Social recommendations like Facebook likes, shares, and comments, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account various social signals when determining website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social presence 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 web spam team 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 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 value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media network on the planet. It has been estimated 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 the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, 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.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest 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 online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social networking site, Google+ naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are starting to interact socially on Google+ every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social signals, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a site has, the number of people sharing your URL, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has amassed, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your services, company, or brand on social media, spy on the competition, take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by embittered customers, spot opportunities for engagement, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. It can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to track trends, online conversations, and social activity on social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including PR companies, market researchers, marketing teams, social marketing agencies, social engagement and community staff, and sales teams. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately various providers have made available affordable tools to facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify what consumers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about your brand or products allowing you to react to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely manner.
Go here to learn more about social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc:
(Are you measuring social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple, yet effective WordPress plugin for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence online.
Our Recommended WordPress Plugin …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to help you grow your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s objective is simple … change reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any website owner can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin 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 their metrics on “green”. From these tests, 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can can have a significant effect on your search rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Installation Is Easy And Simple
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every plugin. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to convert all the red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to apply more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social media activity from social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn directly from your WP dashboard.
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 this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many features to WordPress users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. SocialMetricsPro shows updated stats from your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrades. You can update Social Metrics Pro in one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Uses very little resources. Reporting is fast, using minimal server resources. Reports also include the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather and compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search 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, publishing date, or post authors.
- Export Data: 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 Excel or the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just turn reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials customers have submitted regarding Social Metrics Pro:
”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
Plugin Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This option lets you install SocialMetricsPro on a single website. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License Edition – This edition enables you to install Social Metrics Pro on multiple domains that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost of purchasing SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software sells for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
In Conclusion
As mentioned earlier, with the rise of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account social signals when determining 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and shows 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 directly from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to reduce your social media marketing learning curve.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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