Man we SEOs are kinda obsessed with getting backlinks isn’t it? I would not mind if someone called me up in the midnight to let know of a way to source incoming links from “unexplored, valuable” sources - Like Facebook.

And now we have an option to source incoming links from facebook. Yep! Crawlable, links from facebook pages that are indexed by search engines. Here’s how.

Create a new page under a suitable category, and add your sites RSS feeds to the content. It’s as simple as it, but for the ones who need guidance, here’s the details.

1. Log on to facebook, Go to Pagemanager.
2. Create a new page
3. Make sure you have content filled in to all the required fields (optional)
4. Goto Add applications link
5. Select a good RSS application that displays your content with necessary tweakable options.

The pages would have URL something similar to http://www.facebook.com/pages/yourpagename/16353671142

Something to note here while creating the page.
Use the page options properly and fill in with relevant content that will support the links and any targeted keywords if at all any.
Choose the category into which the page will be placed with care, you might want to select a topic relevant category.
Choose the page name properly, rather than a fancy name use it cleverly.

The links displayed on the page are crawlable by search engines, and links indexed, this has been tested and confirmed. But it is critical that you do it carefully and not create a page just for the sake of getting some backlinks.

If you'd like to stay updated with SEO, grab the RSS feed now !What's this?

Somebody had to do it and Rajesh from Tech Bliss Online is the man to do it. Even though All in One SEO was the most downloaded plugin, I wasn’t quite impressed by it’s functions. Sure it took care of the basic functions, but it wasn’t versatile. There were so many other functions and features a real SEO plugin had to take care of, AllinOne SEO ignored many of them. There were some better plugins available like the Headspace one, but it was too complicated for new users of Wordpress.

Rajesh has the new Platinum plugin now, which is an improvised version of the AllinOne SEO plugin. It does everything that AllinOne was doing and also some extra cool features. I’d say that this one is more closer to the real SEO plugin I was talking about. It takes care of pretty much everything, a bit more advanced than a basic SEO plugin but easy to use as well.

Here are the features.

• Optimized Post and Page Titles for search engines - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Generates all SEO relevant META tags automatically - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Helps you avoid duplicate content - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Lets you override any title and set any META description and META keywords, for any post or page - Present in AllinOne SEO
• Compatible with most other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag
  Warrior and others.However you may have to disable All in One SEO pack
• You don’t have to fear changing permalinks. If you are not
  satisfied with the current permalink, change it through
  Settings–>Permalinks in your admin panel, without worrying about
  loss of Page rank or google penalty.Platinum SEO plugin will take care
  of issuing a 301 redirect to the new location.This is a new essential
  feature, not present in All in one SEO - Absent in AllinOne SEO
• Add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet,
  noodp, noydir meta tags to any post/page.These options are not
  available in All in one SEO Pack.Find out why this option to set
  post/page level Meta Robots Tag useful? - Absent in AllinOne SEO

The best part of the plugin is that it helps you to block certain pages like category, tags or any posts by Google, Yahoo and search engines by including “no index” tags at these specified pages/posts.
You don’t have to tweak Robots.txt hereafter, just select from the page as to which page/caegory is to be blocked or no indexed and the plugin does it beautifully.

So far I haven’t come across any glitches but the good thing is that unlike AllinOne SEO, Rajesh is available for support on this plugin. I would rate it a 4 our of 5 !

If you are on Stumbleupon, there’s no chance that you missed Babychen Mathew a.k.a Dancewithshadows. He is the only Indian to reach the top stumblers list yet. He’s from Delhi, and lives a life completely online. Dancewithshadows.com is his website.

I managed to catch up with him on chat to interview finding out his experience with stumbleupon, tips and tricks he’d like to share with us and help in ensuring a better stumbling experience.

We discussed everything from starting off, building your community on SU, finding good friends, sharing and reviewing, the goods and bads of stumbling, the do’s and dont’s, and some SU secrets from Babychen’s experience. Hope you will like it.

