Social recommendations like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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 assessing social media signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. 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 short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media 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 largest social media network on the planet. Research shows that an average post 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 business strategy, as Google processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter andGoogle+.
(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 on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social media site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are actively using Google+ every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential 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 Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on your competition, take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, and identify market opportunities. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, businesses, products, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to track trends, conversations, and social activity on social media channels like blogs, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, 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, often carried out by various groups that include digital reputation management (ORM) companies, marketing teams, market researchers, professional sales reps, agencies, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different technology providers have developed a range of affordable and even free tools to facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
(Are you searching for an effective tool that can help you measure your social signals?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple, yet highly effective social media monitoring plugin for WordPress and growing your social media influence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you increase your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your job is simple … change more reds into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that anyone can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin 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 their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, 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 result in higher search rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
More info:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more right from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to change more reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals so you know which social marketing campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally track and monitor social media activity from social networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer 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 can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. View the latest stats right on your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal consumption of hosting resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports fast, consuming minimal server resources. Reports also display the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server memory used to compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter your data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by publishing date, post authors, post type, or category.
- 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just turn all reds into greens!)
Feedback From Product Users
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have published about Social Metrics Pro:
”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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”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 – Useful Tips
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Plugin Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This license option allows you to configure Social Metrics Pro on one domain only. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Edition – This allows you to use Social Metrics Pro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Current pricing for the SocialMetricsPro software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin seller when you visit the product site 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 Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining website 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 media marketing strategy and guides you where and how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to avoid wasting resources on over-optimized social campaigns.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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