm. Sure, Google returns pretty good search results most of the time, but they’re impersonal and sometimes irrelevant to what you really want. Getting in touch with your network via Twitter is the best way to get reliable information you can trust. For example, if you had a question about life in the NBA, would you rather ask Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter or type a question in Google?

6. Better targeted for location
How does Google know whether or not a page is relevant to a local geographic region? Unless the page is labeled correctly, Google has no idea. Twitter, on the other hand, can easily tie content to a location by using user profile settings or GPS (as technology advances on mobile phones). This in turn means more relevant information and ads in Twitter search.

So what are your thoughts on Twitter as a search engine? Does it have a chance to get in the ring with Google? Be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts and follow me @gyutae.

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Internet Marketing Blog - Make Money Online Copyright 2009 Winning the Web. All Rights Reserved.



6 Reasons Why Twitter is the Future of Search – Google Beware

• 3 Reasons Why Google Needs to Buy Twitter in Order to Survive
• Yes, SEO is Changing – But It Has a Bright Future
• Twitter SEO – How to Optimize Your Website For Twitter Search
• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration
• Cuil, “Most Comprehensive Search Engine” My Ass