Social recommendations like Facebook comments, Twitter mentions and retweets, etc. are called social signals.
Social signals impact search engine rankings and Google has been tracking social signals as part of its ranking algorithm for several years now.
Note: Google encourages website owners to build their brand on social media 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 own web spam team has stated that Google takes a cautious approach when it comes to social signals, as so many things change quickly on social media. Without a full ‘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 to “wait and see” how things develop over time, as sites that provide value develop longevity, trust and authority, and these are the websites that Google wants to ascribe higher search rankings to.
Social Signal Sources
Social media sites that search engines like Google and Bing look to for measuring social signals include:
With over 1.5 billion active users, Facebook is the largest social media community on the planet. It has been estimated that a single post can reach over 100,000 users, so even if no one seems to be buying your products or services on Facebook, don’t be quick to dismiss Facebook as an important part of your online business strategy, as Google uses data and information from Facebook to help determine your search rankings. In fact, research shows that Facebook seems influence search rankings more than other social media sites.
(Number of monthly active Facebook users. Source: Statista.com)
After Facebook, Twitter is the second largest social media site in the world, with over half a billion tweets sent out every day. Twitter has a significant amount of influence online and places great emphasis on the authority of tweets posted to followers over the volume of tweets sent …
(Over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
Google Plus
As Google’s own social media site, Google+ 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 year. Source: InternetLiveStats.com)
In addition to the big three social media giants listed above, there are a number of other social media networks that provide important social metrics, like Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon,Reddit, and Digg.
(A number of social sites provide important signals to search engines that could affect your rankings)
Social Signals – Which Ones Should You Be Paying Attention To?
Social signals tracked by search engines like Bing and Google include:
- Facebook – e.g. how many Facebook shares, comments, and likes you have, growth rate of likes and shares, etc.
- Twitter – e.g. tweets and retweets, how influential the person retweeting your posts is, trending topics, etc.
- GooglePlus – e.g. who is following you (high profile users), how many people follow you, spread rate of adds and shares, etc.
- Other sites – e.g. number of Pins and re-Pins on Pinterest, upvotes on Reddit, etc.
- Not so obvious signals – In addition to the above, there are other not so obvious social media-related factors that can influence search engine rankings. These include positive and undesirable factors, such as improving clickthrough rate [positive], and whether your site is deemed to be irrelevant by other users [negative].
As a website owner, it’s important to not only grow your social media presence, but also to be able to monitor and analyze your social marketing campaigns 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 your brand’s overall visibility on social media, be alerted to disasters, assess competitor activity and market dominance, measure the impact of your marketing campaigns, and spot opportunities for engagement. It can also provide you with vital data about emerging trends and what consumers and clients think about specific products, businesses, topics, or brands.
As a tool for business intelligence, being able to monitor social media is invaluable. Using social media monitoring as a form of business intelligence, however, is a complex undertaking, often carried out by various people including marketing professionals, PR agencies, market researchers, sales teams, social engagement and community personnel, and agencies. Typically, smaller businesses do not can’t afford to pay a social media monitoring service to continually track their coverage in the media.
Fortunately different service providers have created tools and solutions that facilitate the monitoring of a variety of social media channels, allowing companies to identify and even predict what is being said online about their brands so they can react to conversations and interact with consumers in a timely manner.
We have written a comprehensive article listing several social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Visit this page to learn more:
(Are you measuring your social signals effectively?)
In this article, we look at a simple, yet highly effective social media monitoring plugin for a WordPress-based online presence and growing your social media influence.
Introducing …
SocialMetricsPro – Social Analytics WordPress Plugin
Plugin Description
Social Metrics Pro is an easy-to-use social media analytics premium WordPress plugin that is designed to help you grow your social media influence online in an uncomplicated way. It is built on a simple concept – Social Metrics Pro tracks and measures how each signal is performing and displays either a green or red indicator. The user’s task is simple … change all reds into greens.
