Social recommendations like +1s on GooglePlus, Facebook shares, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm since late 2010.
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. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 websites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. Research shows that an average post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of 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 single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus 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 socially on GooglePlus each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person sending a tweet is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your site page has, amount of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include positive and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your company’s online visibility on social media, spy on the competition, help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied customers, measure the impact of campaigns, and spot new opportunities for engagement. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific brands, products, topics, or businesses.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of people including marketing teams, digital reputation management companies, market research, social media marketing agencies, sales teams, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately various technology providers have developed tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, enabling you to identify consumer behavior around your brand or products allowing you to react to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely manner.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. To learn more, visit this page:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple, yet effective WordPress plugin for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social 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 premise – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The user’s goal is to change all red squares into greens.
(A system that any user can follow … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ websites 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to the plugin developers, improving your social media marketing can result in better search engine rankings, more web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP admin user section and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s job is to turn all reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally track and monitor social activity from social networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon.
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 of my posts are the most popular?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors the social media sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides WP users with many features. Here are some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to go to work in very little time.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. View updated information from your WordPress admin bar, display socially popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrades. Update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Utilizes minimal resources. The plugin generates reports very quickly, using very little hosting resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post authors, publishing date, or post type.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data 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 very simple to use … just convert all the red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Product Customers
Here are a couple of the testimonials that plugin users have published about SocialMetricsPro:
”Social Metrics is the easiest way to see at a glance which posts have performed well on social networks.” Kevin Muldoon, Founder of WPMods.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
Social Metrics Pro – Useful 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.
Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This lets you run SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Edition – This edition lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on all the sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing details of the SocialMetricsPro plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Plugin
As mentioned earlier, Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them how to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to make social marketing measurable.
For full details, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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