Social recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook likes, comments, and shares, 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. Google’s own head of its web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social media, as social trends and relationships tend to change too quickly to fully map out. Without a full ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 real value tend to develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signals – Which Social Sites Matter?
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 media community in the world. Research shows that a single post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your website, 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 indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all 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 600 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google+
Google’s own social media site naturally carries a significant degree of 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 each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your 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, shares, and comments you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus a web page has, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social media in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to find insights into your brand’s online visibility on social media, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, identify potential market opportunities, spy on your competitors, and help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by disgruntled customers. Additionally, monitoring social media can also provide valuable data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific businesses, products, topics, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social media channels like blogging, internet forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., message boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including marketing teams, market researchers, digital reputation specialists, social media marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community staff. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the and actively monitor their digital reputation.
Fortunately many providers have developed affordable tools that facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to identify consumer behavior around your brand so you can respond proactively to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring tools that you may want to check out. Go here for more information:
(Do you know how to effectively measure social signals?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress-driven websites and blogs for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence online.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to help you grow your social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The site owner’s task is to convert all reds into greens.
(A system that anyone can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro on a network of 2,000+ sites over a period of 3 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 the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can affect your search engine rankings, web traffic and revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using Social Metrics Pro
Below are just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Quick And Simple To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In No Time.
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file that contains the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your WordPress admin user account and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to change all red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals so you know which campaigns need you to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Track Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally monitor social media activity across leading networks like Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn.
Social Metrics Pro 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 can be accessed with just one click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks the social sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
Social Metrics Pro offers a number of features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro displays the latest stats from your WP dashboard, display socially popular content on your sidebar or anywhere on your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click upgrades. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when a new version is released.
- Minimal usage of resources. Reports are compiled fast, consuming very little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server memory used to compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro lets you sort and filter 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, publishing date, or post authors.
- Export Data: You can export and plot filtered 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is really simple to use … just convert all the red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments customers have provided for the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
“Social Metrics Pro is the essential plugin we use to monitor how our content performs on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple, neat and works precisely as you would expect it. When we work with our clients such as T-Mobile, the .Me domain name registry and others, Social Metrics Pro is the plugin we use to create reports as well as keep track on each bit of content to optimize it for future performance.” Ivan Brezak Brkan, Editor of Netokracija.com, TechCrunch EU Contributor
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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
SocialMetricsPro Plugin – Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide showing you how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
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.
Software Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This enables you to activate Social Metrics Pro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License Edition – This edition allows you to set up SocialMetricsPro on all the websites that you own. It includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase the SocialMetricsPro software can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product retails for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software author when you visit the product site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details here:
Additional Product Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Get The Product
As mentioned earlier, with the rising importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account a range of social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. 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 media marketing campaigns and shows them where to direct their efforts in order to improve their results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to outperform your competitors on social media.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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