Social recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google are now taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their brand on social media 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 assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a perfect ‘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 to “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 naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social community on the planet. Research shows that an average post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on website 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 each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
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 starting to interact socially on GooglePlus each week. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other sites worth getting to know, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people are following you, amount of adds and shares, 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 signals that can indirectly influence search engine traffic. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [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 grow 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 business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your brand, company, or services on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on your competition, identify opportunities for engagement, and avert impending crises. It can also provide valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, topics, products, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media monitoring 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 researchers, PR companies, agencies, social engagement and community personnel, and sales teams. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many service providers have created tools to facilitate the tracking of a broad spectrum of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can react to conversations and interact with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article on social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Learn more here:
(Are you looking for an effective tool to help you measure social signals?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective social tracking plugin for your WordPress-based web presence and increasing your social media influence online.
Our Featured WordPress Plugin …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help you increase your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. The user’s objective is to change all the reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can operate … turn all the 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 show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber and red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can result in better search rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here we have listed just some of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WP admin login and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change all the reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which social marketing campaigns require investing more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro allows you to track and monitor social activity from networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Digg directly from your WordPress admin area.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media 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 this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides a number of features to WP users. Below we have listed a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows the latest stats from your WordPress admin bar, add popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click updates. You can update SocialMetricsPro with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications whenever a new version is released.
- Uses minimal hosting resources. Reporting is in seconds, using minimal hosting resources. Reports also display the amount of time used to retrieve information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter the data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post authors, publishing date, post type, or category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot filtered data and custom queries in 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just convert red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have submitted regarding 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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”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 (WordCamp Montreal 2011)
Useful Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide showing you how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This license enables you to install SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This enables you to install SocialMetricsPro on all the web sites that you own. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The price of Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the price when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product website and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get The Product
As mentioned earlier, with the rising importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account a range of social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore how important social media is to their online success. Social Metrics Pro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives you instant feedback on the success of your social media marketing strategy and guides you where and how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
Get SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to outperform your competitors on social media.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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