Social recommendations like Facebook shares, likes, and comments, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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 signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere over other aspects of their search algorithm. In summary, Google’s strategy is to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
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 most dominant social community in the world. Research shows that a single post on Facebook 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 Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that 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 second biggest 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 on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site naturally carries a significant degree of 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 year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, how influential the person retweeting your posts is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, number and growth rate 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 factors that can indirectly influence search traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only develop your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or services on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, spy on your competitors, and spot market opportunities. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific businesses, brands, products, 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 marketing teams, market research, PR staff, sales teams, social engagement and community staff, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of technology companies have developed a range of tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your brand so you can respond to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
To learn more about social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth knowing about, see this article:
(Are you monitoring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we review a simple social monitoring plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media exposure.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media exposure uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – the system tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your goal is simple … change all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that anyone can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with the highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand websites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping everything “green”. From these tests, they noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to the plugin developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can dramatically affect your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Installation Is Easy
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload a zip folder containing the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin login and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to convert reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social activity across leading social networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Digg directly from your WP admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social 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 of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many great features to WP users. Below we have listed just some of those:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro displays updated information from your WordPress dashboard, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using widgets.
- 1-click updates. Update the plugin with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Plugin uses minimal server resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports in seconds, using little server resources. The tool also displays the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, category, post authors, or publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered 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 very simple to use … just convert reds into greens!)
Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have published about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”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
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Useful Tips
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) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime software updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This option allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on 1 site only. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This license allows you to use SocialMetricsPro on multiple domains that you own. Price includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product author when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account a range of social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. 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 strategy and guides them how and where to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to improve social visibility and see more of your keywords getting ranked on search engines.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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