Social interactions and recommendations like Facebook comments, likes, and shares, +1s on GooglePlus, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been elevating the importance given to social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages businesses to build their social media presence as a long-term investment to drive qualified traffic, instead of 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 tend to change too quickly to fully map out. 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 a sensible one - “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 listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the largest social network in the world. Research shows that an average 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 website, don’t be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems to have the most influence on search engine rankings of all social media sites, like Google+ or Twitter.
(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 day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great emphasis on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google+
As Google’s own social networking site, GooglePlus naturally carries great authority online, even if it is still a fledgling online community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting socially on Google+ each year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook comments, likes, and shares you have, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your URL has, how influential the person retweeting your posts is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many followers on Google+ your URL has accrued, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious factors that can influence search engine traffic. These include desirable and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate (CTR) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to monitor, measure and analyze your social performance in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your results online)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your company, products, or brand on social media, spot market opportunities, assess competitor activity and market dominance, be alerted to disasters, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients are thinking about specific businesses, products, topics, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, social monitoring is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, typically carried out by various people including market research, marketing teams, digital reputation managers, social marketing agencies, professional sales reps, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, small businesses don’t have the budget to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various technology providers have developed tools and solutions to facilitate the active monitoring of a wide range of social media channels, allowing you to identify and even predict what consumers, competitors, critics, and supporters are saying about your brand or products so you can respond proactively to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
We have written a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. For more details, go here:
(Are you monitoring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, you will learn about a simple social monitoring tool for your WordPress-based website and increasing your social media presence.
Presenting …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics 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 and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The user’s objective is to turn reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any user can operate … simply turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts that get shared the most show up green. Posts with low social media activity display amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of over two thousand sites 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”. According to the plugin developers, they noticed 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 marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, increased traffic and increased revenue!)
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Quick And Easy To Install And Configure. Be Up And Running In Very Little Time.
SocialMetricsPro is quite easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugins folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s goal is to convert all the red squares into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know where to put more effort and which campaigns need to be better optimized.
Track Signals From Social Networks You Care About
Social Metrics Pro allows you to centrally track and monitor social activity from networks like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Pinterest.
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 this information can be accessed with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Plugin Features
SocialMetricsPro provides site owners with many unique features. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to go to work in minutes.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality using external and built-in widgets. Social Metrics Pro shows the latest stats from your WP dashboard, display social content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click auto-updating functionality. You can update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses very little hosting resources. Reporting is in seconds, consuming very little server resources. The tool also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources consumed when gathering data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort and filter data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by category, post authors, publishing date, or by post type.
- Export Data: 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 the spreadsheet application of your choice.
(Social Metrics Pro is really simple to use … just change more red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials that 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
Plugin Tips
A step-by-step, practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens) is also included.
Plugin Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, 60-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This enables you to activate SocialMetricsPro on one website only. It includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site License – This license option lets you set up Social Metrics Pro on all web sites that you own. Includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Price details for Social Metrics Pro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current when this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the product seller when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after your purchase.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing:
Additional Product Info
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Highly Recommend This
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing have started taking 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. SocialMetricsPro solves the problem of how to find a simple, time-saving solution that gives website owners instant feedback on the success of their social marketing campaigns and guides them how and where 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 right from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to use social signals to improve your search rankings.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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