Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook likes, shares, and comments, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
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. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more 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 value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to rank higher in its search results.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. Research shows that a single post 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 Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers 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 great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are actively using Google+ each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a site has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 indirectly influence search rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, spy on your competitors, measure the impact of campaigns, and be alerted to impending crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, products, topics, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to track conversations, trends, and activity on social media channels like blogging, forums, social networking sites, micro-blogging platforms, discussion boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) 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 groups that include digital reputation managers, market researchers, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, professional sales reps, and social marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many technology providers have developed affordable tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your brand or products so you can react to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
(Are you tracking your social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple, yet effective social media monitoring tool for WordPress and increasing your social media presence.
Our Featured WordPress Product Is …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – the system tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s objective is to convert all the reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of over two thousand websites 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 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 better search engine rankings, more web traffic and more revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Simple To Install And Set Up. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro installs like every other WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to turn more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and where to optimize.
Choose Only Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, Digg, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon directly from your WP admin area.
Social Metrics Pro 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides a number of features to site owners. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. View the latest information right on your WP admin bar, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click auto-upgrading functionality. Update Social Metrics Pro in 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 server resources usage. Reporting is in seconds, using minimal server resources. Reports also display the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, post authors, category, or 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just turn all red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are some of the testimonials and comments users have written 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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”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
Product Tips
A practical, step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This license allows you to activate Social Metrics Pro on one domain only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This allows you to configure SocialMetricsPro on multiple sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
The Bottom Line
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account a range of social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social marketing strategy and guides them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to save money on outsourcing your social media marketing campaigns or train your staff to manage your campaigns inhouse.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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