Social recommendations like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook likes, shares, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their social presence as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts 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 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 true 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 sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. It has been estimated that a single post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google uses social 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 rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter andGooglePlus.
(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 online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries great 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 week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search rankings and traffic. These include desirable 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 not only important to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers, spy on your competitors, identify market opportunities, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide valuable data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific products, brands, topics, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to monitor social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including marketing teams, online reputation management companies, market research, social engagement and community personnel, sales teams, and social marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various providers have created affordable tools and solutions to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to track what customers, competitors, supporters, and critics are saying about your brand or products so you can react to conversations and interact with online users in a timely fashion.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. Go here for more info:
(Can you track social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media exposure online.
Our Featured WordPress Product Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to make increasing your social media presence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s objective is to convert all red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can follow … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ 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 a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can dramatically can have a dramatic effect on your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Learn more about this plugin here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Quick And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Start Using In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to turn all the red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to monitor social media activity across leading networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social media 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.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro offers a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. SocialMetricsPro shows updated information right on your WP admin bar, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click updates. You can update the plugin in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses minimal resources. Reporting is very quickly, 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 plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to 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 publishing date, post type, post authors, or category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data 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 really simple to use … just change red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have written about Social Metrics Pro:
“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, step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This lets you run SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This license allows you to set up Social Metrics Pro on multiple domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing details of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Highly Recommend This
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. SocialMetricsPro 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 where to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to improve social media visibility and see more of your keywords getting better rankings on search engines.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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