Social interactions like Facebook likes, shares, and comments, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking 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, rather than 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 media, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more 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 true value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most influential social network on the planet. It has been estimated that one great post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving droves of customers to your website, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, 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 Google+ or Twitter.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
Google’s own social media site naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the authority of the person sharing your posts, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [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 develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze your social media marketing campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your products, brand, or company on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spot potential market opportunities, spy on the competition, and help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, businesses, brands, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor activity, conversations, and trends on social media channels like blogging, internet forums, wikis, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Medium, etc., discussion groups, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content 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, online reputation management (ORM) agencies, social engagement and community staff, professional sales reps, and agencies. 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 various technology companies have developed affordable tools and solutions to facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to identify consumer behavior around their brands so they can respond proactively to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely fashion.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media measurement tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. See this page to learn more:
(Do you know how to effectively track social signals?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective social tracking tool for WordPress and growing your social media influence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social media 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 measures how each signal is performing and returns either a green or red indicator. Your job is simple … change more 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 show up green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro 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 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, more web traffic and more revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Very Easy To Install
Social Metrics Pro installs like every other plugin. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change more reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know which campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Social Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally monitor social media activity from social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, and Pinterest directly from your WP admin area.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively monitors social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many features to website owners. Here are a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated information right on your WordPress admin bar, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrading. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification when a new version is released.
- Plugin works even on the smallest hosting configuration. Social metrics reports are generated in seconds, consuming little server resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to gather the data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort and filter the data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post type, post authors, or publishing date.
- Export Data: 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 simple to use … just change more reds into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials plugin users have written 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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”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
SocialMetricsPro comes with a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Product Pricing
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you install SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License – This allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on unlimited domains that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Price details for SocialMetricsPro depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details here:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This 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 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 shows you how to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to learn how to use social signals to improve your search rankings.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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