Social recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account 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, instead of 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 assessing social media signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘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 sites that provide real value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. It has been estimated that one great post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google processes data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites, like GooglePlus or Twitter.
(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 has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social 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 Google+ every week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social signals, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, 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 growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search engine traffic and rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as important as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social media campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your products, company, or brand on social media, identify market opportunities, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by online users, measure the impact of campaigns, and spy on your competition. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, topics, products, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social signal 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 digital reputation management (ORM) agencies, marketing teams, market researchers, sales teams, social engagement and community staff, and agencies. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many service providers have created affordable tools and solutions that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to identify and even predict what is being said online about their products or brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in a timely manner.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more information, go here:
(Are you looking for an effective tool to help you measure your social signals?)
In this article, we review a simple plugin for WordPress sites for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence online.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to make improving your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your objective is to convert all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any user can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts that get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand sites over a period of 3 months. During this period, all they focused on was turning the “reds” to “greens” and then keeping everything “green”. From these tests, 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can positively impact your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Fast And Simple To Install And Use. Be Up And Running In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your administrator login and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s task is to convert more reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to invest more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you centrally monitor social media activity from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg directly from your WP admin area.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer 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 can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WP users with many features. Below we have listed some of those:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. View updated information right on your WordPress dashboard, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click upgrading. You can update Social Metrics Pro with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses minimal resources. Reporting is very quickly, consuming little server resources. The tool also includes the amount of time used to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter the information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, post type, category, or by publishing date.
- 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 really simple to use … just change all reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials and comments plugin users have published about SocialMetricsPro:
”As with any cool plugin, it solves a very simple problem – how to view how well your WordPress posts are being promoted.” Adam Small, Marketing Tech Blog
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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation
Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro includes a practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Plugin Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full refund guarantee.
Product Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on one domain only. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Edition – This lets you use SocialMetricsPro on unlimited sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the Social Metrics Pro software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and guides you how to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
We recommend Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to see measurable results.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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