Social interactions like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, +1s on Google+, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account social signals to help determine a site’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 social media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to the social sphere 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 true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to rank higher in its search engine.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when 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 one great post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, you should not 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, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest 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 emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on Google+ every month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social sites listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, 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 factors that can influence search rankings. 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 of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to improve your results online)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, avert impending crises, assess competitor activity, and spot potential opportunities for engagement. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific brands, businesses, products, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, social media monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various groups that include online reputation management (ORM) companies, marketing teams, market research, agencies, social engagement and community staff, and professional sales reps. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately many technology companies have developed a range of affordable and even free tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a broad spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands or products so they can respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. For more details, visit this page:
(Are you tracking social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple social tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media presence online.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media presence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s goal is to change more reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any website owner can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro 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 their metrics on “green”. From these tests, they noticed 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can significantly affect your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s job is to change more reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know which campaigns need you to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Choose Only Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social activity across leading networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Digg.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides website owners with many great features. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access updated information right on your WordPress dashboard, display social content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update Social Metrics Pro with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin suits even the smallest hosting. Social metrics reports are generated fast, consuming little hosting resources. Reports also include the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to gather the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, category, publishing date, or post type.
- 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 really simple to use … just turn more red squares into greens!)
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have submitted for SocialMetricsPro:
”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
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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
SocialMetricsPro includes a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Software Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This edition lets you activate Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on all the sites that you own. It includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost to purchase SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the plugin site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
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.
Get This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you instant feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you where and how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social media campaigns or train your staff to manage your campaigns inhouse.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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