Social interactions like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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 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 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 Media Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media community on the planet. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites, like GooglePlus or Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted 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 a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other sites worth getting to know, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a URL has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search engine traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or products on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, be alerted to disasters, spy on your competitors, and identify market opportunities. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, businesses, topics, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, social signal monitoring 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 online reputation management (ORM) companies, marketing professionals, market researchers, social marketing agencies, sales teams, 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 and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of technology companies have developed affordable tools and solutions that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands or products so they can react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article listing a number of social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
(Do you know how to effectively track social signals?)
This article discusses a simple WordPress plugin for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media exposure.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you improve your social media exposure 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 goal is to convert reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any website owner can operate … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts that get shared the most display green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin 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 everything “green”. From these tests, 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 the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in better search rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
Learn more here:
Benefits
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every other plugin. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s goal is to change all the reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to 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 of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. View updated information from your WordPress dashboard, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click auto-update functionality. You can update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever a new version is released.
- Minimal hosting resources usage. Reporting is fast, using little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources used to compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro 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 type, post authors, category, or publishing date.
- 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 Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just change all red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have published about SocialMetricsPro:
“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
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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Useful Tips
A practical 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.
Plugin Support
The software is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. It includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License Edition – This edition allows you to configure Social Metrics Pro on all the domains that you own. It includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Price details for the SocialMetricsPro software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing shown above was current when this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin author when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
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 the importance of social media. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you instant feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and guides you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to make social marketing work for you.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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