Social recommendations like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook shares, likes, and comments, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
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. 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 so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to social signals 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 sites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to rank higher in its search engine results.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. Research shows that an average post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter andGoogle+.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
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 Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting socially on Google+ each year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ a URL has amassed, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow 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 to improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, spy on the competition, measure the impact of campaigns, and help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by embittered customers. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
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 marketing professionals, market researchers, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, professional sales reps, social media marketing agencies, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, smaller businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of technology companies have developed affordable tools and solutions to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your products or brand allowing you to react to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely manner.
We have written a detailed article listing a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More information:
(Are you searching for an effective tool that can help you track your social signals?)
In this article, we discuss a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media exposure.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The user’s objective is simple … turn all the red squares into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can follow … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ sites 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 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can can have a dramatic impact on your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below are just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to convert more red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to invest more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Select Only Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and LinkedIn directly from your WP admin area.
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 of my posts are the most popular on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks the social sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides website owners with many great features. Here are some of these features:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated information right on your WordPress dashboard, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click updating. Update Social Metrics Pro in one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal consumption of resources. Reporting is in seconds, using little hosting resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter the information as 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: 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just change red squares into greens!)
Testimonials From Plugin Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments that plugin users have written about Social Metrics Pro:
“Social Metrics Pro is the essential plugin we use to monitor how our content performs on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple, neat and works precisely as you would expect it. When we work with our clients such as T-Mobile, the .Me domain name registry and others, Social Metrics Pro is the plugin we use to create reports as well as keep track on each bit of content to optimize it for future performance.” Ivan Brezak Brkan, Editor of Netokracija.com, TechCrunch EU Contributor
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“Social Metrics Takes WordPress Stats to the Next Level.” Lorraine Ball, Creative Director, Roundpeg
Social Metrics Pro – Useful Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This lets you run Social Metrics Pro on a single site. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This enables you to set up Social Metrics Pro on unlimited sites that you own. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Price details for this product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
In Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, with the increased 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 the importance of social media. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and shows them where and 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 WordPress dashboard.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to track your social signals automatically.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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