Social interactions like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook comments, shares, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account social signals when determining a site’s 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. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere 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 tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, 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 when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites, like Google+ or Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are actively using GooglePlus every year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social sites listed above, there are a number of other social sites that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(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 like Bing and Google include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ your site page has, 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. These include positive and negative factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, identify opportunities for engagement, assess competitor activity and mind share, be alerted to disasters, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific topics, products, brands, or businesses.
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 groups that include online reputation management (ORM) companies, marketing professionals, market research, agencies, social engagement and community staff, and sales teams. Typically, smaller 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 many service providers have created many tools that facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your products or brand so you can react to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, go here:
(Are you measuring social signals effectively?)
In this article, we discuss a simple, yet highly effective social tracking plugin for your online business and increasing your social media exposure online.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media presence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – the system measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s job is simple … turn more reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that anyone can operate … turn 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 show up green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of over two thousand sites 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 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 the plugin developers, improving your social marketing can result in better search rankings, increased traffic and increased revenue!)
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Set Up. Ready To Use In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro installs just like every other WordPress plugin. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user account and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to change all the red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know which campaigns need you to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track The Social Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to track and monitor social activity from social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg directly from your WordPress admin area.
SocialMetricsPro 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 SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers many unique features to site owners. Below we have listed a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro displays updated information from your WordPress admin bar, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. Update SocialMetricsPro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses very little server resources. Reporting is fast, consuming little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort, search 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 and plot filtered data and custom queries 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just turn reds into greens!)
Feedback From Customers
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin customers have provided for the SocialMetricsPro 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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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation (WordCamp Montreal 2011)
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Plugin Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This license option allows you to install Social Metrics Pro on 1 web site only. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This license option allows you to configure SocialMetricsPro on all the web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this content was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account social signals when determining a site’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 strategy and shows you how and where to direct your efforts in order to improve your 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 WordPress dashboard.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social campaigns or train your staff to manage your campaigns inhouse.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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