Social recommendations like Facebook shares, likes, and comments, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account various social signals to help determine website ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a perfect ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much importance to the social sphere 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 true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social media sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media community in the world. Research shows that one great post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting on Google+ every week. 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, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, shares, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, how influential the person sending a tweet is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus your web page has amassed, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related signals that can influence search engine rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as relevant as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track and analyze social media marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, brand, or products on social media, spot market opportunities, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, be alerted to disasters, and spy on your competition. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, topics, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, social media 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 groups that include marketing professionals, PR agencies, market research, social engagement and community personnel, professional sales reps, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses do not have the budget to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately different service providers have developed tools to facilitate the tracking of a broad spectrum of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your brand so you can respond to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore several social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more information, go here:
(Are you searching for an effective way to track social signals?)
This article discusses a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress websites and blogs for monitoring social signals and improving your social media exposure.
Our Featured WordPress Product Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media influence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – the tool measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s task is to change all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most display green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of over two thousand websites over a period of 3 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 noticed 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 Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing can dramatically affect your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more right from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Really Easy To Install
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every WordPress plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s objective is to convert more red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns require more effort and which social marketing campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social activity from social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Digg, and Pinterest.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to 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?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks the sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
Social Metrics Pro provides many features to WP users. Below we have listed just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats from your WordPress admin bar, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click auto-update functionality. Update SocialMetricsPro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever new versions are released.
- Low-resource consumption. Reporting is in seconds, consuming little hosting resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter your data 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 category.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export and plot data 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is really simple to use … just change more reds into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have submitted regarding SocialMetricsPro:
”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
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Useful Tips
A practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This edition enables you to run SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Edition – This edition lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on unlimited web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for Social Metrics Pro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest price here:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, 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. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives website owners instant feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and shows them how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to track your social signals automatically.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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