A new study by digital and SEO agency Branded3 has revealed that URLs are significantly more likely to climb up Google rankings when they are shared on Twitter.

Using its own Twitter petition site and with a sample size of 8,528, Branded3 found the effect of the Twitter boost levels out at around 50 tweets. Anything following this, between 50 and 1,000 tweets, don’t tend to affect ranking any further.

However, from 1,000 tweets, a URL’s ranking is significantly boosted, and URLs with over 7,500 tweets rank on the first page, according to the study.

But there are considerations that must be taken into account with the findings, said the agency. URLs with lots of tweets are more likely to have media coverage and have links from blogs and news sites, and also many of the Twititions with over 1,000 signatures will be specialised and so will rank higher as they’re in a small niche.

According to the agency, few brands are actively encouraging users to share links to their primary commercial pages.

“Now that the correlation between tweets and rankings has been demonstrated, we are recommending that brands develop strategies to build more social engagement using tactics such as ‘retweet to enter’ style competitions, and other innovative social media ideas designed to encourage customers and fans to share commercial pages and help improve rankings,” said Branded3.