Social recommendations like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook shares, likes, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account a range of social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine.
Social Signal Sources
Social 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 most dominant social network in the world. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search engine 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 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social networking site 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 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, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ your web page has, amount 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 social media-related signals that can influence search engine traffic. 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 visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social performance in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers, identify potential market opportunities, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific topics, brands, businesses, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media 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 professionals, PR agencies, market researchers, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses don’t have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately a number of technology providers have developed many affordable tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to track what is being said online about their brands allowing them to react to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. To learn more about this go here:
(Do you know how to effectively track your social signals?)
In this article, we discuss a simple social tracking plugin for your site and growing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your task is to turn all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can operate … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ sites 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”. From these tests, 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 marketing campaigns can result in higher search engine rankings, more traffic and more revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Social Metrics Pro installs like every other plugin. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s goal is to turn all reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Select Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you centrally monitor social activity across leading social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, and LinkedIn directly from your WP dashboard.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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 Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. View the latest stats right on your WordPress admin bar, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click updates. You can update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email when a new version is released.
- Utilizes minimal resources. The plugin can generate reports in seconds, consuming minimal server resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, category, or post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered, sorted data and custom queries 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 really simple to use … just turn all the red squares into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments users have submitted regarding the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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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
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, full refund guarantee.
Software Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on one web site only. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on unlimited sites that you own. It includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the software seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
In Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, with the rising importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account a range of social signals when determining a site’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. 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 strategy and guides you how and where to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro 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.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized social campaigns.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
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