“How do they do that?” followed closely by “I wish I had that.”
For sure, these thoughts have crossed the mind of marketers and small business owners who have seen Twitter Carousel while searching for something in Google. One of the misconceptions is these are only something Google does for big brands or famous personalities, but it’s not. Even small businesses and regular folks can achieve a recent tweets snippet in Google’s SERP.
What’s in It for You?
At the end of the day, this is the most important question.
Why would you try to achieve a Twitter Carousel for your brand, business, or even for yourself? What are the benefits?
Here are a few:
- Better recall and an overall more positive perception. A Twitter Carousel invoked on name searches for you or your brand elevates the overall impression among Google users. With Twitter going to maintain a 26%+ penetration rate in the United States in the next 5 years, having your recent tweets show in Google search results increases recall.
- Displace negative content. According to research by Marketing Land columnist Chris Silver Smith, there’s a tendency for negative content to rank high in Google’s search results. He called it “the negative bias dynamic.” With a prominently displayed Twitter Carousel, you can displace bad content with messages you control.
Disclaimer: Is a Twitter Carousel a Guarantee?
Before giving you the tips on how to increase your chances of having a featured Twitter Carousel, here’s a quick disclaimer.
Google does not give specific guidelines on how to achieve a Twitter Carousel on its search results pages. When the question was asked in a Moz forum, authority user Chris Ashton offered the following explanation: “The short answer is “nobody knows.” Whether or not it will ever show up is completely at Google’s discretion. If you think about it from Google’s point of view, their aim is to provide the highest possible value to their searchers. If you were a local plumber who Tweets a quote or funny joke a couple of times per year, schema markup or not, displaying this in the carousel won’t provide any value at all and takes up precious screen real estate.”
That said, there is no harm in trying.
5 Tips to Increase Your Chances of Getting a Twitter Carousel in Google’s SERP
What are the common denominators among those who were able to achieve a Google Carousel snippet? Here are 5 actionable tips that you can implement, and see over time if you’re going to get the same results.
1. Generate a good size following.
You don’t need to have millions of followers like Katy Perry or Justin Bieber, but you do need to have a good size following to boost your chances. Generally speaking, Google will give a Twitter Carousel to brands or personalities that are authoritative and the number of followers is a good indication of that. You can do this by:
- Following authorities in your niche, re-tweeting their posts, and mentioning them in your own
- Following back those who follow you
- Replying to relevant threads and interacting with tweets
That said, remember that it’s quality over quantity. Having 1,000 engaged followers is way better than having 10,000 followers who are not interested in your posts.
2. Tweet frequently and consistently.
As mentioned, Google has not given any specific information on how its algorithm for fetching Twitter Carousels work. However, looking at those who were able to get Twitter snippets would lead one to the conclusion that there’s a recency component in the algorithm. According to studies, the ideal number of tweets you should post per day is 15, 7 of which are curated tweets or re-tweets.
Working hand in hand with frequent tweeting is consistent tweeting. You cannot just tweet a bunch of posts one day and be MIA the next few days. Use a social media post scheduling tool such as Buffer to help you with this.
3. Increase interaction with your Tweets.
When it comes to ranking web pages, Google measures and takes into account the level of engagement a content gets. The more engagement, the higher the rankings. The same thing could be true for Twitter accounts. The more interaction your tweets get, the more likely you’re going to get a Twitter snippet when someone searches for you in Google. Here are a few tips on how you can increase engagement on your tweets:
- Minimize promotional tweets about your products or services
- If you want to post promotional tweets, limit them to groundbreaking or time-sensitive announcements
- Reply to other people’s tweets (especially experts in your industry) and re-tweet interesting posts
- Acknowledge people who are mentioning you or re-tweeting your posts
- Use emojis, GIFs, and other visual elements when appropriate
4. Tweet about your content.
While your promotional tweets should be kept to a minimum, there’s nothing stopping you from tweeting your own content. Every time you come up with a new blog post, tweet about it. Your Twitter followers are already a captive audience. Therefore, it’s a great way to drive initial traffic to new content that you produce. Aside from increasing your chances of getting a Twitter carousel by posting about useful, high-quality content, you’re also generating social signals for your content, thereby increasing the SEO juice for those pages.
5. Leverage popular hashtags and trending topics.
The use of hashtags is one of the things that made Twitter a unique social media space. Today, people use it to read about trending topics that interest them. Look at the list of popular hashtags and trending topics every day and see if you can tweet something that is relevant to them. Of course, don’t forget to use the right hashtags so you appear in Twitter searches for them. Usually, key holidays, big sporting events, and breaking news trigger a topic or hashtag to trend, so watch out for those.
The Carousel is Not the Be All and End All
Compared to other core SEO strategies, having a Twitter Carousel appear in name searches for your business could be considered a nice-to-have. However, considering that it only takes an extra investment in terms of time on your end — to get more followers, increase engagement, and posting frequently and consistently — it doesn’t hurt to try.
Besides, the tips above are not just for the sole purpose of having a Twitter Carousel displayed for your business on Google SERP. They are also best practices in Twitter marketing, which is essential if you are serious about using Twitter as a social media marketing channel to promote your brand and gain mileage for your content.
