Social interactions like +1s on Google+, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their brand on social media 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 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 full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more 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 sites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to rank higher in its search listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social community in the world. Research shows that an average post 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 the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other 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 each 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 number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social media site naturally carries great 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 every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your site has, the number of people tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 signals that can indirectly influence search engine traffic and rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [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 marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by online users, measure the impact of campaigns, and spy on the competition. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific products, topics, businesses, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of people including marketing teams, PR companies, market research, agencies, social engagement and community personnel, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different service providers have developed affordable tools to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to identify what is being said online about their brands allowing them to respond to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more info, see this article:
(Are you looking for an effective tool to help you track social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple social tracking plugin for your online business and improving your social media presence online.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media exposure uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your objective is to convert all the reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can operate … turn all the 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 everything “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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in higher search rankings, more web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin login and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to change more red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know which social marketing campaigns need you to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally track and monitor social activity from social networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Digg, and Pinterest.
Social Metrics Pro 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 of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many great features to site owners. Below we have listed some of those features:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access the latest stats from your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. You can update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal hosting resources consumption. Metric reports are generated fast, using little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources used to gather and compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, category, publishing date, or post authors.
- Export Data: You can export filtered 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just change reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments users have written 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
Useful Tips
A step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This option allows you to configure Social Metrics Pro on a single website. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the SocialMetricsPro software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing set by the product author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing now take into account a range of social signals to help determine website ranking.
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 users immediate feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and shows them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their 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 WordPress admin area.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized social campaigns.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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