Social recommendations like Facebook comments, shares, and likes, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social media presence as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of aiming for short-term benefits like search ranking placement. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social 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 the social sphere 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 normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the most influential social media community in the world. It has been estimated that one great post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, you should not be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(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 single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus 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 every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a URL has, how influential the person sharing the URL is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ a URL has accrued, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track and analyze your social marketing performance in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, avert impending crises, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spot opportunities for engagement, and assess competitor activity and market share. It can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track social media channels like blogs, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Quora, etc., discussion boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including online reputation specialists, market researchers, marketing professionals, social marketing agencies, social engagement and community staff, and professional sales reps. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different technology companies have developed tools and solutions to facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what is being said online about your products or brand so you can respond to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have created a comprehensive article listing many social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more details, visit this page:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective social media tracking tool for your WordPress-based web presence and growing your social media influence.
Our Recommended WordPress Product Is …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your goal is simple … change more reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that anyone can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ 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”. According to the plugin developers, they were able to notice 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 media marketing can result in higher search rankings, more traffic and more revenue!)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Below 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 website:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your admin user account and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to change all the reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social campaigns require more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally monitor social activity from social media networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn directly from your WP dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the social media sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro provides WP users with a number of features. Here are some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro displays the latest information right on your WordPress dashboard, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click updates. Update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification whenever new versions are released.
- Minimal usage of resources. Reporting is in seconds, using minimal server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server memory consumed when gathering data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, post type, category, or publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot data 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 change red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials and comments plugin users have written 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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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro comes with a practical guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Software Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This enables you to use SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites License – This license lets you use SocialMetricsPro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Price details for the Social Metrics Pro product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the product site and there may be 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.
Download The Product
As mentioned earlier, Google has been elevating the importance given to 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 immediate feedback on the success of their social marketing strategy and guides them how to direct their efforts in order 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 this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to learn how to use social signals to improve your search engine rankings.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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