Mani Karthik: So you are the only top stumbler from India as of now. How do you feel?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm, good, of course. I never thought about it that way till I got your message!
Babychen Mathew: I keep trying to find other Indians and make friends with them though all the time!

Mani Karthik: So how did you start with stumbleupon and other social media?
Babychen Mathew: I started with digg, and while trying to learn about digg, heard about SU for the first time. Generally i hate all toolbars, so stayed away for a while. When I finally tried it out, I was interested in the promise of SU that it will throw up sites which you like. Seemed to work better as I used it more, so kept using it and trying to learn a bit every day. I liked the fact that SU is not obsessed about politics, and not as negative as Digg is!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So where do you like better now. SU or Digg?
Mani Karthik: And when did you start with SU?
Babychen Mathew: for breaking news, I prefer digg anyday. Or for top ten lists. Digg seems to be obsessed with top tens, and I dont mind much. And of course, a front page on digg can send you an amazing amount of traffic - so I have to keep a foot there for the future for my own site. And for networking with those who are active in social media, digg is good as everyone is there.

Babychen Mathew: started with SU long time back…
Babychen Mathew: forgot all about it (the general negativity towards all toolbars!)
Babychen Mathew: and then came back to it
Babychen Mathew: I think I started SU almost 2 years back, though I have really been active only in the last one year

Mani Karthik: I must agree. Tell me how does your daily routine look like online? Many people have the idea that power users are geeks who sit rooted in front of their PCs, hours together, and fail to get a life. What’s your thoughts?
Babychen Mathew: Hmm. I am afraid I belong to that category too! But most of my time is spent on my own site, and social media stuff keeps happening in other Firefox tabs! Yes, I spent most of my waking hours in front of the PC, but I spent a lot of time reading news (past journalist background!), reading books and watching TV and going out for something or the other once daily for a break.
Babychen Mathew: as i work from home, I have to invent reasons to go out though

Mani Karthik: Do you use any tweaks for SU? Greasemoneky / Scripts anything?
Babychen Mathew: For SU, none at all. I am happy with stumbling, thumbing up, reviewing and adding tags.

Mani Karthik: Great. So, what do you think are the type of articles that are adored by the SU crowd?
Babychen Mathew: from what I have seen, serious articles don’t do well in SU as far as popularity is concerned. The SU users seem to love pictures (even when they are dupes!) and funnys stuff as long as it has pics. My feelign so far is that almost any topic will do much better if it has interesting pics on it, and the visitors can get a grip on the story at one look. So I guess big fonts and pics should do it for any topic. There is a lot of interest in Bizarre, Science, Gadgets and humor from what I see, but I have seen Su stories going popular from every topic. Pics are critical, I think - more chances of people photoblogging your stuff then.

Mani Karthik: I agree and SU gives a lot of cool pics if you are bored.
Babychen Mathew: yea.

Mani Karthik: Do you agree to the idea of using SU to leverage traffic to websites?
Babychen Mathew: Why not. Every available venue on the Net (or in the real world) will always be used commercially, there is nothing wrong with that. But you would get SU traffic only if your content is good - and appeals to the sensibilities of the SU user. I have come across several sites which I think are using SU for traffic - no harm in that!

Mani Karthik: I agree. So what are the best practices for a newbie to get popular on SU? Or shall I say what will make him powerful to thumbs up a site and give thousands of traffic to it?
Babychen Mathew: hmm.. one important thing about SU is - you don’t need to be a top stumbler to send a lot of traffic to a website. That depends to a large extent on your network of friends. the top stumblers page shows who contributes more to SU (through discoveries, activity, tags, reviews) and usually top stumblers have big networks of friends too - but you really don’t need that. There are stumblers who have been around for long and never made it to the top stumblers page I think.
Babychen Mathew: Traffic is more a function of your network and the topic you are stumbling upon…
Babychen Mathew: For newbies though
Babychen Mathew: the immediate thing I would suggest is to get active. Stumble a lot, search for people who are likely to share your interests, add them and message them. Do not beg for thumbs and traffic the moment you join!
Babychen Mathew: Most newbies have no patience, and want to do it all in a week!
Mani Karthik: I agree.
Babychen Mathew: If you give it time and you are loyal to your stumbling, friends and networks are not a problem at all.

