Around 6,000 tweets are sent out on Twitter every second – or 500million tweets per day – as it currently stands. There’s no doubt it’s a noisy, crowded platform. So how do you stand out from the pack and get people to notice you – and your website?

Social media websites are increasingly gaining traction with Google, and represent an easy way for you to get your brand name front and centre on search results. If you want to boost your SEO through Twitter, here’s how:

1. Branding

Branding between your website and your Twitter profile should be consistent – so that means similar colours, the same company name, consistent pictures and content. You need to put a link to your website on your Twitter biography – or better still, a direct link to a landing page or something that will convert the visitor. Making a good online impression, whether it’s with your website or social media, is important.

2. Getting into the conversation 

On Twitter, conversations are often held around hashtags – clickable topics denoted by a # in front of the topic name, like #australianpolitics or #agriculturechat. Google now indexes hashtags on their search results, so you should ensure you’re including relevant hashtags in your tweets to up your chance of being found in the chatter.

Part of succeeding in this area is being active from your account. It’s not going to be an effective effort if you post once a month, or simply repost what’s already been said on other platforms. To get the most out of Twitter, you need to engage with people who respond to your Tweets, seek out and participate in conversations, and do so often – at least daily.

3. Build backlinks

Backlinks show that your website is important and authoritative. They occur when people link back to your site from other sources. And Twitter is one of the best ways to get them – people love to share on the social media platform. Encourage backlinks by creating compelling content, sharing it on Twitter, and engaging in conversations with people who you think might like that content. Inbound links help drive traffic to your site.

4. Understand your market

This doesn’t directly relate to SEO – but with the insights you gain, you can tweak your SEO to some benefit. Twitter’s got an enormous number of people chattering about what they want, need, or desire. Tapping into that to understand the persona of your potential leads can help you alter the way you communicate and the message you’re sending out, which could help boost traffic.