Social interactions like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account social signals when determining 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 so many things change quickly on social media. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to the social sphere 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 tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to rank higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media network in the world. Research shows that one great post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social 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 rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance 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: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
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 Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are actively using GooglePlus each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track 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 gain insights into what people are saying about your company, products, or brand on social media, spy on your competitors, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, and identify opportunities for engagement. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, brands, products, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to track trends, online conversations, and social activity on social media channels like blogging, forums, social networking sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Medium, etc., message 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, often carried out by a cross-section of groups that include market research, online reputation management (ORM) agencies, marketing professionals, social media marketing agencies, social engagement and community personnel, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately many service providers have developed affordable tools and solutions to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what is being said online about your products or brand so you can respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
Go here if you would like to learn more about social media tracking tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives:
(Are you searching for an effective way to monitor your social signals?)
This article explores a simple plugin for WordPress sites for tracking social media signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s task is simple … turn more red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any user can follow … simply turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts that get shared the most display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro 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”. From these tests, 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, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, more web traffic and more revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below we have listed just some of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Installation Is Easy, Fast & Simple
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to convert more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to track and monitor social media activity from social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, and Pinterest directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro 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 of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WordPress users with many great features. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. View updated information from your WordPress dashboard, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrades. Update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Minimal server resources consumption. Social metrics reports are generated very quickly, consuming very little hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources used to gather and compile the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort and filter data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post authors, category, post type, or publishing date.
- Export Data: You can export and plot data 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just change all reds into greens!)
Feedback From Product Customers
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have written about SocialMetricsPro:
”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
Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Software Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This enables you to set up SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This license option lets you activate Social Metrics Pro on unlimited web sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the SocialMetricsPro plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional 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 media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account various 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and shows you how to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to track your social signals automatically.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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