Social interactions and recommendations like +1s on Google+, Facebook comments, likes, and shares, etc. are called social signals.
With the increase in importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account a range of social signals when determining 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 media, 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 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 websites 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 media sites that search engines like Google look to when measuring social signals include:
With almost 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most dominant social community in the world. It has been estimated that a single post on Facebook 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 power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes social 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.
(Number of active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over 600 million tweets sent out every day. Twitter plays a significant role as a global influencer online and places great importance on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the amount of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: Internet Live Stats)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, GooglePlus naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it has not reached the same level of growth and take up as Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are interacting on GooglePlus each month. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other sites worth paying attention to, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, StumbleUpon, 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?
Search engines like Google and Bing track various social signals, including 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. tweets and retweets, the number of people sharing the URL, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many people follow you, amount of adds and shares, 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 social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search rankings. These include desirable and negative factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be of low quality by other users [negative].
As a business owner, it’s not only important to find ways to develop your presence on major social networking websites, but also to be able to track, measure and analyze social marketing in order to improve your business results.
(Using social media can improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into your company’s overall visibility on social media, measure the impact of campaigns, assess competitor activity, help you take preventative measures against the spread of negative comments or feedback by dissatisfied customers, and spot opportunities for engagement. It can also provide you with valuable information about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific products, businesses, topics, or brands.
As a business intelligence tool, the ability to monitor activity, trends, and volume and sentiments of social conversations on social media channels like blogs, forums, news sites, micro-blogging platforms, discussion boards, video sites, and user-generated content (UGC) is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including digital reputation managers, market researchers, marketing teams, social engagement and community staff, agencies, and sales teams. Typically, small businesses do not can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various service providers have made available many tools to facilitate the tracking of a wide range of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict consumer behavior around their products or brands allowing them to react to conversations and engage with online users in a timely fashion.
Go here to learn more about social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
This article explores a simple, yet effective plugin for WordPress users for monitoring social media signals and increasing your social media influence.
Presenting …
Social Metrics Pro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Description Of Plugin
SocialMetricsPro is an easy-to-use social analytics plugin for WordPress that is designed to help users increase their social media influence in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro tracks how each signal is performing and displays either a red or green indicator. The site owner’s objective is simple … turn all reds into greens.
(Social Metrics Pro provides a system that anyone can follow … 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 are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The plugin developers tested SocialMetricsPro 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 everything “green”. From these tests, 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 their revenue increased by 310%.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social media marketing campaigns can result in higher search engine rankings, more traffic and increased revenue!)
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Below are just some of the benefits of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, +1s, Pins and more directly from your WordPress Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In No Time.
SocialMetricsPro installs just like every WP plugin. Simply upload it to your Plugin folder via your dashboard and activate.
Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, the user’s task is to change more reds into greens. The plugin tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to invest more effort and where to optimize.
Select Only Signals You Care About
SocialMetricsPro provides a powerful dashboard to track and monitor social activity across leading social networks like GooglePlus, Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
SocialMetricsPro lets you easily answer 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 on social media?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly monitors social signals from the social sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
SocialMetricsPro offers many great features to web site owners. Below we have listed a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to go to work in no time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend the plugin’s functionality with external and built-in widgets. SocialMetricsPro displays updated stats from your WordPress dashboard, add social content to your blog sidebar or anywhere on your site using widgets.
- One-click auto-updating functionality. You can update the plugin in one click via the WordPress Updates page, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to be notified via email whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses minimal resources. Reporting is fast, consuming little hosting resources. The tool also includes the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server resources used to gather and compile data.
Additional features include:
- Sort, Search And Filter Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort and filter information however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study topic-related posts, and even filter the results by category, post authors, publishing date, or by post type.
- Export Data: 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.
(Social Metrics Pro is simple to use … just change more red squares into greens!)
Feedback From Users
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for 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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”I give Social Metrics a big thumbs up and I recommend it to anyone who’s serious about tracking their social sharing analytics.” James Johnson, Senior Editor at The Inquisitr
Plugin Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide containing useful advice on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
SocialMetricsPro is well-supported, and users get lifetime updates and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Edition – This lets you set up SocialMetricsPro on a single site. Pricing includes free lifetime upgrades and support. Price = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This allows you to install Social Metrics Pro on unlimited websites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The price of SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the product is selling for the amounts shown above. This may not be the actual price charged by the product developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details:
Additional Information
SocialMetricsPro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Download The Plugin
As mentioned earlier, with the growth of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines are now taking into account a range of social signals to help determine website ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. 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 campaigns 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 right from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to use social signals to get better search engine rankings.
For more information, visit the plugin website: SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics Plugin For WordPress
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