Social recommendations like Facebook shares, +1s on GooglePlus, 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 brand on social media as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of 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 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 a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. It has been estimated that one great post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site 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 week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the number of people sharing your URL, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ a URL has amassed, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search traffic and rankings. These include positive and undesirable 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 business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, avert impending crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, identify opportunities for engagement, and assess competitor activity. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific brands, topics, businesses, or products.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to monitor social media channels like blogs, internet forums, social networking platforms, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Quora, 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, typically carried out by various groups that include digital reputation management (ORM) agencies, marketing professionals, market research, social media marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many technology companies have developed many affordable tools to facilitate the monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, allowing companies to track what is being said online about their brands or products allowing them to react to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns here:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple WordPress plugin for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users grow their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the tool measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your objective is simple … change red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that anyone can operate … 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 show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of over two thousand websites 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 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 marketing campaigns can result in better search engine rankings, more web traffic and more revenue!)
Learn more about this plugin here:
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Fast And Easy To Install And Implement. Ready To Go To Work In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to turn all reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social campaigns require more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Select Only Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social activity across leading networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social media 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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WP users with a number of features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to use in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest stats right on your WordPress admin bar, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email when new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal server resources use. Social reports are generated fast, using very little hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources used to gather and compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, category, post type, or by publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: 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 very simple to use … just convert all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials and comments users have published about Social Metrics Pro:
”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
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro includes a practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and users get lifetime software upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Plugin Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This allows you to run Social Metrics Pro on 1 site only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This license enables you to set up Social Metrics Pro on unlimited websites that you own. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing the SocialMetricsPro product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price shown above was current at the time this content was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing:
Additional Plugin Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines are now taking into account social signals when determining website ranking.
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 immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and shows you 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.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social marketing.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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