Social interactions like Facebook likes, comments, and shares, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social media presence 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 social media, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to social signals over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. It has been estimated that a single post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, you should not be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all 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 500 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site 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 socially on Google+ each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three 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?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, how influential the person sharing your URL is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus your site page has amassed, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search engine traffic and rankings. 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 website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, spy on your competitors, identify opportunities for engagement, and be alerted to impending crises. It can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to monitor conversations and activity on social media channels like blogging, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms, message boards, 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 PR companies, marketing professionals, market researchers, sales teams, social engagement and community personnel, and social marketing agencies. Typically, many small businesses do not can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various providers have created many affordable tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify consumer behavior around your brand or products allowing you to respond proactively to conversations and interact with online users in a timely fashion.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More info:
(Can you track your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we review a simple social media tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help you increase your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your objective is to change all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that anyone can follow … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with the highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro 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”. From these tests, they noticed that their top 10 best performing sites saw an improvement of up to 360% more traffic, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing can result in better search rankings, increased traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Ready To Use In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin section and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s job is to turn all the red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to centrally monitor social activity from social media networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social 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 of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed some of those features:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in no time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. View the latest stats right on 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. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Minimal hosting resources consumption. Reporting is in seconds, using minimal hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, category, or post type.
- Export Data: 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just turn more reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have published about the Social Metrics Pro 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
Product Tips
A practical guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you run SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This lets you set up Social Metrics Pro on unlimited websites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing Social Metrics Pro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin 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 price here:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account social signals when determining 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing strategy and guides you how and where to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress admin area.
Get this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to use social signals to get better search rankings.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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