Social recommendations like Facebook comments, shares, and likes, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social 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 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 perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 websites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media community in the world. It has been estimated that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining 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 Google+ and Twitter.
(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 amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can 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 shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, identify market opportunities, help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied customers, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, products, brands, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to monitor social media channels like blogging, internet forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms, message boards, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content (UGC) 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 marketing teams, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, market researchers, professional sales reps, social media marketing agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various service providers have developed tools that facilitate the active tracking of a wide range of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict consumer behavior around your brand or products so you can respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely manner.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. See this page for more information:
(Are you measuring social signals effectively?)
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs for monitoring social signals and growing your social media influence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media presence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s task is simple … turn all red squares into greens.
(A system that anyone can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most 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 2,000+ sites over a period of three 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 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can positively can have a significant effect on your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Be Up And Running In No Time
Social Metrics Pro installs like every plugin. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin area and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s goal is to turn more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social campaigns need more effort and where to optimize.
Choose Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to track and monitor social activity across leading networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Digg, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon directly from your WordPress dashboard.
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 of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides WordPress users with many features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest stats right on your WP dashboard, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrades. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal use of server resources. Reporting is in seconds, consuming very little server resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources used to gather the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro 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 post type, publishing date, post authors, or by category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered data and custom queries in 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 very simple to use … just turn more reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials users have published about the Social Metrics Pro 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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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Product Tips
A practical, step-by-step guide on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Support
The software is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Plugin Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This lets you use Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This license enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on all web sites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing for the SocialMetricsPro plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the software author when you visit the plugin site 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 The Product
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you how and where to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro 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 SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to measure your social media marketing results professionally.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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