Social recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
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 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 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 websites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. It has been estimated that an average 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 uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, 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 next largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social media site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are actively using Google+ each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person sending tweets is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your URL has accrued, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search engine traffic and rankings. These include desirable and negative factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as relevant as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by site reviewers [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on your competition, spot opportunities for engagement, and avert crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific topics, products, brands, or businesses.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media monitoring 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 market research, digital reputation management (ORM) agencies, marketing teams, sales teams, social engagement and community personnel, and social marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of technology providers have developed many tools that facilitate the monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, allowing companies to identify consumer behavior around their products or brands allowing them to respond to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article listing a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Visit this page to learn more:
(Are you measuring social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple social monitoring tool for your WordPress-based online presence and increasing your social media influence online.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use 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 concept – the system tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your task is simple … change more red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that anyone can operate … 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 display amber and red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ 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”. From these tests, they were able to notice 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing can positively affect your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Social Metrics Pro installs like any WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s job is to convert more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to monitor social media activity from networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, 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 Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many features to WP users. Here are just some of those:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest stats from your WordPress dashboard, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click updating. Update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever new versions are released.
- Low server resource consumption. Reporting is very quickly, using little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources used to compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to 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 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 convert more reds into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have published about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”Social Metrics is the easiest way to see at a glance which posts have performed well on social networks.” Kevin Muldoon, Founder of WPMods.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
Plugin Tips
A step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This option enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This lets you install Social Metrics Pro on unlimited domains that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Current pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the product is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
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 immediate feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social media campaigns or train your staff to manage your campaigns in-house.
For more details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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