Mani Karthik: I Agree. So your network matters more than anything. so would I be doing the right thing if I keep on adding anyone I see on SU?
Babychen Mathew: of course not. Add only active stumblers who seem to like topics you are interested in too. Adding someone as a mutual friend - what I do is to add someone, watch their activity for a while, and if they are not active or are here only for marketing their own websites, remove them. However, If I find that someone contributes a lot to SU, and is meanwhile trying to get some traffic to his own site, I don’t mind that at all.
Mani Karthik: I get it and completely agree.
Babychen Mathew: I would strongly advice - if anyone doesn’t look like stumbling actively, remove him immediately!
Babychen Mathew: Like all social media, in th end, you have to give it more than you get.

Mani Karthik: Yes, makes sense. It works more like MLM isn’t it? Inactive members are like cancer. Right?
Babychen Mathew: Well, comparing MLM to SU … I wouldn’t do that! But inactive memebers - why add them as friends anyway? There is no point to it. The same way, adding top stumblers only as your friends - there is not much point to it either - they often can’t add you back as they have reached their 200 mutual friends limit!
Mani Karthik: That’s right.

Babychen Mathew: I would yes, you really cant MLM to SU - as MLM is purely about marketing, but in SU, it can never work unless you give it more than you take.
Mani Karthik: You are right.

Mani Karthik: How are the groups in SU doing? I’ve seen that many are not really active. Are they any good joining them?
Babychen Mathew: Some SU groups seem to be very active. And probably it is a good place to find new friends. However, I have never been active in any groups at all.

Mani Karthik: What do you think is the best way to find similar minded folks on SU?
Babychen Mathew: When SU shows you a page and you really like the story or topic, click on the reviews icon on the toolbar and take a look at those who have reviewed it and given it a thumbs up. You will find a lot of like-minded folks there. You can also click directly on the tags you like on the Buzz page, check out the people who are actively stumbling your topics, visit their profiles and thumb up their fav stories.
Babychen Mathew: I sometimes keep checking the friends of my friends too - you find likeminded people there often!
Mani Karthik: That’s indeed a cool tip there.
Babychen Mathew: also, people are curious. Visit the page of someone you like and thumb up a few of theirs, and they are quite likely to come visit your page - and then if you want them to like you, make sure your own blog has quality stuff.

Mani Karthik: Correct.Are there any do’s and dont’s on SU, apart from the official ones. Anything from your experience that you want to share?
Babychen Mathew: Do’s - get active. Discover, review as much as possible. When you can’t thumb it up and tag it. When you can’t tag, at least thumb it up! Visit other stumblers profiles, send messages when you want to tell them something, add only like-minded people and very active stumblers.

Mani Karthik: How about the don’ts?
Babychen Mathew: Don’ts — please try not to stumble your own site. It is a dead giveaway that you are here for marketing, as oftne your name and site name are the same! I did that too. Do not vote up the same sites too often - regular stumbling of the same site seems to reduce your power to send traffic re: that site.

Mani Karthik: I agree. But what if you found many cool pics on flickr? They are all the same site. Any probs in this scenario?
Babychen Mathew: I don’t SU has a problem with that. See, they have an option already called Stumble Thru this site. So it wont matter much. Same for Youtube.
Babychen Mathew: However, Flickr is not dependant on the traffic you send them, so it doesnt matter. When yo continuously stumble the same small sites everyday, your vote keeps geting discounted more and more. But this is purely my observation, and I haven’t seen any strong data on this.

Mani Karthik: Right.