(SocialMetricsPro provides a standard operating procedure that any website owner can operate … turn reds into greens!)
Colors indicate relative popularity. This simplifies your social analytics. Posts with the highest number of shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity are colored amber or red.
The developers of SocialMetricsPro 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 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 they also experienced a 310% increase in revenues.
(According to Social Metrics Pro developers, improving your social marketing can result in higher search engine rankings, increased web traffic and an increase in revenue!)
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using SocialMetricsPro
Here are just a few of the benefits of using SocialMetricsPro to track Likes, Tweets, Pins, +1s and more right from your WP Dashboard on your site:
Quick And Simple To Install And Set Up. Ready To Start Using In Minutes.
Social Metrics Pro is very easy to install. Just upload a zip file that contains the plugin to your Plugin folder via your WordPress dashboard and activate.
Very Simple To Use
As mentioned earlier, your objective is to change all the reds into greens. SocialMetricsPro tracks and measures social signals so you know which social campaigns require investing more effort and where to optimize.
Track Only Signals From The Networks You Care About
SocialMetricsPro lets you monitor social media activity across leading networks like GooglePlus, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Digg.
Social Metrics Pro helps you get answers to 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 is available on-demand, with just one click.
(Social Metrics Pro actively tracks social signals from the social media sites that you care most about!)
Product Features
Social Metrics Pro offers many unique features to WP users. Below we have listed some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- SocialMetricsPro Is Widgets & Extensions Ready. You can extend its functionality using built-in and external widgets. Access updated stats right on your WordPress admin bar, display popular content on your blog sidebar or anywhere in your site using point-and-click widgets.
- One-click updating. You can update Social Metrics Pro with one click via the WordPress Updates screen, or update the manually manually. You can also choose to receive an email notification whenever new plugin updates are released.
- Consumes minimal hosting resources. The plugin generates social metrics reports fast, using very little hosting resources. Report generation also includes the amount of time spent retrieving the information and the server resources used to compile data.
Additional plugin features include:
- Sorting, Searching And Filtering Features: Social Metrics Pro allows you to sort and filter your data however you like. You can perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics, and even filter the results by publishing date, category, post type, or post authors.
- 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 really simple to use … just change red squares into greens!)
Testimonials
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments customers have written about the SocialMetricsPro plugin:
“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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“Social Metrics Takes WordPress Stats to the Next Level.” Lorraine Ball, Creative Director, Roundpeg
Plugin Tips
Social Metrics Pro comes with a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your campaigns and improve your social media strategy (i.e. turn reds into greens).
Support
The software is well-supported, and comes with free lifetime updates and support, backed by a no-risk, sixty-day, 100% refund guarantee.
Product Licensing Cost
Social Metrics Pro plugin is available in two editions:
- Single Site Licensing – This lets you activate SocialMetricsPro on a single domain. Includes free lifetime updates and support. Cost = $27.00 (one-time).
- Unlimited Sites Licensing – This license option enables you to configure Social Metrics Pro on unlimited websites that you own. Pricing includes free lifetime updates and free support. Price = $47.00 (one-time).
Note: The cost to purchase SocialMetricsPro can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current at the time this article was published. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the product author when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after you’ve purchased.
Check the plugin’s website for the current price here:
Additional Product Information
Social Metrics Pro requires a self-hosted installation of WordPress and can be instantly downloaded after purchase.
The Bottom Line
As mentioned earlier, with the increased importance of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, search engines like Bing and Google have started taking into account a range of social signals when determining a website’s ranking.
No website owner can afford to ignore the importance of social media. SocialMetricsPro 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 strategy and shows you how and where to improve your results.
SocialMetricsPro is ideal for beginners and advanced WordPress users alike. It tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more directly from your WordPress admin area.
We recommend getting this plugin if you own or manage WordPress sites and would like to use social signals to get better search rankings.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: SocialMetricsPro – Social Media Analytics Plugin
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