Social interactions like Facebook likes, +1s on Google+, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account various social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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 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 short, 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 wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social community on the planet. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social networking 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 starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, 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, 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 factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include positive 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 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 media campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, identify market opportunities, avert disasters, measure the impact of campaigns, and spy on your competitors. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific topics, products, businesses, or brands.
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, often carried out by various groups that include marketing professionals, market researchers, PR companies, sales teams, social media marketing agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, many small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many service providers have made available a range of affordable and even free tools that facilitate the monitoring of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to track consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
To learn more about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc, see this article:
(Are you monitoring social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple social monitoring tool for a WordPress-based online business and improving your social media exposure.
Presenting …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make growing your social media influence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s job is simple … convert all reds into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin 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 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can result in higher search engine rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin user login and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to change more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns need you to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally track and monitor social activity from social media networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Digg, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which posts are performing the best on these social networks?
- Which of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many great features to web site owners. Here are some of those:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. View updated stats right on your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click auto-upgrading functionality. Update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Low server resource consumption. Social reports are compiled in seconds, consuming little hosting resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time used to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter the information 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 by publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just change reds into greens!)
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Below are a couple of the testimonials 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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”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
Social Metrics Pro includes a step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Software Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This edition lets you install Social Metrics Pro on one website only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This option enables you to use SocialMetricsPro on unlimited websites that you own. It includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price when this article was written. This may not be the actual price set by the product author when you visit the 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.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account various 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. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you instant feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to outperform your competitors on social media.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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