User-generated content or UGC is changing the SEO playing field. It might be to good to be true that your existing users can help you attract new users.
But it is true! User-generated content can help you attract new users by increasing the visibility of your website and increasing your website’s trust and authority.
UGC can also help you improve your website’s search engine ranking. When people find your website through user-generated content, they are more likely to visit it because it is more relevant to their interests. This can help you improve your website’s ranking in search engines.
User-generated content can also help you increase brand awareness. When people find out about your company or product through user-generated content, they are more likely to trust and recommend it to their friends and family.
This can help you increase brand awareness and attract new customers. Continue reading to get the full explanation of how user generated content will have an awesome impact on your small business SEO strategy and improve your SEO rankings.
What is the meaning of user-generated content?
User-generated content or UGC is information that is published and unpaid by contributors to a website.
The information that is considered UGC are photos, blogs, videos, discussion forum posts, comments on a social media website, and poll responses.
UGC can be valuable because it is often more relevant to the interests of the people who are viewing it. This means that it is more likely to be found through search engine optimization (SEO).
And user generated content can help increase brand awareness. When people find out about your company or product through current users.
How will user-generated content help my small business?
User-generated content is free marketing.
When done right, user-generated content can drive a lot of organic traffic and relevant traffic to your site, especially if you’re looking for organic visibility or any other form of search visibility.
For example, if you have a travel blog and want to share some tips on how to plan your next trip, you can easily add a new post with user-generated content.
You can take your travel-related questions and answer them in a new blog post. You can use images or videos to help illustrate your tips, and you can even ask your readers to submit their own questions.
With a little creativity, you can easily create a new post with user-generated content and start acquiring valuable traffic to your site.
It provides great feedback for a small business.
As a business owner, you are accountable for each and every sale. If a user was unhappy with the product or service, it can be very helpful to know what needs to be improved.
This can be done through surveys or client testimonies. Keeping a close eye on your reviews can help you to improve your business.
One way to do this is by offering a discount to your clients who leave reviews on your site. This is a great way to show your gratitude to clients who leave reviews or to attract new clients who are looking for a business with a great reputation.
UGC builds a community around businesses’ products or services.
This can take many forms; from a blog post to social media engagement, or any other form of content creation.
The main goal of a community is to drive traffic to a website, which can also be a blog, product listing, or any other website that a business wants to promote.
The best way to start building your community is to start with a strategy. Which strategy you choose to follow depends on the needs of your company.
Some of the most common strategies for building your community are;
- Blog– You can start a blog for your small business and provide valuable content for your readers. You can increase the business’ search rankings with the content created to help new and returning users.
- Social Media Platform– Create a Facebook Page, Instagram Account, Youtube Channel, or TikTok account. Social media posts can be a great way to drive user content by asking users to submit photos of them using the business products.
- Reddit– a popular but overlooked tool is Reddit. It is a personal network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies, and passions
Each of these strategies has its own set of pros and cons. One of the most important things to keep in mind when starting your community is to always be available to answer questions and provide help to current and potential customers.
UGC is a more authentic way to build customer trust.
By posting on social media every week, you’re giving your followers a chance to get to know you better.
If you have a niche audience, focus your content on them. How can you get to know your followers better? Share photos of your dog or your cat, show your kids doing something cute, or even post about your favorite hobby or something that makes you laugh.
You might be surprised by what your fans are into. Boosting customer trust is important because when someone feels like they know you, social media allows you to make that connection with your followers in a very real way.
People read and use reviews.
Before buying more than 90% of people polled between the age of 18-34 read online reviews before buying from a business.
When you have users leave reviews on your site with a third-party platform like Yelp or Trip advisor search engines will view that as user generated content.
Also when users leave a review on these online platforms search engines’ search crawlers will analyze the page and find long tail keywords that will appear on SERPs.
User generated content can be a terrific way to generate ideas for your business.
You can use these ideas to create new content or repurpose content that already exists.
What you can’t do is force yourself to accept these ideas because they conflict with your own values or standards.
What types of user-generated content are there?
- Forums-if you give users a platform to discuss your products or services natural language will be used and search engine queries can be derived from there.
- Images- Third party platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok are great place to use the branded hashtag and create a buzz around images that your current users shared.
- Videos- Another way to create new and exciting content which is considered the best content marketing technique is posting to a third-party platform like Youtube.
- Question and Answers- A small business can create a Q&A to drive more traffic and increase keywords on their site. Which is also considered an awesome way to create authentic content.
- Testimonials and Reviews- Asking for testimonials is another way to earn SEO points and check mark another item from the SEO checklist.
- Posts-Social proof has a psychological affect on new users when first encountering a business they would like to interact with.
- Comment- Comments section on a blog can expand on the topic naturally at the bottom of a single page post.
What are the Pros and Cons of UGC?
UGC (user generated content) is a great way to share your thoughts, ideas, and photos with the world. However, there are some pros and cons to using UGC.
Advantages of user-generated content
- Helps with SEO: As more search engine robots and crawlers get introduced to the website, the higher the rank in the search engine results pages. By using the ico-site meta-description, you will be able to increase your Google PageRank as well as the trust rating from Google and other search engines.
- Reduces the about of content you need: When you’re writing content, you want to keep readers engaged. They want to know that you’re listening to them and that you care about what they have to say. Allowing user content can help boost the number of words on a newly published article or post.
- Encourages engagement: Through content marketing, you create and publish, and you can also help your readers to engage with your topic. For example, if you write about a certain type of workout, you can create articles that feature specific exercises, provide videos to help readers follow the exercise process, and include information about diet and nutrition to help them maintain their fitness goals. In order to help readers engage with your content, you need to make sure that it is useful and of high quality.
- Drives conversions: The content you produce can have a huge impact on conversions in search results. In order to achieve the best results, you need to work on creating quality content that people want to read. You can’t just throw some keywords at a piece of content and hope for the best. You need to plan out each and every keyword you choose, choose the right topics and create relevant content people want to read.
- Builds brand trust with: UGC content on your website not only helps you grow your audience but also builds brand trust with your customers. When your audience shares their favorite topics on social media, you’re naturally going to receive lots of questions and requests for information. and you can build on that with more relevant content.
Disadvantages of user-generated content
- Time-Consuming: Creating visual content can be time-consuming and expensive to obtain. The amount of resources that it will take may slow down your growth.
- Unreliable and Unknown Sources: Unreliable sources do not have to be a fabrication. They can be information that has been tampered with or distorted and lose creditability for being quality content. For example, a news report might report that “President Trump won an executive order that will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.” But is that information real or a fabrication? What if it is a report that includes background information such as quotes from federal officials? This is a form of unreliable information. What if the news report is based on a single anonymous source? This is also a form of unreliable information. And this information can negatively affect your trust in your strategy.
- Negative Reviews: Be careful about letting negative reviews and content submitted pile up, though, because they can be used as a form of feedback to show how dissatisfied people are buying after buying from you.
Is User-generated content worth it?
We believe user generated content is worth, as well as some of the best marketers will concur that it can help you build a more engaged and knowledgeable audience around your content.
This is especially useful if you want to get more feedback from people who are interested in your topic or if you want to grow your following quickly.
Conclusion:
UGC content can help with search results and the Google algorithm treats UGC as a quality indicator. That is, it weighs the importance of UGC in a search result higher than the importance of UGC in an ad.
This is a great way to help your brand appear in search results. What is even better is that UGC can be used as a signal for other customers to use or buy your product.
If certain ranking signals are expected to be associated with certain types of content, then it will appear in those results.