User-generated content (UGC) has many benefits for your company’s SEO strategy and when properly implemented can lead to a substantial increase in your website’s engagement, sales, clicks, impressions, and other metrics you may be tracking to measure your website’s growth.
In this article, we will go over what user-generated content is, why it is so important, and how user-generated content can be used to help you move up the search engine results page.
What Is User Generated Content?
User-generated content (UGC for short) is content created, written, or distributed by a third-party user talking about a company, said company’s products, or services. User-generated content also includes people’s thoughts, premonitions, opinions, and perceptions about a brand and its offerings.
User Generated Content Examples
Knowing that user-generated content is written or created by consumers, brand ambassadors, advocates, and everyone else that has experienced at least one touch point with your brand, here are a few examples of user-generated content.
- Product or services reviews
- Blog comments
- Forum Posts
- Videos of product use/ testimonials
- Social media posts about the product, company or service
- Community social media pages
These are just some examples of user-generated content. While some of these UGC examples can play an important role in your SEO strategy, others are out of your control. Let’s go over which of these user-generated content examples can benefit your SEO efforts and how you can build a UGC strategy around them to increase engagement and organic traffic to your website.
How To Use Reviews As Part Of Your UGC Strategy
Reviews are one of the most important parts of any user generated content strategy because they are some of the most authentic content created for a brand. Reviews from sources outside the company hold a lot of weight to future consumers as they provide insight into a product or service.
To start using reviews as part of your SEO user generated content strategy, you first need to find reviews that contain keywords your website wants to rank for. Once you have found a review that shines a positive light on your brand or product, you can copy it to a better-highlighted section of the page or even showcase it on your website’s homepage. This will give you another keyword to help you rank higher in search engine results pages and get more traffic with little marketing efforts.
How To Use Comments As Part Of Your UGC Strategy
Whether you write blog posts, or embed comments from your social media platforms onto your website, comments are a great way to improve your SEO rankings because they offer more keywords and a longer page depth without you needing to put in the work to create high quality content. Often times comments will contain the same keywords as search engine queries and can improve your rankings in search engines.
When it comes to blog posts, comments can greatly improve SEO rankings by feeding search engines natural language sentences that increase the word count and keyword density of a page. Comments are also a way for existing customers to leave customer testimonials about a brand experience they had with you or acknowledge the valuable content you provided to them.
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How To Use Forum Posts To Increase Your SEO Rankings
If your website runs a forum for users to interact and talk with other users then you will be able to leverage user generated content to get more traffic through user content and improve the SEO ranking of your forum as a whole. The more posts that get created, the more pages of content your forum will have which will lead to stronger link signals and more in-depth content for search engines to categorize and rank you for.
Websites that can leverage user generated content through forums have a high likelihood of SEO success due to the number of posts being made and Google’s tendency to show high traffic forum posts in personalized alerts feeds. Often times questions asked in forum posts are specific and when answered provide valuable information that can’t be found anywhere else.
How To Use Posts On Social Media Platforms As Part Of Your User Generated Content Strategy
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are a great place to find user generated content. However, it can be very difficult if not impossible to control. If you want to use any content found here as part of your SEO strategy and embed these posts on your website, be sure to ask permission from the post’s original author.
Most social media websites give you ways to incorporate user generated content into your website usually through embed code. Even if you can’t get permission to embed these posts on your website responding to them on your own social media account provides social proof of engagement with your customers and enables brand loyalty and recognition through social engagement.
How does user-generated content affect SEO?
Incorporating user-generated content into the SEO strategy can greatly improve the success of your SEO campaigns. When user generated content appears on your website it shows new users what your brand is about and how others have interacted with you. It makes a huge difference when your website is getting a lot of referrals and people want to authenticate the quality of your product or services.
UGC is essential for causing a psychological response from new website visitors looking to learn more about you while also allowing users to be a part of your content marketing strategy at zero cost. The longer, more keyword rich a page is, the higher its likelihood of ranking among the top search engine results.
Related: Gen Z social media statistics
How can I leverage UGC for SEO?
Use user-generated content for SEO as an effective search engine optimization tactic that also helps search engines understand user intent through reviews and other forms of UGC. Many marketers should try to include some level of user generated content into every campaign due to its weight in the consumer buying process. User generated content also helps to eliminate pain points for new customers making them more likely to make purchasing decisions.
Gain Long-tail keywords and keyphrases from customer reviews
Reviews testimonials by clients are an essential feature of UGC because of the ability for customers to include keywords directly into their content. Online eCommerce websites can improve the online shopping experience by leveraging UGCs for reviews. Studies have found that websites that incorporate UGC like online reviews had far more lon-gtail keywords than most competing websites. The study concluded as proof that user generated content helps drive SEO results.
How User-generated content can improve your SEO
A well thought out user generated content strategy is integral to many search engine optimization efforts. The more feedback you can get from your users means the more keywords your page will have, the longer your content will be, the more keyword density it will have while also providing Google and other search engines with a general idea of user intent when they visit your page. When users leave reviews on your website, it provides authority to your page and makes you more trust worthy in the eyes of the public and search engines. This can lead to increased search visibility and organic traffic.
UGC helps rank long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords are long search queries with several words included. These search terms typically have a lower search volume due to being more specific. However, these search terms are also less competitive and sometimes have no competition at all.
Long-tail keywords tend to be more relevant to web pages and guides and allow you to gain more targeted traffic for your site by solving an issue that is asked. User generated content that includes long tail keywords satisfy the Google search algorithm and allow your content to rank for those keywords even though they aren’t in your body copy.
Related: Long Tail vs. Short Tail Keywords
UGC can boost your search visibility and domain authority
The early SEO and SEM was centered around establishing and improving links. Since these are two elements of Search Engine Optimization, it wasn’t long ago that this tactic led to spammy links on thousands of websites. Over time, search engine optimization became much more sophisticated.
User-generated content helps to reduce search engine’s dependence on links by emphasizing user experience and authenticity as a primary ranking factor. By allowing users to comment using their own links you can build your website’s outbound link authority while creating a community where other websites may link to yours. This will increase your websites search visibility and domain authority score.
UGC supports Voice Search Optimization
As voice search continues to grow and evolve, companies aim to become the feature snippet of the capture voice search. Adobe found that 48% of consumers used voice searches as part of their regular search habits in their daily life. The figures have continued to rise over the last few years. Likewise, UGC can offer gold in long-tail keyword research and rankings, as mentioned earlier. UGC review types use natural languages, which resemble people looking for information through voice. This makes your page more likely to exact match search queries.
Want To Learn More About Using UGC For SEO?
To learn more about how you can use user generated content to improve your website’s SEO checkout the rest of our blog. We have plenty of resources teaching you how you can climb search results and create relevant content that will keep your customers coming back. We also have blog articles about the future of voice search results, social signals, and digital content creation.
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