Social interactions like Twitter mentions and retweets, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account various social signals to help determine a website’s 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 web spam team 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 full ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide true value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally 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 active users, Facebook is the largest social community in the world. Research shows that one great 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 processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Google+ and Twitter.
(Number of 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 every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent every day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
Google’s own social networking site 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 interacting on GooglePlus each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that should not be ignored, 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 Pay Attention To?
Search engines like Bing and Google track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a web page has, the authority of the person tweeting, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus your URL has, amount and authority of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search traffic. 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 poor quality by visitors [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social signals 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 what people are saying about your company, products, or brand on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, spy on the competition, identify market opportunities, and avert impending crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, brands, topics, or products.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social media channels like blogs, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms, discussion boards, video/photo sharing websites, and user-generated content (UGC) 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 marketing professionals, market research, PR companies, social marketing agencies, social engagement and community staff, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many providers have made available many tools that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling companies to track what consumers, competitors, supporters, and critics are saying about their products or brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools that you may want to check out here:
(Can you track social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple social media monitoring plugin for WordPress and increasing your social media influence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make improving your social media presence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – SocialMetricsPro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. Your objective is to change more red squares into greens.
(A system that any website owner can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts with highest number of shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity display amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of 2,000+ 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”. 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can result in better search rankings, more web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
Learn more about this plugin here:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Very Little Time.
Social Metrics Pro installs just like every other plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to turn reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you centrally monitor social media activity from networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg directly from your WP admin area.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer 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 on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively monitors social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers website owners with many features. Below we have listed just some:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays the latest stats right on your WP dashboard, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update the plugin in a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when new plugin updates are released.
- Minimal usage of resources. Reports are compiled fast, using minimal hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort, search and filter information as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, publishing date, category, or by post authors.
- Export Data: You can export data to 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 change reds into greens!)
Testimonials From Plugin Customers
Here are just some testimonials and comments plugin users have provided for the Social Metrics Pro 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
A step-by-step, practical guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Social Metrics Pro Plugin Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full refund guarantee.
Product Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This enables you to install Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites License Edition – This license enables you to install SocialMetricsPro on multiple websites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Current pricing for the Social Metrics Pro product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price above was current at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the product developer when you visit the site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing here:
Additional Info
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get 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 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 website owners immediate feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and guides them where to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to make social media marketing measurable.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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