Social interactions like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to rank higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social community on the planet. Research shows that one great post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can influence search engine rankings. These include desirable and negative factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, assess competitor activity and mind share, spot opportunities for engagement, and help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by online users. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific topics, brands, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track volume and sentiments of online conversations and social activity on social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by a cross-section of people including market research, marketing teams, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and professional sales reps. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of technology providers have developed tools and solutions that facilitate the active tracking of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing you to track consumer behavior around your brand or products allowing you to respond to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Learn more about this here:
(Can you measure social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective social monitoring tool for WordPress and improving your social media exposure.
Our Recommended WordPress Plugin …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make growing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – the plugin measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your task is to turn all the red squares into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any user can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares display green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand websites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, they noticed 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can significantly affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Ready To Use In No Time
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change all red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns need you to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Only Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to track and monitor social activity from social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon directly from your WordPress admin area.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access the latest information right on your WP admin bar, add social content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. Update Social Metrics Pro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Low-resource consumption. Social reports are compiled very quickly, using very little server resources. The tool also displays the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server memory consumed when gathering the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, category, or by post type.
- Export Data: You can export and plot data in Excel for further analysis. Data can be exported in tab-delimited and comma-separated file formats, and imported to the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just change all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for Social Metrics Pro:
”Our entire marketing strategy relies on social media. Each post on the site has viral potential, but we needed one place to see which social networks are performing the best for us…We went ahead and got the PRO Version of Social Metrics.” Syed Balkhi, Founder of List25 and WPBeginner.com
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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Useful Tips
A practical guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This edition allows you to run Social Metrics Pro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This enables you to set up SocialMetricsPro on all the web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Price details for Social Metrics Pro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account various social signals when determining website 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 you instant feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and guides you how and where to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to monitor which social media networks are working for your business.
For more details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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