Social interactions like +1s on Google+, Facebook comments, shares, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to 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, rather than aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social community in the world. It has been estimated that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your website, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google processes social 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.
(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 the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person sharing the posts, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ a site page has accrued, amount of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, services, or company on social media, spy on your competitors, be alerted to disasters, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and identify market opportunities. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, products, brands, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to track social media channels like blogging, internet forums, social networking sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion groups, video 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 people including marketing teams, online reputation specialists, market research, social engagement and community staff, sales teams, and agencies. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately different providers have developed many tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a broad spectrum of social media channels, enabling 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 on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. To learn more about this go here:
(Can you monitor social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective WordPress plugin for tracking social signals and growing your social media influence online.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media exposure uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the tool tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s job is to turn all the red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any website owner can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ websites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping their metrics on “green”. From these tests, they noticed 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can dramatically affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your admin account and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to convert all the reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social campaigns require investing more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to track and monitor social activity from networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
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 of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides web site owners with many features. Below we have listed just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access the latest information from your WordPress admin bar, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrades. You can update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications whenever new versions are released.
- Plugin suits even the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is in seconds, using little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to 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, category, post type, or post authors.
- 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just turn red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have submitted 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
Social Metrics Pro Plugin – Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Plugin Support
The plugin is well-supported, and users get lifetime software upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Software Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on a single web site. It includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This enables you to set up Social Metrics Pro on multiple web sites that you own. It includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase the SocialMetricsPro software depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was correct when this review was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
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.
Get This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account social signals to help determine website 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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and guides them how and where to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to avoid wasting resources on over-optimized social campaigns.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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