Social recommendations like Facebook comments, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their social presence 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 signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere 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 normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social network on the planet. Research shows that an average 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 business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social site, Google+ naturally carries great 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 day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites worth getting to know, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares 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 sending tweets is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your web page has, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social media marketing performance in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, assess competitor activity and market dominance, avert disasters, spot market opportunities, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific products, topics, businesses, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to monitor 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 marketing teams, digital reputation management (ORM) specialists, market research, sales teams, social marketing agencies, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of providers have made available many affordable tools to facilitate the active tracking of a wide spectrum of social media channels, enabling you to track consumer behavior around your brand or products so you can respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
(Do you know how to effectively track social signals?)
This article discusses a simple social media monitoring tool for your online business and growing your social media influence.
Announcing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media exposure online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your objective is to change all reds into greens.
(A system that any website owner can operate … just 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 are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 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 campaigns can affect your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to turn all the red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals so you know which social campaigns need you to invest more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally monitor social media activity across leading social networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress admin area.
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 of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers WordPress users with a number of features. Below we have listed just some:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running 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. SocialMetricsPro shows updated information from your WP admin bar, add social content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. Update SocialMetricsPro in one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when new versions are released.
- Uses minimal resources. Reporting is in seconds, using very little server resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to compile 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 topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, category, post type, or by publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just change reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback customers have provided for SocialMetricsPro:
“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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”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)
Useful Tips
A step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Plugin Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on 1 website only. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on all domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, 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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them how and where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to shorten your path to success with social media marketing.
For full details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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