Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook likes, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages website owners 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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. 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 real value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social media network on the planet. It has been estimated that one great post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over 500 million 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 number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus naturally carries great authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on Google+ each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your web page has, how influential the person sending tweets is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search engine rankings and traffic. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as backlinks from authority sites (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand, services, or company on social media, avert crises, spot opportunities for engagement, measure the impact of campaigns, and spy on your competition. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific topics, businesses, brands, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor activity on social media channels like blogs, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion groups, video/photo sharing websites, and user-generated content is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including market researchers, marketing professionals, digital reputation specialists, sales teams, social media marketing agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately different providers have created affordable tools and solutions that facilitate the monitoring of a broad range of social media channels, enabling companies to identify consumer behavior around their brands so they can 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 checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
(Are you monitoring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs for monitoring social signals and improving your social media presence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the tool tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your goal is simple … change all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts that get shared the most display green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 everything “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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in higher search rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your administrator area and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to change all the red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals From Social Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally monitor social activity from networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, Pinterest, Digg, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social media networks work best for my site?
- Which social campaigns 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 this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors the social sites that you care most about!)
Social Metrics Pro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides WP users with many features. Below we have listed just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows updated information from your WordPress admin bar, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrading. You can update Social Metrics Pro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new versions are released.
- Minimal server resources consumption. Reports are generated in seconds, consuming little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to gather data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, post authors, or by category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered data and custom queries to 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just convert all red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Plugin Users
Below are just some testimonials and comments that customers have provided for the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”Social Metrics is the easiest way to see at a glance which posts have performed well on social networks.” Kevin Muldoon, Founder of WPMods.com
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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
Social Metrics Pro Plugin – Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This license option lets you run SocialMetricsPro on a single website. Cost includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License Edition – This edition lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on unlimited websites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was correct when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
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.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account various social signals when determining 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 media marketing strategy and shows you how to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social media campaigns.
For more information, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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