Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook likes, shares, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than 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 perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is to “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 naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social media network in the world. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your site, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all 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 600 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
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 Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are starting to interact socially on Google+ each month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person sending a tweet is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus a URL has, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and undesirable 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 of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your results online)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, avert crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, identify market opportunities, and spy on your competitors. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, topics, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, social signal 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 people including online reputation management (ORM) specialists, marketing teams, market research, sales teams, agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have developed tools to facilitate the tracking of a wide spectrum of social media channels, enabling you to identify what is being said online about your products or brand allowing you to respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely manner.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about here:
(Do you know how to effectively track your social signals?)
In this article, we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social signals and improving your social media presence.
Announcing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin that is designed to help you grow your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your job is to convert all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that anyone can operate … 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 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 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 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 can result in higher search engine rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to change red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to track and monitor social media activity from networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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 SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WordPress users with a number of features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows updated information right on your WordPress admin bar, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrading. Update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Minimal usage of hosting resources. The plugin generates reports fast, consuming minimal hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server memory consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter the data 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 and plot filtered data and custom queries in 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 really simple to use … just turn all reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that users have provided for the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
“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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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro includes a practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Product Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Product Licensing Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This allows you to install SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This option lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on multiple web sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost of purchasing the SocialMetricsPro plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account various social signals when determining a site’s 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 users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to improve social media visibility and see more of your keywords getting ranked on search engines.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
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