Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook comments, +1s on Google+, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
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 reliable ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine results.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media community in the world. It has been estimated that one great post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online 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 day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
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 Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person retweeting your posts is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a URL has, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social media campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, products, or company on social media, assess competitor activity, avert disasters, identify market opportunities, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific products, topics, brands, 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 a cross-section of people including marketing teams, digital reputation management companies, market researchers, social media marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have created affordable tools and solutions that facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to track consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can react to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor your social signals?)
In this article, we look at a simple WordPress plugin for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The user’s goal is simple … convert red squares into greens.
(A system that anyone can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts with the highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of over two thousand websites 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can dramatically can have a dramatic impact on your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your admin user section and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to change all red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns require investing more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to track and monitor social activity from networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
Social Metrics Pro 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 on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro offers website owners with a number of features. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest information right on your WordPress dashboard, add social content to your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification when new versions are released.
- Minimal hosting resources use. Social reports are generated fast, using little hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by publishing date, post type, post authors, or category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data to 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 very simple to use … just turn all the reds into greens!)
Feedback From Customers
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have submitted regarding SocialMetricsPro:
“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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“Social Metrics Takes WordPress Stats to the Next Level.” Lorraine Ball, Creative Director, Roundpeg
Useful Tips
A practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This enables you to run Social Metrics Pro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This allows you to set up Social Metrics Pro on all sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing details of this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing when this content was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking into account various social signals when determining a site’s ranking.
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 WordPress users immediate feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to make social media marketing campaigns work for you.
For more information, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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