Mani Karthik: What are the SU secrets if at all you have any? (Apart from what you’ve said eaerlier)
Babychen Mathew: I am sure there are SU secrets! But I don’t know many, frankly. I became one of the top stumblers without trying, in fact. I was on a mission to get very active and see what would happen, and a friend told me I was listed there!
Mani Karthik: Shall we say white hat SU?
Babychen Mathew: lol
Babychen Mathew: yes! I mean, white hat SU as you call it is not difficult at all, so why bother with black hat stuff!
Babychen Mathew: The general environment in SU is positive, and its not like everyone has to destroy another site to get your site in front of more people - unlike in, say, Google!

Mani Karthik: True. I’m all for white hat methods.

Mani Karthik: Babychen if I were to ask you to put things into a formula, finally. how would you formulate it?
Babychen Mathew: Very difficult for me Mani. I am all for active stumbling and a bit of patience, and you will see results. I do not have a brain that can really do things systematically!
Babychen Mathew: I can tell you one thing though.
Babychen Mathew: When I get very active in SU for a few days, my Su top stumblers ranking goes up. I move up a few positions as I discover, review and tag more. When I slacken, I go down. The number of people who stumble sites I discovered go up when I am higher up (probaly more people visit my profile then) and when I am lower down in the listings, less people visit me and less people naturally thumb up what I discover.
Babychen Mathew: The take-away from that is, more activity in SU seems to directly affect your strength in SU.
Mani Karthik: Wicked stuff !
Babychen Mathew:

Mani Karthik: Some personal Qs. Which are the websites you run and what are they about?
Babychen Mathew: My main website is www.dancewithshadows.com It is a 4 year old site which now gets a substantial amount of traffic. It is a general news and features website with content from a varied number of topics. I have other experimental sites too but nothing as big as this
Babychen Mathew: The main traffic source for it though is not SU - it is google
Babychen Mathew: Su probably makes up 1-2 % of the traffic it gets.

Mani Karthik: Great. So you live a life completely ON
Babychen Mathew: guess so, but on the Net, you are always lagging behind someone, in something. For example, I have been an abject failure in Digg!
Mani Karthik: There is a piece of cake for everyone. You have yours.
Babychen Mathew: Agree completely! And choose the social media site that is appropriate for your personality - and be happy with it!

That’s it. Hope you got something to take home from it.

Stumbleupon is no doubt the best targeted traffic source available today. But unfortunately there is very less information on how to use or utilize stumbleupon to the maximum. We all know that some people do it better, while some are awesome with SU. There are no secrets, buy some lesser known or lesser used features on Stumbleupon that helps the power user.

I might sound like a fool if I said that nobody knew about these, so these are likely to be known by some while it might be news for the rest. Let’s see.

1. Quick stumbles with “From the page” review
   You can highlight any text from any page and clik the “review” button, so that the text will automatically appear with a “From the page:your text” format in the review column. When discovering a new site, just highlight the text and click thumbs up. The text will automatically fill in.
   So hereafter, no need to write reviews for each submission.
2. Increase your productivity with shortcuts
   Go to “Toolbar Options” and assign shortcuts like “CTRL+S” etc to thumbs up and thumbs down buttons. This will make your stumbling easier.
3. Subscribe to Tags not just topics
   You can subscribe to tags as well, not only to topics. It is done via the ‘tag page‘ (it’s also accessible through Preferences ? My interests) by choosing a tag and clicking the ‘Subscribe’ button on the upper right of the tag’s page.
   Since there are more tags than topics, and tags are likely to be more relevant to the crowds tastes, it’s a good idea to subscribe to them.
4. Thumbs up images in jiffy
   If you come across images on a site, right click on the image and select the “Stumbleupon Photoblogit” menu. It wil quickly add a rating for the image. No need to find the images URL and then go rate it. Two clicks saved!

