Social interactions like Facebook shares, likes, and comments, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the rise of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account a range of 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, instead of 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 so many things change quickly on social media. 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 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 display higher in its search results.
Social Signals – Which Social Media 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 community on the planet. Research shows that an average post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a ton of sales on your website, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence website rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next 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 tweeting posts that provide value to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social networking site, Google+ naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are starting to interact socially on GooglePlus every month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other social sites that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals that can affect your search engine 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 shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a URL has, how influential the person retweeting your information is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has accrued, number and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 traffic and rankings. These include desirable and negative factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spot new opportunities for engagement, spy on the competition, and avert crises. It can also provide you with vital information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific brands, businesses, products, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various groups that include market research, online reputation management companies, marketing professionals, agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, many small businesses don’t have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various providers have created tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to identify consumer behavior around their products or brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with consumers in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here for more information:
(Do you know how to effectively monitor your social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress-powered websites and blogs for tracking social media signals and increasing your social media exposure.
Announcing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help users increase their social media exposure in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – the tool measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your task is to turn more reds into greens.
(A system that any user can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most are colored green. Posts with low social media activity display 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 their metrics on “green”. From these tests, 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 positively affect your search rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Quick And Easy Installation
Social Metrics Pro is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your job is to change more reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals so you know which campaigns need you to invest more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Select Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you monitor social media activity across leading networks like Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, Digg, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social 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 Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides web site owners with a number of great features. Below we have listed some:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access the latest stats from your WP admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click updates. You can update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to receive email notifications whenever new versions are released.
- Consumes minimal hosting resources. The plugin generates reports very quickly, consuming minimal hosting resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory used to compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search and filter the information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by post type, category, post authors, or publishing date.
- 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 turn all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials customers have published about the Social Metrics Pro plugin:
”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 – Tips
A step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, 100% money-back guarantee.
Plugin Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This license option lets you run SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License Edition – This license lets you run SocialMetricsPro on all sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Pricing for the Social Metrics Pro plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the current price when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download This Product
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 WordPress users instant feedback on the success of their social media marketing strategy and shows them where and how to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP admin area.
Get this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to outperform your competitors on social media.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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