Social interactions and recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, shares, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account social signals to help determine website ranking.
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 assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to the social sphere 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 value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social community in the world. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your website, you should not 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 shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly 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 each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each 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 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 week. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your site has, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has, amount of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search rankings and 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 poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to develop 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 to improve your results online)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, avert crises, spot opportunities for engagement, assess competitor activity, and measure the impact of campaigns. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific products, brands, topics, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including market researchers, online reputation specialists, marketing professionals, social engagement and community staff, professional sales reps, and social marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different service providers have made available tools and solutions to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what is being said online about their brands or products so they can respond to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
To learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives, see this article:
(Can you track your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet highly effective plugin for WordPress-driven websites for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media exposure online.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your task is simple … change red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can operate … simply turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro 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 everything “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 the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can positively can have a dramatic effect on your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Ready To Use In Minutes
Social Metrics Pro installs just like every plugin. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to change all the red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know which social marketing campaigns require more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to centrally monitor social media activity across leading networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Digg, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress admin area.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to 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?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers many features to WP users. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats from your WP admin bar, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Plugin uses minimal hosting resources. Reporting is very quickly, using little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources used to compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, post authors, or by category.
- Export Data: You can export and plot data 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just turn reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have published 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
Social Metrics Pro – Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a practical, step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Software Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This edition allows you to install Social Metrics Pro on a single site. It includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This license lets you use SocialMetricsPro on all sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the rise of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
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 WordPress users immediate feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and shows them where and how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to shorten your path to success with social marketing.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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