Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social 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 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 full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more 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 websites that provide value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social network in the world. It has been estimated that an average post on Facebook can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other 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 600 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 readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social networking site naturally carries a significant degree of 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 year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can 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 shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential 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, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search rankings and traffic. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your company, services, or brand on social media, spy on your competitors, identify market opportunities, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and avert crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, products, brands, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to track social media channels like blogs, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Quora, etc., discussion boards, video/photo sharing websites, 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 marketing professionals, market research, digital reputation management (ORM) companies, social engagement and community staff, social marketing agencies, and professional sales reps. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay social media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately many technology providers have developed tools and solutions that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
(Are you tracking your social signals effectively?)
This article discusses a simple, yet highly effective social media monitoring plugin for a WordPress-based online presence and increasing your social media presence.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help users improve their social media exposure in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s goal is to turn red squares into greens.
(A system that anyone can follow … turn all the 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 display amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin 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 their metrics on “green”. According to the plugin developers, they were able to notice 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social marketing can positively can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Easy Installation
Social Metrics Pro installs like any plugin. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to convert more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally track and monitor social media activity from social networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Digg directly from your WP dashboard.
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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro offers site owners with many unique features. Below we have listed some of those:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats from your WP dashboard, display popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification when new versions are released.
- Plugin uses minimal resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports fast, consuming very little server resources. The tool also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, category, publishing date, or by post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries 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 very simple to use … just convert all red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Below are just some testimonials and comments users have written 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
Plugin Tips
A practical, step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Product Licensing Cost
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This option allows you to set up SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Edition – This allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on all the sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Price details for the SocialMetricsPro plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the pricing when this content was published. This may not be the actual price set by the software seller when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
As mentioned earlier, Google has been tracking 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 marketing campaigns and guides them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to make social media marketing measurable.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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