Social interactions like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook shares, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social media 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 social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals 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 true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. It has been estimated that one great post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses 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.
(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 single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sharing your posts, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus a URL has, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers, spot opportunities for engagement, measure the impact of campaigns, and assess competitor activity and market share. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, brands, products, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, 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 research, online reputation management companies, marketing professionals, professional sales reps, social engagement and community staff, and social media marketing agencies. 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 digital reputation.
Fortunately a number of providers have made available affordable tools to facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to track consumer behavior around your products or brand so you can respond to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
(Are you tracking your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we review a simple WordPress plugin for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media presence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the system tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your job is simple … change all the red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with the highest number of shares are colored 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 their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, 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, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can dramatically can have a positive effect on your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Learn more about this plugin here:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Ready To Use In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro installs just like any plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s job is to convert more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to monitor social activity from networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon directly from your WordPress dashboard.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers WordPress users with many unique features. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro shows updated information from your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click auto-update functionality. Update the plugin in a single 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.
- Low-resource consumption. The plugin can generate social metrics reports fast, using little server resources. The tool also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post type, publishing date, or by post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just convert all reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are a couple of the testimonials and feedback that plugin users have provided for 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
Social Metrics Pro – Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro 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 License – This enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on 1 web site only. It includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This enables you to run Social Metrics Pro on all web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Current pricing for Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product seller when you visit the plugin 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 Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Product
As mentioned earlier, Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress 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 would like to save money on outsourcing your social campaigns or train your staff to manage your campaigns in-house.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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