Social recommendations like Facebook likes, comments, and shares, Twitter mentions and retweets, 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 website owners 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 assessing social media signals, as social trends and relationships can change at a moment’s notice. Without a reliable ‘map,’ Google is understandably reticent to assign more importance to the social sphere 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 real value normally develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the sites that Google naturally wants to display higher in its search listings.
Social Signals – Which Sites Matter?
Social sites that search engines look to when measuring social signals include:
With more than 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social community on the planet. It has been estimated that one great 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, you should not be quick to dismiss the power of leveraging Facebook, as Google processes data and information from Facebook when determining your search rankings. In fact, research indicates that Facebook seems influence search engine rankings more than other social media sites, like Twitter andGoogle+.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second biggest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every single day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence on the cybersphere and places great importance on tweeting posts that provide great value to followers over the number of tweets sent …
(Over half a billion tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social site, GooglePlus naturally carries a significant degree of authority online, even if it is still a fledgling social community compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
(More people are actively using Google+ each week. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social sites listed above, there are a number of other social sites that should not be ignored, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Digg, and StumbleUpon.
(A number of social sites provide important signals that could affect your search engine rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Pay Attention To?
Search engines track a number of social signals, including the following:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook likes, shares, and comments a person has, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. how many tweets and retweets a site has, the number of people sending a tweet, trending topics, etc.
- Google+ – e.g. who is following you (influential users), how many followers on GooglePlus your URL has, number and growth rate of +1s, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. growth rate of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, comments on Reddit, etc.
- Other signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can indirectly influence search engine traffic. These include positive 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 site reviewers [negative].
As a business owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social signals in order to improve your business results.
(Use social media marketing to improve your business results)
Social media monitoring allows you to gain insights into what people are saying about your services, brand, or company on social media, assess competitor activity and market dominance, spot market opportunities, help you take preventative measures if you detect negative comments or feedback by online users, and measure the impact of campaigns. It can also provide vital data about emerging trends and what clients and consumers are thinking about specific products, brands, topics, or businesses.
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 a cross-section of people including marketing teams, online reputation management (ORM) specialists, market researchers, social engagement and community personnel, professional sales reps, and agencies. Typically, smaller businesses don’t can’t afford to pay media monitoring professionals to track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately various technology companies have developed a range of tools to facilitate the active monitoring of a broad spectrum of social media channels, allowing you to identify what is being said online about your brand or products so you can react to conversations and engage with online users in various social media platforms.
We have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here to learn more about this:
(Can you measure social signals effectively?)
In this article, we explore a simple, yet highly effective plugin for WordPress users for tracking social signals and increasing your social media influence.
Let’s Review …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin For WordPress
Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics plugin that is designed to help you increase your 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 green or red indicator. The user’s job is simple … change more reds into greens.
(A system that any user can operate … turn all the reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. Posts that receive the most shares are colored green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red.
The developers of Social Metrics Pro tested their plugin on a network of 2,000+ websites 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to SocialMetricsPro developers, focusing on improving your social marketing campaigns can affect your search engine rankings, traffic and revenue!)
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Below we have listed just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Social Metrics Pro to track Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Use In Very Little Time.
SocialMetricsPro is really easy to install. Simply upload the plugin file to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Really Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your goal is to convert reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social media signals the way Google sees it so you know where to put more effort and where to optimize.
Track Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you centrally monitor social media activity across leading social media networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, 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 are my most popular posts?
- And more …
With Social Metrics Pro, all this information is available on-demand, with a single click.
(SocialMetricsPro constantly tracks social signals from the sites that you care most about!)
Features
Social Metrics Pro offers WordPress users with many great features. Here are a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality with built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats from your WP admin bar, display popular content on your sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click auto-update functionality. You can update SocialMetricsPro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also opt to receive an email notification whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Plugin uses very little resources. Reports are generated fast, using very little server resources. Reports also display the amount of time it took to retrieve the information and the server memory used to compile the data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching & Filtering Features: SocialMetricsPro lets you sort, search 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, publishing date, post type, or post authors.
- Export Data To Excel: You can export filtered 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 simple to use … just convert all red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have provided for SocialMetricsPro:
“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
Social Metrics Pro – Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a practical guide on how to optimize your social media strategy (i.e. how to turn reds into greens).
Social Metrics Pro Support
Social Metrics Pro is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a risk-free, sixty-day, full money-back guarantee.
Plugin Pricing
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site License Edition – This license allows you to use SocialMetricsPro on a single website. Price includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Multi-Site Edition – This lets you install Social Metrics Pro on multiple sites that you own. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $47.00 (one-time).
Please Note: The cost to purchase the SocialMetricsPro product can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the product sells for the prices shown above. This may not be the actual price set by the software seller 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 the latest pricing details here:
Additional Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
Our Recommendation
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, search engines like Google and Bing now take into account social signals when determining a site’s 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 instant feedback on the success of your social media marketing campaigns and guides you how and where to direct your efforts in order to improve your results.
Social Metrics Pro is ideal for beginners and advanced users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WP dashboard.
We recommend getting Social Metrics Pro if you own or manage WordPress sites and want to save money on outsourcing your social marketing campaigns.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Social Metrics Pro – Social Media Analytics For WordPress
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