Social interactions like Facebook comments, shares, and likes, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account a range of social signals when determining 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. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social 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 influential social media 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 power of leveraging Facebook, 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 website rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter andGoogle+.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
As Google’s own social networking 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 interacting on GooglePlus each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth paying attention to, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones 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 likes, shares, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a site has, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ a site page has amassed, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search engine rankings. These include desirable 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 business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your services, brand, or company on social media, avert crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, identify market opportunities, and spy on the competition. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific brands, topics, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, being able 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 market researchers, PR companies, marketing teams, social media marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, smaller businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have made available affordable tools to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to track what consumers are saying about your brand or products allowing you to react to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. If you would like to learn more here:
(Do you know how to effectively track your social signals?)
In this article, we discuss a simple social tracking plugin for WordPress and improving your social media exposure.
Let’s Review …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media influence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s goal is to turn all red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any user can operate … turn all the 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 three months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. From these tests, they noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can result in higher search engine rankings, increased traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to convert all red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Track The Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social activity from social networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Pinterest.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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 this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WP users with many features. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. View the latest stats from your WP admin bar, display social content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click upgrading. You can update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when new versions are released.
- Plugin works the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is in seconds, consuming minimal hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post authors, post type, publishing date, 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 Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just turn more reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that users have provided for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
“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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”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 Plugin – Tips
A step-by-step guide on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Plugin Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This allows you to activate SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This lets you run Social Metrics Pro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost to purchase Social Metrics Pro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author 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 the latest pricing information here:
Additional Product Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
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 and how to direct your efforts in order 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 admin area.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to shave years off your social media marketing learning curve.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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