Social recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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 signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. 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 value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most influential social network in the world. Research shows that one great 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, you should not be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Google+ or Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social site naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track various social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sharing your posts, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ your site page has amassed, amount of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search engine 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 of low quality by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze your social media marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or products on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on the competition, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, and identify new opportunities for engagement. It can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific brands, businesses, products, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to track social media channels like blogging, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Quora, etc., discussion boards, video/photo sharing websites, and user-generated content (UGC) 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 groups that include market researchers, PR companies, marketing teams, agencies, social engagement and community staff, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various service providers have created affordable tools that facilitate the tracking of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing you to track what customers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about your brand so you can respond to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more details, go here:
(Can you track social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple social media tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media exposure uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your goal is simple … convert all reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any website owner can operate … turn all the 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 show up 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 their metrics on “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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to the plugin developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in higher search engine rankings, increased traffic and increased revenue!)
Learn more about this plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Easy Installation
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to turn red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social media activity across leading networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, 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 posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest stats from your WordPress dashboard, display popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrades. Update Social Metrics Pro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever new versions are released.
- Minimal consumption of server resources. Reporting is fast, consuming little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server memory consumed when gathering data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter data however 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 by post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries to 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 reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have published about 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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”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
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a practical guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This allows you to run Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This lets you use SocialMetricsPro on unlimited domains that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Highly Recommend This
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account various social signals when determining 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing campaigns and guides you how and where to direct your efforts in order 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 WP dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social media marketing or train your staff to manage your campaigns in-house.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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