Social interactions like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social presence as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of the 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 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 a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites 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 listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. It has been estimated that a single post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ 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 actively using Google+ every week. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search 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 comments, likes, and shares you have, growth rate of likes and shares, 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 Google+ a URL has accrued, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spot new opportunities for engagement, avert crises, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social media 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 market research, online reputation management (ORM) agencies, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and professional sales reps. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately different technology providers have developed many tools that facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict consumer behavior around your products or brand allowing you to react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more info, see this article:
(Do you know how to effectively track your social signals?)
This article explores a simple social tracking plugin for WordPress and improving your social media exposure online.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin that is designed to help users improve their social media presence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your task is to convert all the red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any website owner can operate … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts with the highest number of shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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”. From these tests, they were able to notice 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in better search rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s job is to change more red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Choose Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you monitor social media activity from social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns 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 just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers web site owners with a number of features. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated stats from your WP dashboard, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrading. Update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when a new version is released.
- Low server resource consumption. Reports are generated in seconds, consuming little server resources. Reports also include the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources used to gather data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by publishing date, category, post type, or by post authors.
- 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 really simple to use … just convert all red squares into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials and comments that plugin customers have published about the Social Metrics Pro 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
Product Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Software Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on one web site only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License Edition – This option allows you to install SocialMetricsPro on all sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing details of the SocialMetricsPro plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller 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 Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines now take into account various social signals when determining a site’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 instant feedback on the success of your social marketing campaigns and guides you where to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to avoid wasting resources on over-optimized networks.
For more information, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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