Social interactions like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook shares, likes, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account a range of social signals when determining a website’s 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 the 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 reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more 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 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 Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social media community 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 site, you should not be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites, like GooglePlus or Twitter.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every single 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 number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every 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 interacting on GooglePlus each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has amassed, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only 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 marketing can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your brand, company, or services on social media, be alerted to disasters, identify opportunities for engagement, assess competitor activity and market share, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, products, brands, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track social media channels like blogs, forums, social networking platforms, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including digital reputation management companies, market researchers, marketing professionals, agencies, sales teams, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many providers have developed many affordable tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a wide range of social media channels, enabling you to identify consumer behavior around your brand allowing you to react to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
(Can you track social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple plugin for WordPress websites and blogs for tracking social signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Our Recommended WordPress Product Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make growing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the tool measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s goal is to change all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any user can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares display 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”. 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 the plugin developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can result in better search rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user account and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to change all the red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social marketing campaigns require more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to track and monitor social activity across leading networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Digg directly from your WP admin area.
SocialMetricsPro 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers WordPress users with many features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. View the latest information right on your WP dashboard, display popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using 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 opt to be notified via email when a new version is released.
- Utilizes minimal resources. Social reports are generated very quickly, consuming very little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter 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 by category.
- Export Data: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries to 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 really simple to use … just convert all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
“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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”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
Plugin Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a step-by-step, practical guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Product Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, full refund guarantee.
Software Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This edition lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on 1 site only. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This enables you to install SocialMetricsPro on multiple web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing details of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the rising importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines are now taking into account a range of social signals when determining a site’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives users immediate feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them where to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to measure your social marketing results professionally.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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