Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media 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.
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. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere 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 real value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social media network on the planet. It has been estimated that a single post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses social data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems to have the most influence on search rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to readers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Twitter and Facebook.
(More people are interacting socially on GooglePlus each month. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 social media giants listed above, there are a number of other sites worth getting to know, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg.
(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 Google and Bing track various social signals, including:
- 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 authority of the person sharing the information, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential 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, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can influence search engine traffic and rankings. These include positive and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [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 media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, assess competitor activity and market share, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, be alerted to impending crises, and spot opportunities for engagement. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific products, topics, businesses, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social signal monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including marketing professionals, digital reputation specialists, market research, social engagement and community staff, sales teams, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, small businesses don’t can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately a number of providers have made available tools and solutions to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to track consumer behavior around your products or brand so you can respond to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a detailed article where we explore several social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. For more details, go here:
(Can you measure your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we look at a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social signals and improving your social media exposure online.
Our Recommended WordPress Product Is …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help users increase their social media presence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s goal is to convert red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure 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 show up amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro 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”. According to the plugin developers, they noticed a 360% improvement in traffic for their top 10 performing sites, 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 marketing campaigns can can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
To learn more about this plugin go here:
Benefits
Below we have listed just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your website:
Ready To Start Using In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to turn all reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social signals so you know where to apply more effort and which ones need to be better optimized.
Track Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro provides a powerful dashboard to centrally track and monitor social media activity from networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, and StumbleUpon directly from your WordPress 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides WP users with a number of great features. Below we have listed some of these features:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access the latest stats from your WordPress dashboard, add socially popular content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click updating. Update SocialMetricsPro in a single click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to be notified via email when new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses minimal resources. Social reports are compiled fast, using little server resources. Report generation also displays the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server memory consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search 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, post authors, publishing date, or by category.
- 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 simple to use … just turn more red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Plugin Customers
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback plugin customers have written about Social Metrics Pro:
”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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”Social Metrics is one of the recipes for Social WordPress. You can integrate it quickly and easily on your WordPress site to view your performance on social networks” Jean-Francois Arseneault, Arseneault Consultation (WordCamp Montreal 2011)
Social Metrics Pro – Tips
A practical, step-by-step guide showing you how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you configure SocialMetricsPro on a single web site. Includes free lifetime updates and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Licensing – This allows you to activate SocialMetricsPro on unlimited domains that you own. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price set by the plugin developer when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Plugin Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install The Product
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google now take into account social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
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 marketing strategy and guides you how to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress dashboard.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to shave years off your social media marketing learning curve.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics For WordPress
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