Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook comments, shares, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been tracking 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. 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 full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. It has been estimated 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 the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses 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 Twitter orGoogle+.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
Google’s own social networking 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 starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, assess competitor activity and mind share, identify new opportunities for engagement, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and avert disasters. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, products, topics, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, social 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 teams, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, market researchers, social engagement and community staff, social media marketing agencies, and professional sales reps. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various service providers have developed a range of affordable and even free tools to facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your products or brand allowing you to respond to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
Go here if you want to learn more social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about:
(Are you looking for an effective way to track your social signals?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress sites for monitoring social signals and improving your social media exposure online.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you grow your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. Your task is simple … convert all the reds into greens.
(A system that anyone 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 display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in better search engine rankings, more traffic and more revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro installs like any other plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress admin area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to turn more reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to monitor social activity across leading networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest directly from your WordPress dashboard.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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 of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows updated stats from your WP admin bar, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. You can update the plugin with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin even works on the smallest hosting. Social metrics reports are generated in seconds, using little hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, post type, publishing date, or by category.
- Export Data: 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 Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just turn all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written about SocialMetricsPro:
”Social Metrics is the easiest way to see at a glance which posts have performed well on social networks.” Kevin Muldoon, Founder of WPMods.com
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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Tips
A practical, step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This lets you set up SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License Edition – This license enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on unlimited sites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get The Product
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 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and guides you how and where to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to make social marketing campaigns work for you.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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