Social interactions and recommendations like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account various 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, 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 full ‘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 a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social media network on the planet. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 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 processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of 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 online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site 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 actively using Google+ every month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, the authority of the person sharing your posts, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search rankings and traffic. These include positive and undesirable 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 other users [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 track and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, identify market opportunities, spy on the competition, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and avert impending crises. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, brands, businesses, or products.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track social media channels like blogging, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion groups, video/photo sharing 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 a cross-section of people including market research, marketing teams, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, agencies, sales teams, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately many service providers have developed tools to facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to track what consumers are saying about your products or brand so you can react to conversations and interact with online users in a timely manner.
We have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that you may want to check out here:
(Can you monitor your social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple, yet highly effective plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social signals and improving your social media presence online.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the system measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your job is simple … turn all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that anyone can follow … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with the highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 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, improving your social media marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, increased traffic and increased revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Here are 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 web site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro installs like every other plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to convert all the red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to apply more effort and where to optimize.
Choose Only Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social media activity across leading social networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg directly from your WP dashboard.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers site owners with a number of great features. Here are some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to use in no time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows updated information from your WP dashboard, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. You can update Social Metrics Pro 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.
- Minimal consumption of resources. Metric reports are generated very quickly, using very little server resources. The tool also includes the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources used to gather data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by category, post type, post authors, or by publishing date.
- Export Data: You can export and plot filtered, sorted data and custom queries 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is simple to use … just convert all the reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have written about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”Our entire marketing strategy relies on social media. Each post on the site has viral potential, but we needed one place to see which social networks are performing the best for us…We went ahead and got the PRO Version of Social Metrics.” Syed Balkhi, Founder of List25 and WPBeginner.com
***
”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
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This license lets you use SocialMetricsPro on 1 web site only. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Edition – This license option allows you to set up SocialMetricsPro on multiple sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing the Social Metrics Pro product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was current when this content was published. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, 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 website owners instant feedback on the success of their social marketing strategy and shows them how and where to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to track your social signals automatically.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
***
***