Social interactions and recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account various social signals to help determine a website’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 social media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 websites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the most influential social media community on the planet. Research shows that a single post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, you should not 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, research shows that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus each year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search engine rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze your social signals 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 your brand’s online visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, assess competitor activity and market share, identify market opportunities, and take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by online users. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific products, topics, brands, 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, typically carried out by various people including marketing teams, online reputation management (ORM) companies, market researchers, social media marketing agencies, social engagement and community staff, and professional sales reps. Typically, small businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of technology providers have developed tools and solutions to facilitate the tracking of a broad spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what customers, competitors, supporters, and critics are saying about their brands or products allowing them to respond proactively to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article listing many social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple social monitoring plugin for a WordPress-based digital business presence and growing your social media influence online.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media presence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your goal is to turn more reds into greens.
(A system that any user can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand websites 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 noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can dramatically impact your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Easy & Quick To Install
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to turn more reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to apply more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social media activity across leading networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, and LinkedIn directly from your WP admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors the sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro provides website owners with many features. Here are a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Access the latest information from your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. Update the plugin in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Consumes very little resources. Reporting is fast, consuming very little server resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to gather and compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post type, publishing date, or post authors.
- Export Data: You can export data 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just turn all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin customers have published about 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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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation (WordCamp Montreal 2011)
Plugin Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a practical, step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Plugin Support
The plugin is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This option allows you to configure Social Metrics Pro on 1 site only. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This option lets you use SocialMetricsPro on unlimited websites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Current pricing for SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is selling for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the rising importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account social signals when determining website ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing campaigns and guides you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to outperform your competitors on social media.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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