The world of social media is growing by the day, and Twitter is one of the newest yet most well-known and used social networking site of them all. The popularity of the site means that it is essential to be involved with it for SEO purposes.

Twitter has a number of features which allow you to link posts to topics and other people, the most widely used being ‘hashtags’ and ‘mentions’. for those of you who are relatively inexperienced with Twitter, here is a brief explanation of what each feature does.

Hashtags – These are used to highlight a word or phrase within your tweet in order to put it in a category e.g. #friday. Once hashtags are created, they can be clicked on by followers; this will bring up any other tweets which contain the same hashtag. If lots of different people post the same hashtag then this becomes a ‘trend’ and will have more exposure on the Twitter site.

Mentions – These are similar to hashtags, but instead of words or phrases, you tag people in your posts e.g. @beyonce. Once a person is mentioned, they will receive a notification of this and can reply to the tweet directly.

In terms of SEO, involving social media is a necessary and growing trend. This is because having lots of Twitter followers will increase the visibility of your company, and linking your website to your Twitter account will turn these followers into endorsements of your company. The more times that your business information is viewed, the better for your company profile and brand awareness.