Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook shares, comments, and likes, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines now take into account a range of social signals when determining 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. 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 so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as websites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to for measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion active users, Facebook is the most dominant social network in the world. Research shows that an average post can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if no one is buying your products or services on Facebook, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter orGooglePlus.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next biggest social media site in the world, with over 500 million tweets sent out every single day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide value to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion 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 actively using Google+ each year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(Social media sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a URL has, how influential the person tweeting is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search traffic. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of poor quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze social media in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your results online)
Monitoring social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your services, company, or brand on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, spot opportunities for engagement, spy on the competition, and help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied customers. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific businesses, topics, products, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, the ability to track trends, social conversations, and activity on social media channels like blogging, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Quora, etc., discussion boards, video/photo sharing sites, and user-generated content is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various groups that include PR companies, market research, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, many small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the and actively monitor their online reputation.
Fortunately a number of technology companies have developed many affordable tools that facilitate the tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what is being said online about their brands or products so they can react to conversations and interact with online users in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here for more info:
(Can you measure your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we discuss a simple plugin for WordPress sites for tracking social media signals and growing your social media influence online.
Announcing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin that is designed to make improving your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. Your task is to convert red squares into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that anyone can operate … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts with highest number of shares display green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The plugin developers tested Social Metrics Pro on a network of over two thousand sites 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 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 the plugin developers, focusing on improving your social media marketing campaigns can affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Ready To Start Using In No Time
Social Metrics Pro installs like every WordPress plugin. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your admin login and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to turn all red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you track and monitor social media activity from networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Digg, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon directly from your WP 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 Social Metrics Pro, all of this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro displays updated stats from your WP dashboard, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click upgrading. Update Social Metrics Pro with a single click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also opt to be notified via email when new versions are released.
- Low server resource consumption. The plugin generates reports fast, using little server resources. The tool also displays the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter the information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by post type, category, post authors, or publishing date.
- 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 simple to use … just change all red squares into greens!)
User Feedback
Here are just some testimonials and feedback customers have submitted for 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
Useful Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Support
The plugin is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full refund guarantee.
Product Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This edition enables you to activate SocialMetricsPro on one site only. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This lets you use SocialMetricsPro on all domains that you own. Cost includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: Current pricing for this product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The above reflects the price when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing set by the plugin author when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information here:
Additional Product Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Highly Recommend This
As mentioned earlier, social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking 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 you immediate feedback on the success of your social media marketing strategy and shows you where and how to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to improve social media visibility and see more of your keywords getting ranked on search engines.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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