How many of you are Stumble Upon enthusiasts?
And how many have wondered what that shield icon is that appears next to “some” stumbler names?

Well, as you might already know these are “sponsors” on stumbleupon and they have special privileges. If you want to become one, you can do so here. It’s only USD 20 for a year long membership.

Now, if you’d like to have a shield for yourself, I may be able to help you out. You can carry that shield for FREE and do all the things listed here for Free !

If you have interests like me on SU,

- add me as a friend on SU and send me a message.
- It would also be a good idea to review the stumbles…
that way we can make sure that we know our tastes better.

This is one good way to pick your best friends.Let’s catch up and let me present that prestigious shield for you.

You’ve got nothing to do, connect with me, and nudge me.

Some people call it Reputation Management, some call it Social Media Profiling, but essentially it is about how visible you are online.

Do a simple google search on your name and see how you look. With the social media it’s pretty much possible for one to create an online “resume” sorts, where each site listed in your name will give you a separate idea about you. Linkedin will give your professional details while Twitter will give your personal and more up close picture. Stumble upon and Digg may show how addicted you are to the internet.

So next time when someone asks for your resume, ask them to google your name.

For those of you who have done link building campaigns on an extensive scale would admit that the exercise by itself is a risky process because, the results are always based on experimentation. There are no hard and fast rules but experiments. For the same reason, I’m questioned by clients by - Why can’t I and Why don’t we try this - type.
My suggestion and advice would always revolve around not following any pattern while doing link building campaigns. Google has been very clever in detecting patterns in SEO campaigns and if found “guilty” put you in trouble so it’s best to stay away from patterns.

• Sudden increase in the number of backlinks
  This is a major problem with link building. Frustrating sometimes it is, when we know that we can’t wait for the competitor but beat him on what he is at the moment, but at the same time, gets none of the backlinks indexed. So patience takes a back seat and on we go with aggressive link building, sourcing links left and right. Only to know that, we aren’t indexed at all because of extensive link building. Clever Google eh?
  The only solution here is to make the link building campaign look as natural as possible. Take it slow and steady one by one, documenting each link you collect and monitoring the progress. Haste makes serious waste!
• Very similar anchor text across all backlinks
  This is yet another mistake due to excessive keyword anxiety. It is natural for webmasters to cling on to the primary keyword and try getting as many links as possible. Technically, this is right, the more keywords you have in your anchor text, the better. But as far as Google is considered, dude thinks it’s un natural. And discounts all those backlinks you sourced.
  In this situation, it’s a great idea to use variations of your primary keyword to source links. Keep ready more than one variation of the primary keyword. Ex:- If your primary keyword is “Rabbit”, you might want to use “White rabbits”, “Red Rabbits”, “Rabbitery” and “Rabbittabittoo” as your anchor texts assuming they aren’t totally different keywords.
• Extensive links from the same site with the same anchor text
  Yet again, an un natural phenomena as seen by Google. Why would a site add your text link to all it’s pages with the same anchor text? Unless you are connected in some way, this probably is the best example of a text link purchase/sales. Okay, Links discounted !
  So be clever, ask the webmaster to link to you contextually, give them different sets of text and keywords to embed the link without causing much “un naturality”.
• Increased number of links from brand new sites.
  Okay, let’s guess why this would happen.
  - you went on a link buying spree with the cheaper sites.
  - you build a network of blogs yourself.
  - your friend runs the site.
  Either way, this seems to be un natural. Mix up your link building campaign with both old and new sites, do not stick to one category of them

Essentially, link building can be a fairly simple process if you look at it at a long term perspective (say 6 months or so), and it’s much effective that way too. But if you want quick results, quicker backlinks and immediate SERPs rise, then you’re doing something to game the system however good your intention is. And Google sometimes read your mind as well, so be careful about that guy.

