Social recommendations like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook likes, comments, and 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 website owners to build their social media presence as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of 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 social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘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 websites that provide value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Media Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. It has been estimated that an average post 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 the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every single day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social media site naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus each month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people are following you, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search traffic and rankings. These include desirable and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, products, or company on social media, spot new opportunities for engagement, spy on your competitors, avert crises, and measure the impact of campaigns. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, products, brands, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track trends, volume and sentiments of social conversations, and social activity on social media 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 market researchers, digital reputation specialists, marketing teams, social marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many service providers have developed a range of affordable and even free tools to facilitate the monitoring of a wide range of social media channels, allowing companies to track consumer behavior around their brands or products allowing them to respond to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
(Are you searching for an effective way to measure your social signals?)
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to make increasing your social media influence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s job is to convert all the reds into greens.
(A system that any user can follow … simply 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 are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ websites 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in higher search rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
More info:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Implement. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Simply upload it to your Plugins folder via your admin area and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to change more red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
SocialMetricsPro 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 on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro provides site owners with a number of great features. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Social Metrics Pro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest information from your WP admin bar, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click updating. You can update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever a new version is released.
- Plugin suits even the smallest hosting. The plugin can generate reports in seconds, consuming very little server resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by publishing date, post authors, post type, or category.
- 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just turn all the reds into greens!)
Testimonials From Product Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin customers have written about SocialMetricsPro:
“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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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
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.
Product 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 refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This allows you to use SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This enables you to use Social Metrics Pro on multiple web sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the product developer when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account a range of social signals to help determine website 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 website owners immediate feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and guides them how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to improve social visibility and see more of your keywords getting ranked on search engines.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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