How the rise of Twitter could spell the end of the PageRank Algorithm

I watched an interesting video on Web Pro News, where Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz discussed the possibility that Twitter is ‘cannibalising’ traditional SEO practices such as Link Baiting. He expresses a very convincing argument.

More WebProNews Videos

Fishkin says that you can calculate PageRank from the twitter graph in the same way as you can on the web.

Why are links going to be less important?

Reading more of Fishkin over at SEOmoz I came across a supporting article from him where he elaborates on this subject. Read it here. Basically, he suggests that Blogging is more about building your own authority and is less popular than it once was, so those still blogging are doing it for themselves and not to share knowledge with their peers, and so rarely link out.

I can only surmise from this that:

a.) blogging for yourself becomes introspective to the level that it not only becomes dull and difficult to think of new things to say and,

b.) the popularity of blogging has decreased because linking out has proved to be unsuccessful for SEO purposes so people are less inclined to do it, and therefore have less to say. And,

c.) if linking to fun or interesting sources can be achieved much quicker on Twitter than on your own blog then this is what people will do.

Having said this I do think there is merit in linking out from your blog but only if you go to interesting and informative sources. It’s a way of connecting what you have to say with what your wider community has to say on the subject.

Why follow when you can lead?

Personally, I think that using blogs to talk about your own products, services, industry relevant topics and your own opinions is a better use of time than randomly re-publishing or re-writing other ‘more interesting’ posts written by other people. As well as this, I really think the place for a blog is to talk about your services in a way that cannot be done on a static brochure style website, as the nature of a blog is comfortable, friendly and much more personal.

The purpose of a corporate blog should not be to regurgitate the same tone and language as the static site would have, but to connect with your customers on a more personal and engaging level. Of course it’s still all about sales, it has to be because that’s the nature of the beast, but you can do it in a more creative and engaging way.

Fishkin goes on to say that this trend may well spell the end of backlinks as the main ranking factor. I can’t help think, that although this remains to be seen, it could liven things up, eh?