Social recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook comments, shares, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining website 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 assessing social media signals, 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 summary, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social 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 network on the planet. It has been estimated that one great post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of 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 online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social networking site, Google+ 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 day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social sites listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your web page has accrued, amount of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 signals that can influence search traffic and rankings. These include desirable and undesirable 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 irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, spy on the competition, take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied users, and identify market opportunities. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, businesses, products, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to monitor online conversations and activity on social media channels like blogs, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Medium, etc., 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, typically carried out by a cross-section of people including PR companies, marketing teams, market researchers, social engagement and community personnel, sales teams, and social marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately many service providers have developed tools that facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands allowing them to respond proactively to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore many social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. See this page to learn more:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor your social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet highly effective plugin for WordPress-powered sites for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you grow your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s goal is to turn more reds into greens.
(A standard operating procedure 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 are colored green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of over two thousand 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”. 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, improving your social media marketing can dramatically impact your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro installs like any WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin user area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to convert all the reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to invest more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track The Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to monitor social media activity across leading social media networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon.
Social Metrics Pro 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 of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro offers web site owners with many great features. Here are some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. View updated stats right on your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. You can update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal hosting resources consumption. The plugin generates social metrics reports in seconds, using very little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter your data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by publishing date, post type, post authors, or by category.
- 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just convert reds into greens!)
Feedback From Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials users have published about Social Metrics Pro:
“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)
Product Tips
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Software Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This allows you to activate SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on unlimited domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of SocialMetricsPro 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 charged by the plugin author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing information here:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro 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. 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 campaigns and shows them how and where to direct their efforts in order 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 dashboard.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to track your social signals automatically.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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