Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook comments, shares, and likes, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
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 so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘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 a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. It has been estimated that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(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 single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus every month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your URL has, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search engine traffic. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [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 grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze your social marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your services, brand, or company on social media, spy on your competitors, measure the impact of campaigns, avert impending crises, and spot opportunities for engagement. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, brands, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, social media monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various groups that include marketing professionals, market research, PR agencies, professional sales reps, agencies, and social engagement and community staff. 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 various technology companies have developed many tools that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what consumers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about their brands allowing them to react to conversations and interact with online users in a timely manner.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. If you are interested in learning more here:
(Are you searching for an effective tool to help you monitor your social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet highly effective social monitoring plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence online.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you grow your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s goal is simple … change red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any user can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts with the highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ websites 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”. 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can can have a significant impact on your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to convert reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know which social campaigns need you to invest more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Select Only Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally monitor social activity from networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
SocialMetricsPro 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 of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides web site owners with many unique features. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. Access updated stats right on your WP dashboard, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications whenever a new version is released.
- Consumes very little hosting resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports fast, using little hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the data 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, category, or post type.
- 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 very simple to use … just turn more red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have written 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
***
”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 includes a practical, step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Plugin Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full refund guarantee.
Software Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This edition lets you use Social Metrics Pro on one website only. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License Edition – This license option lets you set up SocialMetricsPro on all the websites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Price details for the Social Metrics Pro product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was current when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Plugin Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
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 instant feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and guides you how to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress admin area.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to measure your social media marketing results professionally.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
***
***