Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account various 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 reliable ‘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 normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. Research shows that a single post 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 uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter andGooglePlus.
(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 every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
Google’s own social media 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 starting to interact socially on GooglePlus each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines 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. how many tweets and retweets your site has, how influential the person sending tweets is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can influence search engine traffic and rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by site reviewers [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure 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 products, company, or brand on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, spy on your competition, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and be alerted to crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, products, brands, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including market researchers, PR staff, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, professional sales reps, and agencies. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed many affordable tools that facilitate the tracking of a broad range of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands allowing them to react to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
Go here if you want to learn more social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs for tracking social signals and growing your social media influence.
Our Recommended WordPress Plugin Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. Your objective is simple … convert all red squares into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that any user can operate … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ 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”. According to the plugin developers, they noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Easy & Fast To Install
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to change more reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to invest more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to track and monitor social media activity across leading social networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
SocialMetricsPro 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 this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro provides website owners with many features. Below we have listed a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. View updated stats from your WP dashboard, add socially popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrading. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Consumes minimal resources. Reporting is in seconds, consuming very little server resources. The tool also includes the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, category, or post type.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries to 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 simple to use … just convert all the reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that customers have published about Social Metrics Pro:
”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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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Software Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This license option lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on one domain only. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This license option enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on all the web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
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.
The Bottom Line
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 immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing strategy and shows you where 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 dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to improve social media visibility and see more of your keywords getting better rankings on search engines.
For more information, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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