• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, April 25, 2012

A new BrightEdge report details a 47% increase in engine rankings when aligning Twitter and organic search. Tiny Prints achieved the uptick, improving online conversions and ROIs.

Tiny Prints -- an online boutique offering cards, invitation and a variety of photo goods and services -- achieved the increase in organic search rankings on long-tail keywords and URLs that were popular on Twitter. The gains occurred with help from BrightEdge search and social analytics tools, as engagement by Twitter followers on pages and keywords grew 300% during the month-long campaign.

Tiny Prints wanted to reach prospective and potential customers through Twitter. Teaming with BrightEdge, the company grew the value of its digital marketing conversations and aligned its Twitter with organic search strategies, making the most from site traffic to convert sales.

Twitter provided the data for BrightEdge could test the process. "We were able to pinpoint the specific social topics driving lift on search," said Jim Yu, BrightEdge CEO. "It's difficult for marketers to change their attribution model until they can see the correlation of what works and what doesn't."

Advertising revenue at Twitter grew 213% to $139.5 million in 2011, and strong international growth should push the company’s ad revenue to nearly $260 million in 2012, per an eMarketer forecast. By 2014, the research group estimates Twitter's global ad revenue will reach $540 million. Part of that can be attributed to the integration with search.

But BrightEdge technology appears to hold the edge. Many of those on its executive team came from Salesforce.com, having knowledge about the inner workings of cloud services. In addition, Twitter's vice president of products Satya Patel advises BrightEdge.

Patel has been instrumental in insuring that BrightEdge's S3 platform maximizes Twitter's value, as well as other social channels, such as Facebook and Google+.

BrightEdge revenue grew 400% and employee headcount rose 200% only to recently secure $12.6 million in Series C funding to support Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, VMWare, Symantec and others.