Social recommendations like Facebook likes, comments, and shares, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
With the rising importance of social sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines have started taking into account various social signals when determining website 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. Google’s own head of the web spam team Matt Cutts 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 perfect ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search results.
Social Signal Sources
Social sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion 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 a massive amount of sales on your site, you should not be quick to dismiss the importance of Facebook in your business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter andGooglePlus.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the next largest 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 the authority of tweets posted to readers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent every single day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
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 actively using Google+ each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
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.
(Social media sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Google and Bing include the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes a person has, growth rate of shares and likes, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets your site has, how influential the person sharing your information is, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on Google+ your URL has accrued, amount and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate 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 social media-related signals that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include desirable and undesirable factors, such as age and authority of your social media account [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s not only important to find ways to grow your social media presence, but also to be able to track and analyze social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media marketing can help improve your results online)
Social media monitoring allows you to find insights into your brand’s overall visibility on social media, spy on your competitors, be alerted to disasters, spot market opportunities, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide you with valuable data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers think about specific products, brands, topics, or businesses.
As a business intelligence tool, being able to track social media channels like blogging, forums, social networking sites, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, etc., discussion boards, video/photo sharing websites, and user-generated content is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by a cross-section of groups that include marketing professionals, market research, PR agencies, sales teams, agencies, and social engagement and community personnel. Typically, smaller businesses don’t can’t afford to pay social media monitoring professionals to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed tools that facilitate the active monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to track consumer behavior around their products or brands so they can respond to conversations and interact with online users in a timely fashion.
To learn more about social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about, see this article:
(Are you searching for an effective way to measure your social signals?)
This article discusses a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress sites for monitoring social media signals and improving your social media presence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-install social media analytics WordPress plugin that is designed to make increasing your social media exposure online uncomplicated. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro measures and tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s goal is to turn reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a system that any website owner can follow … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics with Excel-like conditional color formatting. Posts with highest number of shares display 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 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 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 result in higher search engine rankings, increased web traffic and more revenue!)
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your website:
Be Up And Running In Very Little Time
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Just upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WP dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your task is to change all red squares into greens. Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures social signals so you know which campaigns require more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals You Care About
Social Metrics Pro lets you track and monitor social activity from social media networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Digg, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn directly from your WP dashboard.
Social Metrics Pro lets you easily answer questions like:
- Which social 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 on social media?
- And more …
With SocialMetricsPro, all of this information can be accessed with a single click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks the social media sites that you care most about!)
SocialMetricsPro Features
SocialMetricsPro provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Widgets And Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats right on your WordPress admin bar, add socially popular content to your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. Update SocialMetricsPro in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update it manually. You can also choose to receive email notifications when a new version is released.
- Minimal consumption of hosting resources. The plugin can generate social metrics reports very quickly, consuming minimal hosting resources. Reports also include the amount of time used to retrieve the information and the server memory used to compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to 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 authors, category, publishing date, or post type.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export data to 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.
(SocialMetricsPro is very simple to use … just convert reds into greens!)
User Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials and feedback that plugin customers have published about Social Metrics Pro:
“Social Metrics Pro is the essential plugin we use to monitor how our content performs on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. It’s simple, neat and works precisely as you would expect it. When we work with our clients such as T-Mobile, the .Me domain name registry and others, Social Metrics Pro is the plugin we use to create reports as well as keep track on each bit of content to optimize it for future performance.” Ivan Brezak Brkan, Editor of Netokracija.com, TechCrunch EU Contributor
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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
SocialMetricsPro – Tips
SocialMetricsPro 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).
Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and comes with free support and free lifetime updates, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, full refund guarantee.
Product Licensing Price
SocialMetricsPro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License – This allows you to install Social Metrics Pro on 1 domain only. Includes free lifetime upgrades and free support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This allows you to activate SocialMetricsPro on unlimited domains that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: Pricing details of the product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. The price shown above was correct when this review was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin author when you visit the product website and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional 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 have started taking into account various 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 immediate feedback on the success of your social marketing strategy and shows you how and where to direct your efforts in order 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 this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to make social marketing measurable.
For full details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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