Link building has always been associated with link exchanges, link request emails, link buying etc. Not any more. They’re all old-school stuff people try and waste their time on. Now since the social media revolution, there’s a whole new array of sites available that allows SEOs and webmasters to get some link juice from them for free. Now, these features will be taken for a ride, if given out freely, and they know. For the same reason, many of the sites have converted from “dofollow” to “nofollow“.

Social Media sites are basically communities where like minded guys gather up and share stuff. Be it SU, or Digg, there’s a community within. And universally, SEOs and Webmasters are looked upon with a raised eyebrow because these guys (you and me) tend to manipulate the system, and benefit from it. So let me warn you, what I’m going to tell you is of course a part of SEO, but this does not mean we have flock to all of them and start building links from day one.

Social media sites are seen generally as traffic generation machines. Be it Digg or SU, people see it as a medium to get the extra ordinary visibility for their websites, and take advantage of the large communities there. This is something that’s open to discussion. Whether to use social media sites for link building or to leave them off as communities and let them exist for what they are.

Now, here are the social media sites that are known (as of today) to pass link juice apart from teh community benefits. Some of them give huge traffic, some does not, but give you good healthy, relevant google juice.

Digg - Digg gives link juice from all the stories submitted. If you are on a top page, you have higher PR link juice, if you are on the upcoming page, lesser.

Mixx - Mixx does pass link juice and it’s easy to use it to rank high on SERPs as of now. But it’s a growing community, so it may not be easier later. Bit right now, it’s a good tool.

Hugg - Hugg is almost like digg with focus on environmental issues. Links are crawlable and passes juice.

Linkinn - Linkinn has some offbeat categories that you won’t find in the mainstream, popular social media site. A PR 6 site it features videos and pictures. Links are indexed and pass juice.

Reddit - One of the most popular guys around, reddit still have it’s links dofollowed so if you make it to the top pages, you’re lucky.

Indian Pad - Audience that’s Indian targeted, this guy is the only most popular social media site in India. Links are crawlable and indexed, and does pass on Google juice. The most popular categories are Tech and News

Backflip - Social bookmarking site with PR 6. Links are crawlable and passes on link juice.

Mister Wong - One of my favorites, Wong is a PR 6 social bookmarking site that allows dofollow links.

Mylink Vault - This guy gives you PR 5 backlinks, clean interface, good tool.

Swik - A clean social bookmarking site that gives you PR 6 backlinks. The community id for developers and open source enthusiasts.

That’s it for now. There are quite a number of other niche social media sites that help you with link juice and targeting niche communities. A healthy participation in these communities respecting the members and the laws can ensure you long lasting help with link building and traffic.

Link building is the trump card in SEO. As I have stated on many occasions, a wise and clever link building strategy can take care of a stupid on site optimized site. So even if everything on your site went wrong. Having a carefully planned link building strategy will rescue you and push you up the SERPs more than a good on site optimization strategy.

The only problem is that link building can be a bit more costly. I would never suggest you to buy links from other sites, but if it is essential, try to source some good relevant links from related sites on the same domain space.

However, there are still some myths regarding link building that still exist, and people a bit scary or skeptical when talking about it. I would tell them that link building is nothing to worry about, in fact if carefully planned it can work you wonders. Let’s discuss some common myths on link building and why shouldn’t you worry about link building.

