Social interactions like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing now take into account a range of social signals when determining a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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 own web spam team 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 full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 sites that provide real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to rank higher in its search listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media 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 network on the planet. Research shows that an average post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites, like Google+ and Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ 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 interacting socially on Google+ every 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.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sharing the URL, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people are following you, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, spot market opportunities, measure the impact of campaigns, take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific businesses, topics, products, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, social media signal monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including digital reputation management (ORM) companies, market researchers, marketing teams, social engagement and community personnel, sales teams, and social marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately many service providers have developed affordable tools to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what is being said online about your brand or products allowing you to respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article listing many social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. More info:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor social signals?)
This article discusses a simple plugin for WordPress users for tracking social media signals and increasing your social media exposure online.
Let’s Review …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the plugin measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your job is simple … convert more red squares into greens.
(A system that any user 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 get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, increased web traffic and more revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Use In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro installs just like any WP plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to turn reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to apply more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you centrally monitor social activity from social networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Pinterest.
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 of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro provides a number of great features to web site owners. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access the latest stats from your WP dashboard, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click auto-updating functionality. Update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email when new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal server resources consumption. Metric reports are generated in seconds, consuming very little hosting resources. The tool also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort and filter the information 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 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just convert all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials plugin users have provided for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”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 – Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Plugin Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This lets you run Social Metrics Pro on one web site only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This enables you to install Social Metrics Pro on unlimited web sites that you own. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of the SocialMetricsPro product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product is selling for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing here:
Additional Product Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining website ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. 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 guides you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
We recommend this plugin 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: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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