Social recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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 social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a reliable ‘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 true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to rank higher in its search engine.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social community on the planet. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, 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 next largest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus 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 socially on Google+ each year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a URL has, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ your site page has accrued, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, products, or company on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, be alerted to disasters, identify opportunities for engagement, and assess competitor activity. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, products, topics, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to track conversations and social activity on social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various groups that include market researchers, marketing professionals, online reputation management companies, professional sales reps, social engagement and community personnel, and social marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed tools and solutions to facilitate the monitoring of a broad spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their products or brands allowing them to respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in a timely manner.
To learn more about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns, see this article:
(Can you monitor social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple, yet highly effective plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social media signals and growing your social media influence online.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media presence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s goal is to turn more red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with the highest number of 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 three 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 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, improving your social media marketing can dramatically affect your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Ready To Use In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user account and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change all the reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to invest more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
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 is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows the latest stats from your WordPress admin bar, display socially popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click auto-upgrading functionality. Update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin works even on the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is very quickly, consuming very little hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources used to compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort 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 authors, category, publishing date, or post type.
- 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just change red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have published about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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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
Social Metrics Pro – Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with 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).
Product 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.
Plugin Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on 1 domain only. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This enables you to install Social Metrics Pro on all web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
In Conclusion
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 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing campaigns and shows you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to measure your social media marketing results professionally.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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