Social recommendations like Facebook shares, likes, and comments, +1s on Google+, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account social signals to help determine a website’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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social community on the planet. It has been estimated that one great post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other 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 500 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers 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, GooglePlus 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 Google+ each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social sites listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the number of people 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. 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 factors that can influence search rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as relevant as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social marketing performance in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your products, company, or brand on social media, spot market opportunities, take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers, assess competitor activity, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific products, brands, businesses, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social activity on social media channels like blogs, forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms, discussion boards, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content 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 people including market researchers, digital reputation managers, marketing teams, agencies, social engagement and community personnel, and sales teams. Typically, small businesses do not have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately many technology companies have developed tools to facilitate the tracking of a broad spectrum of social media channels, enabling companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can respond to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. For more information, go here:
(Can you track social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress users for tracking social signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin that is designed to help users grow their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s objective is to convert all the red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure 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 are colored 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 their metrics on “green”. From these tests, 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 the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can result in higher search rankings, more web traffic and more revenue!)
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Fast And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to turn all the red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social marketing campaigns require more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally track and monitor social media activity from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress dashboard.
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 on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. View the latest information from your WP dashboard, display social content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click updates. Update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification when a new version is released.
- Minimal hosting resources consumption. Social metrics reports are generated very quickly, consuming very little hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, post authors, or category.
- 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 simple to use … just turn all reds into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin customers have provided for the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”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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”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
Social Metrics Pro Plugin – Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a step-by-step, practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, full refund guarantee.
Product Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This license enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on 1 domain only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This license option enables you to activate SocialMetricsPro on unlimited web sites that you own. Price includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
In Conclusion
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. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives website owners instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them where and 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 this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to shorten your path to success with social media marketing.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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