Social interactions like Facebook likes, shares, and comments, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the most influential social community in the world. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your site, you should not be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGoogle+.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
As Google’s own social networking site, Google+ naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can indirectly influence search traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or products on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, be alerted to impending crises, identify new opportunities for engagement, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific products, brands, topics, or businesses.
As a tool for business intelligence, social signal monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including marketing teams, PR staff, market researchers, social engagement and community staff, sales teams, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different providers have developed a range of affordable and even free tools to facilitate the tracking of a wide range of social media channels, enabling companies to identify consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can react to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely manner.
If you want to learn more about social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about, see this article:
(Do you know how to effectively measure social signals?)
This article explores a simple social media tracking plugin for your online presence and growing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. Your job is to turn all the reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any user can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that get shared the most display green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand sites over a period of three months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping everything “green”. According to the plugin developers, they were able to notice that their top 10 best performing sites saw an improvement of up to 360% more traffic, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social marketing can result in better search rankings, increased traffic and an increase in revenue!)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin user section and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to change more red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to track and monitor social activity from social networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro offers site owners with a number of great features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest information from your WordPress admin bar, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrading. Update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email when a new version is released.
- Plugin uses minimal server resources. Reports are compiled fast, consuming little server resources. Reports also display the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources used to gather data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, post type, publishing date, or category.
- Export Data: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries to Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just convert all the reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for SocialMetricsPro:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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”If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve.” Goes one of the most important sayings in business. And this is particularly true for tracking of your social mentions I found. There were two things that helped me a great deal to increase sharing after installing Social Metrics: First, I was able to see that some of my articles would perform much better on networks I wasn’t particularly using, such as StumbleUpon for example. Secondly, I could filter out the best performing content more easily and analyse what makes my readers share. Since then I have focused strongly on producing and replicating those posts that performed best.” Leo Widrich, Co-Founder of Buffer
Useful Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product License Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This option allows you to activate Social Metrics Pro on a single website. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This license allows you to configure Social Metrics Pro on all the sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Current pricing for SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the rise of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines now take into account social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives WordPress users immediate feedback on the success of their social marketing strategy and shows them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
Get this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to shorten your path to success with social marketing.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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