Social recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines now take into account various social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social presence 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 own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘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 true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media network in the world. It has been estimated that a single post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of 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 each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are actively using Google+ every week. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track various social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, 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 engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your brand, company, or services on social media, identify potential market opportunities, avert disasters, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific products, topics, businesses, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of groups that include online reputation managers, market research, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, social media marketing agencies, and sales teams. Typically, smaller businesses do not have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately many service providers have created a range of affordable and even free tools that facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict consumer behavior around your products or brand allowing you to react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article listing over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. Go here for more info:
(Are you looking for an effective tool to help you track your social signals?)
In this article, we discuss a simple, yet highly effective social media tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you improve your social media exposure in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. Your objective is simple … turn more red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any user can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ sites over a period of three 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 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing can result in better search rankings, increased traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro installs like every WordPress plugin. Simply upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to turn all the reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to monitor social activity across leading networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media 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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many unique features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to use in very little time.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated stats from your WP dashboard, add social content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. You can update Social Metrics Pro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Utilizes very little server resources. Reporting is in seconds, using minimal server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, category, post authors, or publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just convert more reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials plugin customers have provided for Social Metrics Pro:
“Social Metrics Pro is the essential plugin we use to monitor how our content performs on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple, neat and works precisely as you would expect it. When we work with our clients such as T-Mobile, the .Me domain name registry and others, Social Metrics Pro is the plugin we use to create reports as well as keep track on each bit of content to optimize it for future performance.” Ivan Brezak Brkan, Editor of Netokracija.com, TechCrunch EU Contributor
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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
Plugin Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product License Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This enables you to use Social Metrics Pro on a single website. Price includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This edition lets you run SocialMetricsPro on all sites that you own. Price includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The price of the Social Metrics Pro plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives website owners immediate feedback on the success of their social marketing strategy and shows them how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to track your social signals automatically.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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