Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook likes, comments, and shares, Twitter retweets and mentions, 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 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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media community on the planet. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 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 data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that 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 second largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
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 Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, the number of people sharing the URL, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has amassed, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine traffic. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your brand, company, or products on social media, be alerted to impending crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on your competition, and identify opportunities for engagement. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, topics, brands, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including online reputation management (ORM) companies, marketing teams, market researchers, social media marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of providers have developed a range of affordable and even free tools that facilitate the monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict consumer behavior around your brand so you can respond proactively to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more details, go here:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor your social signals?)
This article discusses a simple, yet effective social media tracking tool for your digital business presence and improving your social media exposure.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to make growing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the system measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s goal is simple … convert all the red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with the highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ websites 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 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 marketing campaigns can can have a significant effect on your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Be Up And Running In No Time
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change all red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social media activity from networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Pinterest.
Social Metrics Pro 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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. View the latest stats from your WP admin bar, display socially popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click updates. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications when a new version is released.
- Uses minimal server resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports fast, using little hosting resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort 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 data 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just turn all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback customers have written about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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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
SocialMetricsPro – Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This enables you to install Social Metrics Pro on a single web site. It includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License Edition – This enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on multiple domains that you own. Price includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current when this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to 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 website owners instant feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and shows them where and how to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to measure your social marketing results professionally.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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