Social interactions like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook shares, likes, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and 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 media 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 own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to rank higher in its search engine results.
Social Signal Sources
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 one great post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus each year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, how influential the person sharing the URL is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your URL has, number of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [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 presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social marketing performance in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your brand, services, or company on social media, be alerted to crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on the competition, and spot opportunities for engagement. It can also provide vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific topics, businesses, products, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to monitor social conversations and social activity on social media channels like blogging, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms, 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 online reputation managers, marketing teams, market research, social engagement and community personnel, sales teams, and social marketing agencies. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have created affordable tools to facilitate the active tracking of a wide range of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what is being said online about your products or brand allowing you to respond to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article listing over 30 social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More info:
(Do you know how to effectively measure social signals?)
This article discusses a simple, yet highly effective social media tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users improve their social media presence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the system measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s objective is simple … change more red squares into greens.
(A system that any user can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity display 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 their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in better search engine rankings, more web traffic and increased revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s goal is to convert all red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally monitor social activity across leading social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro offers WP users with many great features. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access the latest stats from your WP dashboard, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click auto-update functionality. You can update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal usage of server resources. The plugin can generate reports very quickly, consuming very little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather and compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, post type, or by category.
- Export Data: You can export and plot filtered, sorted 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just turn all reds into greens!)
Feedback From Plugin Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have provided for SocialMetricsPro:
”Our entire marketing strategy relies on social media. Each post on the site has viral potential, but we needed one place to see which social networks are performing the best for us…We went ahead and got the PRO Version of Social Metrics.” Syed Balkhi, Founder of List25 and WPBeginner.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
Useful Tips
A step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This license allows you to install SocialMetricsPro on one web site only. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This license option enables you to activate Social Metrics Pro on multiple websites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current pricing at the time this content was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details:
Additional Product Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download The Product
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media 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 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 marketing strategy and shows them how and where to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro 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 improve social media visibility and see more of your keywords getting ranked on search engines.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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