Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook comments, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines are now taking into account various social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their brand on social media 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 own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, 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 a sensible one - “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide true value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search listings.
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 media network on the planet. Research shows that one great 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 Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites, like Google+ and Twitter.
(Number of monthly 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 emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media 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 the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments 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.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, services, or company on social media, spot potential opportunities for engagement, spy on your competition, avert crises, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific products, brands, businesses, or topics.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to monitor trends, social activity, and conversations on social media channels like blogging, forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms, message boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including PR companies, marketing professionals, market research, professional sales reps, social engagement and community staff, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many service providers have created tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a wide spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to track consumer behavior around their brands or products allowing them to react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore several social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More information:
(Are you monitoring your social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress websites and blogs for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media influence.
Announcing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s job is simple … turn all reds into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can operate … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display 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”. 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing can result in higher search rankings, increased traffic and increased revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below are just some of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Use. Ready To Go To Work In Minutes.
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s job is to change all the red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to invest more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you centrally track and monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon directly from your WordPress admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social 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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro provides a number of features to website owners. Below we have listed some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. View the latest stats right on your WP dashboard, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click updates. You can update Social Metrics Pro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin suits even the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is in seconds, using little hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources used to gather and compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, publishing date, post type, or by post authors.
- Export Data: You can export data 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 turn all the reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Below are some of the testimonials and feedback customers have submitted for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”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
Useful Tips
A practical guide on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This option allows you to use SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. It includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This lets you install Social Metrics Pro on all the websites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost to purchase SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software author when you visit the site 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 Product Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines are now taking into account social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and shows them where and how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP admin area.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to avoid wasting resources on over-optimized social campaigns.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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