Social recommendations like Facebook comments, likes, and shares, +1s on Google+, 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 social signals when determining website ranking.
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. 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 so many things change quickly on social media. 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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to rank higher in its search engine listings.
Social Signal Sources
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 influential social network in the world. Research shows that a single post on Facebook can reach up to 150,000 users, so even if it seems like Facebook is not driving a massive amount of sales on your site, don’t be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems to have the most influence on website rankings of all social media sites.
(Number of monthly 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 each day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance 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 Plus
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus 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 on Google+ every year. Source: Internet Live Stats)
In addition to the big 3 listed above, there are a number of other sites worth paying attention to, such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social media sites provide important signals to search engines that can affect your rankings)
Which Social Signals Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include:
- 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 site has, how influential the person sending tweets is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on StumbleUpon, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious signals that can indirectly influence search engine rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as links from authority sites (backlinks) (not as influential as they once were, but still a factor) [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can help improve your business results)
Tracking social media activity allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, spy on your competitors, measure the impact of campaigns, spot market opportunities, and be alerted to crises. Additionally, social media monitoring can also provide vital information about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific brands, products, businesses, or topics.
As a tool for business intelligence, social media monitoring 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 market research, marketing teams, online reputation management (ORM) agencies, social engagement and community staff, professional sales reps, and social media marketing agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t have the budget to pay a social media monitoring service to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately many providers have made available tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, enabling you to identify and even predict what consumers are saying about your brand allowing you to respond to conversations and engage with consumers in a timely manner.
We have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. More information:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we review a simple, yet highly effective social monitoring tool for your WordPress-based site and increasing your social media influence online.
Introducing …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
Plugin Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics plugin that is designed to make improving your social media presence uncomplicated. It is built on a simple premise – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and returns either a red or green indicator. The user’s task is to change all reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a standard operating procedure that any user can follow … turn all the 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 plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 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 SocialMetricsPro developers, improving your social marketing campaigns can impact your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard on your web site:
Ready To Go To Work In Minutes
SocialMetricsPro is very easy to install. Just upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the site owner’s objective is to turn red squares into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know which campaigns require investing more effort and which need to be better optimized.
Choose Only Social Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you centrally track and monitor social activity across leading social networks like Google+, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Digg directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro 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.
(Social Metrics Pro constantly tracks social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro offers WordPress users with a number of great features. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. View the latest information from your WordPress dashboard, add popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- 1-click upgrades. Update the plugin with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update it manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever a new version is released.
- Minimal usage of hosting resources. Social metrics reports are generated fast, consuming very little server resources. Reports also include the amount of time spent retrieving information and the server resources consumed when gathering and compiling the data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search & Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro allows you to sort, search and filter your data as you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by publishing date, category, post type, or post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered, sorted data and custom queries 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 very simple to use … just change more red squares into greens!)
Testimonials From Product Users
Below are a couple of the testimonials and comments that users have submitted for 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
Social Metrics Pro – Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical, step-by-step guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Product Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, complete money-back guarantee.
Software Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This edition enables you to configure SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Cost includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Edition – This license option enables you to run Social Metrics Pro on multiple domains that you own. Price includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The pricing shown above was correct at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer 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 current pricing details here:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
We Recommend
As mentioned earlier, with the increase in importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines now take into account a range of social signals to help determine 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 where and how to improve their results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Get Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to save time and resources by focusing on under-optimized networks.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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