Social interactions like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, shares, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise 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, instead of 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 assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. 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 short, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide real value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social media network on the planet. It has been estimated that an average post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other 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 600 million 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 readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social site, Google+ naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on Google+ every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include the following:
- 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, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, 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 links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [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 track, measure and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, identify potential market opportunities, spy on your competition, and take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied customers. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific topics, products, brands, or businesses.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to monitor social media channels like blogs, internet forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms, discussion groups, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various groups that include marketing teams, digital reputation specialists, market research, professional sales reps, social marketing agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different technology providers have developed tools and solutions that facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your products or brand so you can respond proactively to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article listing many social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here for more information:
(Do you know how to effectively measure social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple social monitoring plugin for your online business and growing your social media influence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media influence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your objective is simple … convert all reds into greens.
(A system that any website owner can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand 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 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 media marketing campaigns can can have a significant effect on your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Start Using In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s job is to convert all red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social media activity across leading networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Pinterest, 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many features to website owners. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. View updated information right on your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. Update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal use of resources. The plugin can generate reports very quickly, using little hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server memory consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort, search and filter data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, category, post authors, or publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered, sorted 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just turn all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that customers have provided for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”Our entire marketing strategy relies on social media. Each post on the site has viral potential, but we needed one place to see which social networks are performing the best for us…We went ahead and got the PRO Version of Social Metrics.” Syed Balkhi, Founder of List25 and WPBeginner.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
SocialMetricsPro – Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a step-by-step, practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Software Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – 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 License – This enables you to configure SocialMetricsPro on multiple domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the rise of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account various social signals to help determine a website’s 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 website owners instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them where to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to track your social signals automatically.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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