Social recommendations like Facebook likes, shares, and comments, Twitter retweets and mentions, etc. are called social signals.
With the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account a range of social signals to help determine a website’s ranking.
Note: Google encourages businesses 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. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign too much 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 websites that provide true value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine.
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 active users, Facebook is the most dominant social community in the world. Research shows 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, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence search engine 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 importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
Google’s own social media 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 socially on GooglePlus every month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites that provide important social metrics, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that can affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines track various social signals, including:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, likes, and comments you have, growth rate of likes and shares, 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 people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Digg, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search 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 irrelevant by visitors [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 campaigns in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media to help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to find insights into what people are saying about your products, company, or brand on social media, spy on your competitors, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied users, measure the impact of campaigns, and identify market opportunities. It can also provide valuable information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific topics, businesses, brands, or products.
As a business intelligence tool, 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 researchers, marketing teams, PR companies, professional sales reps, social engagement and community staff, and agencies. Typically, many small businesses do not have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different technology companies have developed a range of tools to facilitate the active tracking of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what is being said online about their brands so they can respond to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have created a comprehensive article listing many social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here for more info:
(Do you know how to effectively measure your social signals?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple social tracking tool for a WordPress-based web presence and growing your social media influence online.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics For WordPress
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media presence online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. Your task is to convert all red squares into greens.
(A standard operating procedure that any website owner can follow … turn 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 developers of SocialMetricsPro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand websites over a period of three 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing can dramatically affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using SocialMetricsPro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more from your WP Dashboard on your web site:
Installation Is Easy
Social Metrics Pro is quite easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to turn all reds into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social media signals so you know which social marketing campaigns require more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you centrally monitor social media activity across leading networks like Twitter, GooglePlus, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest directly from your WordPress dashboard.
SocialMetricsPro helps you get answers to questions like:
- Which social media 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 SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
SocialMetricsPro provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. View updated information from your WP admin bar, add social content to your sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- 1-click updating. You can update SocialMetricsPro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Consumes very little server resources. Reporting is in seconds, using little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve information and the server memory consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by category, post authors, post type, 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is really simple to use … just turn all red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials plugin users have written about the SocialMetricsPro 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 practical guide on how to optimize your site for social media success (i.e. how to turn reds into greens) is also included.
SocialMetricsPro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, 60-day, complete refund guarantee.
Plugin Price
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you activate Social Metrics Pro on a single website. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License Edition – This license allows you to run SocialMetricsPro on all websites that you own. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing for the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The pricing above was correct when this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the plugin website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Install This Product
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing are now taking into account social signals to help determine a site’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 shows you how to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is an ideal tool for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend getting SocialMetricsPro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized networks.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics Plugin
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