Writing an SEO-friendly Twitter Bio

Part of a series for getting
the most reach out of your Twitter

By Columnist Reneé Groskreutz
September 2012

No matter what online project or business you’re in, search engine optimization (SEO) is vital to your success. It’s important to take advantage of every SEO opportunity that comes your way.

Your Twitter profile (or bio) is no exception to this rule. Nothing against your amazing grandkids, but if you’re on Twitter as an author and your book is not about your grandkids, then don’t take up the precious character space with family information. Instead, include your book title and genre in the bio. Whatever keywords you set up for yourself on Amazon, for example, need to be added to your Twitter bio.

Note:

Your grandkids make great muses. Once you are tweeting, feel free to throw in tweets about your grandkids. Your readers want to get to know you, after all. It’s important to be seen as human but when it comes to your bio, SEO matters first.

Things to consider

The first and most important part of a Twitter bio is to be human: be clever, tell a story, be memorable.

Don’t jam your bio with nothing but keywords. It’s important that your bio makes sense and expresses a bit about who you are and why you are on Twitter. Your bio can have a maximum of 160 characters, which is 20 more than a tweet, so make wise use of those extra 20 characters.

Definitely include your genre, book and series title in your bio, with links to your content-rich presence. If your Facebook doesn’t get updated that often, list a link to your website instead. If you don’t have a website, how about linking to your blog or Amazon page? Content is king.

Avoid all capital letters; no one wants to be “yelled” at. And say “no” to any negative information.

The goal with a great bio is not only to be real, but to also include some appropriate keywords. Try using this Google tool for your keyword search:

https://adwords.google.com/

Examples of SEO-friendly Twitter bios:

@FullCustodyDad
Super Cool Christian Father who loves
his kids & owns a business to help
good fathers with custody issues!


@LissaDuty
Social Media Marketing Strategist |
Coach | Trainer in Dallas. 20 years
of marketing, administrative and
management experience working
to grow your business.

Tool tip:

For the more savvy Twitter users, check out Crowdbooster, a free online tool (upgradable for those with more than one account) that allows you to check analytics on the best times to tweet based on habits of your followers, how many impressions have been made by your tweets, etc. It’s a great analytics tool. I am still learning the tool’s capabilities, but it seems to be ideal when you want to get a graphical picture of your Twitter account’s reach.