Social interactions like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook shares, comments, and likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account a range of social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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 perfect ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine results.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly 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 it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your site, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites, like GooglePlus and Twitter.
(Number of 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 day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
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 interacting on GooglePlus each year. 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, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the authority of the person sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your web page has, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals 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 of low quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track and analyze social marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, assess competitor activity and market share, identify opportunities for engagement, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied users, and measure the impact of campaigns. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific topics, brands, products, or businesses.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to track conversations and social activity on social media channels like blogging, internet forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Medium, etc., discussion groups, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) 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 groups that include marketing teams, market researchers, PR staff, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses do not can’t afford to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately different technology companies have developed a range of tools that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify consumer behavior around your products or brand allowing you to react to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
If you want to learn more about social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about, refer to this article:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor social signals?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social signals and increasing your social media exposure online.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s goal is simple … change all red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can follow … just turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that receive the most shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro 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 noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 410% more keywords ranked in the first page of Google and their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to the plugin developers, improving your social marketing can positively can have a dramatic impact on your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Learn more about the plugin here:
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 WP Dashboard on your web site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Minutes.
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change more red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to apply more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you centrally monitor social media activity across leading social networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn.
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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly monitors the social media sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro provides many great features to WordPress users. Below we have listed some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access the latest information right on your WP admin bar, add social content to your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click auto-updating functionality. Update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Utilizes very little resources. The plugin generates reports in seconds, using minimal server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, post authors, publishing date, or by category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered, sorted data and custom queries in 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is very simple to use … just change more red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials and feedback that users have provided for Social Metrics Pro:
”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
Plugin Tips
A step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Plugin Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This license option lets you set up SocialMetricsPro on one site only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This allows you to install SocialMetricsPro on all the web sites that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of the Social Metrics Pro software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price here:
Additional Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
As mentioned earlier, with the rise of social 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 how important social media is to their online success. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced 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 shorten your path to success with social marketing.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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