Social interactions and recommendations like Twitter retweets and mentions, Facebook likes, etc. are called social signals.
With the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account social signals to help determine a site’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their social presence 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 the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. 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 websites that provide value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant 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 site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of monthly 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 every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social site naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social signals, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, comments, and shares a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people are following you, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, identify new opportunities for engagement, be alerted to impending crises, assess competitor activity, and measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. It can also provide vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific brands, topics, products, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to track activity on social media channels like blogging, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Medium, etc., message boards, video 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 people including market researchers, PR staff, marketing teams, professional sales reps, agencies, and social engagement and community staff. 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 many providers have developed tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing you to identify what is being said online about your products or brand so you can react to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here for more details:
(Can you monitor your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet highly effective social tracking plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Description Of Plugin
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s task is simple … turn all red squares into greens.
(A system that any user can follow … turn 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 are colored amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ 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”. From these tests, 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in better search engine rankings, increased traffic and more revenue!)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below are just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WP administrator login and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to turn reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Track The Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you monitor social activity from networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social 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 SocialMetricsPro, all this information can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in no time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. Access updated stats from your WordPress admin bar, display social content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click upgrading. Update SocialMetricsPro in a single 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 works the smallest hosting configuration. Reporting is very quickly, using minimal hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, category, or post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just convert more reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials and comments users have published about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
”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
Useful Tips
SocialMetricsPro includes a step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens).
SocialMetricsPro Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you configure Social Metrics Pro on 1 site only. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multiple Sites Licensing – This enables you to activate SocialMetricsPro on all the sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The price of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software seller when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining a website’s 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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing campaigns and guides them how to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to see measurable results.
For more information, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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