1. Link building is not just about numbers.
   Link building is not about getting the maximum number of links. There is a widespread belief that the more links you get, the better. Well that’s true but it doesn’t mean that you can beat an existing top rank guy on the SERPs ONLY by having more number of links than them. Many a imes, when I talk to SEOs and clients, many of them first counts the number of links to their competitor, and says that we got to gather more links than them to beat them. And I cannot completely agree. Go to point 2.
2. Less links but more power
   In my opinion, to beat an existing guy, you don’t need to gather more links than him. But you should collect more “meaningful” links. I’d say “Power” links. Power links even though lesser in number, by their value and authority will give you stronger and bigger pushes up the SERPs. So essential, if your competitor has 100 backlinks, then it’s possible to even have 20 power links and get a better position than him on the SERPs.
3. How old are you ? I mean the links.
   Another crucial factor is that the age of links does matter while counting the backlinks. Sometimes, people asks me, why can’t you set up 100 blogs on blogger.com or wordpress.com and then link all of them to my main website? Wouldn’t that be like 100 backlinks for free? Well, I wish if it was easier that way. It works perfect if you had a blogger.com blog running for a longer time and you had decent PR on it. But you can’t just create 100 of them on one fine day and get links from them. The reason is that they dont have the age advantage. Unlike in real life, the older the links are the better. So it makes sense to gather links from an aged domain (check with webarchive.org) rather than a new one.
4. Link boosters
   Now, to help fight tight competition, we have the link boosters. They are “special” links that can be sourced from exclusive domains. Like .edus, .govs, and .orgs. Well, since this Google guy is so clever, he thinks that links from a .gov and .edu are hard to source, and if some one did link to you, that means you are likely to be an authority, just like the way you are. And they are partially right. .Gov sites are government authorizations and they are not generally willing for link sales. So once you have their links that’s most likely because your site is relevant to the content.
   Google also should be knowing that many of them has blogs. I’ll stop it there.
5. Just any text link won’t help. Why?
   I wish if it was that way. But the problem is that gathering links from any source just doesn’t matter. It even becomes like a no link at all situation. Valid links should always come from contextual content and related sites. So if you want a link to a dating site, you source a link from a relationship site.
6. Contextual links?
   And also it’s important that the links should be contextual. NO sitewide links, single anchor text links. They are OK, but what’s of value to you is contextual ones that are more like a suggestion from the webmaster, or recommendation to visit your site, naturally.
7. Google v/s Yahoo v\s MSN
   Finally, if you have been checking Google for backlinks, then you’d be having a tough and confusing situation. Google (deliberately) does not show all links to your site. But Yahoo and MSN are more fair on this and will show you more links. So don’t check your backlinks on Google and fret over it. Yahoo is better than the big G in some aspects.

Hope it all makes sense.

So, now the Twitter hype is almost over…what are the SEO benefits of Twitter you discovered, if at all any?
One, two months earlier almost everyone including the probloggers and the pro-SEOs flocked to Twitter and almost trashed it with tweets. And just like you, I was one too.

Didn’t someone tell you that getting more followers on twitter was so cool? Yeah, I heard the same thing too. We added friends as much as we can and started…tweeting. Only to find that twitter is nothing but a waste of time.

So what are the benefits of using Twitter?

- More popularity
- More viral stories
- More fun
- More socialization
- Blah blah..BS

To be honest, I’ve not found luck with Twitter from day one and always wondered why everyone flocked to it. And to tell you the least, I found it’s s***t considering the SEO benefits. This is what i found.

- If you want to have a good user name like “Dating Tips”, which might be your primary keyword, it helps in some ways. but the following conditions apply.
-> You must have at least 1000 followers
-> They must all be one sided, that is…you shouldn’t be following them
-> They should be all active guys on Twitter, preferably
-> They should interact with you

Now, that’s an utopian concept isn’t it? How the hell would you be a super star with a username as “Dating Tips” or “Great wraps” ?

- Since all of the links on Twitter are “no followed” there’s basically nothing you get from it as link juice. So forget it!

- Now, it does help in social media. The viral thingy? How and by what scale - is the question.

Assuming I have thousand plus, very active subscribers - I release a viral video on Twitter, or a controversial story, and it becomes a super hit on Twitter!

Wow - that’s great. But hey, I would still stand a chance to make a viral video viral or a controversial article controversial, minus twitter - wouldn’t I ?

So bottom line is - There is no SEO benefits what so ever using Twitter, and if you are trying to get popular on it for the “viral” benefits, then I’d suggest you spent the same time on Digg/SU or Deli, and you’ll get four fold “popularity” of what you would get on Twitter.

Simple stuff.