Social recommendations like Facebook shares, likes, and comments, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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 web spam team 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 too much 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 value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media network on the planet. Research shows that a single post 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 the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence 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 day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
Google’s own social site naturally carries great 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 Google+ each month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites that provide important social signals, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track a number of social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ your site page has amassed, authority of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number 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 factors that can influence search traffic and rankings. These include positive and negative 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 not only important to find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, be alerted to disasters, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on your competitors, and spot new market opportunities. It can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, topics, brands, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to monitor activity on social media channels like blogs, forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion boards, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by a cross-section of people including marketing professionals, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, market researchers, professional sales reps, agencies, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed many tools to facilitate the active tracking of a wide range of social media channels, allowing companies to identify consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. For more details, go here:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor social signals?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective social monitoring tool for WordPress and growing your social media influence online.
Our Recommended WordPress Product Is …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help you improve your social media presence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s objective is simple … turn all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that anyone can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with the highest number of shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand 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”. According to the plugin developers, 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, more traffic and an increase in revenue!)
More info:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Ready To Use In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro installs like every WordPress plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your admin account and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to convert all the reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Track The Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social media activity from networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and Digg directly from your WordPress admin area.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social 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?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors the social media sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides a number of great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- 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 built-in and external widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows updated stats from your WP admin bar, display socially popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrading. Update the plugin with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when a new version is released.
- Plugin works even on the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is fast, consuming little server resources. The tool also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, post authors, category, or by publishing date.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered, sorted data and custom queries in 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just change reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have published about the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
“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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”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 – Tips
SocialMetricsPro includes a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This lets you configure Social Metrics Pro on 1 domain only. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This license lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on unlimited websites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Price details for Social Metrics Pro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
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 you instant feedback on the success of your social media marketing strategy and shows you where to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to shorten your path to success with social media marketing.
For more information, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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