Boost your SEO with user-generated content and discover how customer reviews and user contributions can enhance your online visibility and credibility.
Ieva Treiliha
We live in a world where brands must quickly deliver an overwhelming amount of unique and valuable content across numerous devices and channels to keep consumers engaged, interested and satisfied.
It is no longer enough to simply produce engaging content – it also needs to be authentic and visual. One way to achieve this is by leveraging content created by real customers – also known as user-generated content (UGC).
In this blog post, you can read more about what user-generated content is, and how you can harness it to boost your SEO and online reputation. And finally, I will share 4 simple tips for cultivating and collecting user-generated content!
User-generated content takes many different forms. It can be videos, blog posts, discussions on social media, images, audio files and other media created by consumers of a product or service, and made publicly available to other consumers.
Happy customers are the best marketers. You can successfully use user-generated content for reputation management, as well as to strengthen your social proof and, hopefully, improve your sales figures.
Consumers trust online reviews written by other consumers just as much as they trust recommendations from their personal network.
In fact, 91% of consumers aged 18-34 say they trust other consumers’ reviews just as much as personal recommendations from their network. This is according to the Local Consumer Review Survey.
Your brand can try to tell consumers how good your products or services are, but it is far more credible and relatable for consumers when it comes from another customer.
This is why user-generated content, combined with brand content, can create an authentic customer journey that users can relate to and find value in.
The market is saturated with branded content. Creating targeted, unique content for SEO requires significant resources and, in the end, may not deliver the desired results. That is why it is important to use user-generated content to your advantage.
By effectively leveraging user-generated content, you have the opportunity to save on internal resources.
Websites are optimised for search engines using a range of different parameters, such as keywords, titles, backlinks and internal links.
When your customers write reviews, they naturally use the right keywords and links that match your products or services. In this way, search engines receive fresh content, making it easier for them to rank your products and services in search results.
Effective use of user-generated content demonstrates that your business engages in dialogue with customers and takes their opinions seriously.
Long-tail keywords are typically search phrases with a low monthly search volume. In SEO, these keywords are often referred to as “low-hanging fruit”, and many companies overlook these phrases and their potential.
For example, if you sell vacuum cleaners, you will naturally want to rank well for the keyword “vacuum cleaner”, but this keyword has over 12,000 monthly searches and very high competition. It takes a lot of time and resources to rank for this search because you are competing with the biggest players.
On the other hand, the phrase “Best vacuum cleaner in test” has 1,000 monthly searches and much lower competition. This phrase is also used by users with a specific intent to find and buy this product. They are often closer to making a purchase decision.
By researching relevant long-tail keywords in your industry, you can gain valuable insights into your target audience’s pains, gains and goals with the product. What challenges do your customers have? How can your products help your customers solve these challenges? What results do consumers expect from your products?
Furthermore, by analysing long-tail keywords, you gain a better understanding of customer intent.
Customer intent refers to the considerations that influence customers’ decisions or actions towards a particular purchase. By understanding what your customers are thinking during the consideration process, you can identify how best to reach, communicate with and convert your customers.
User-generated content is an excellent way to gain more social proof. Social proof is a term for the herd mentality of people and once again highlights that people trust the statements of others.
An effective way to use user-generated content is on social media. Visual content from your previous customers on Facebook, Instagram and other relevant social platforms is a great way to build more social proof.
You can use your customers’ images from social media where your products or services are visible or mentioned. BUT: always remember to ask for permission first. By sharing your customers’ images or reviews on your website or social media, you strengthen your level of social proof among your potential and existing customers.
Using user-generated content helps your brand appear more transparent and trustworthy, which often leads to greater user engagement in the form of more followers, likes, comments and shares.
As mentioned, search engines use a range of factors to rank websites in search results. When it comes to user-generated content and search engines, your website can be assessed in two different ways:
Search engine algorithms use “spiders” that, among other things, look for customer reviews and testimonials to evaluate a website.
Companies such as Google also have people who manually evaluate websites.
These quality experts assess website credibility, expertise and authority in their sector based on a range of factors, including user-generated content found elsewhere on the internet.
User-generated content will help you earn SEO points from both quality systems.
Using user-generated content should be a key part of every SEO checklist, as reviews and customer testimonials can make it easier to deliver exceptional results to search engines.
You can advantageously send automated emails to your previous customers and ask for a review on your chosen reputation management platform. If you are not already collecting reviews, now is the time to start!
Reviews of your products or services are not only important for your social proof, but also for conversion optimisation and SEO.
You can find a guide and email template for collecting reviews here.
For example, you can create a brand-specific hashtag for Instagram.
Hashtags allow you to build conversations around your brand and products online. Your chosen hashtag should be short and easy to remember. See, for example, Essie below:
To create more community around your brand, you can set up a Facebook group for your customers and followers.
The group can focus on your and your customers’ shared interests. For example, if you sell beauty products, you could create a group that shares beauty tips & tricks, makeup or hair advice.
The key is to create a space where your customers can talk to each other, but avoid too many sales pitches in the group – the main purpose should be to create a community for your potential and existing customers.
You can choose whether the group is public or private, and you should also clearly identify the group’s purpose so people know why it exists. If you already have a Facebook Business page, you can easily create a related Facebook group.
In recent years, we have moved away from desktop and today our primary focus is on mobile devices when it comes to marketing, sales and engagement.
Social media such as Facebook have evolved from being text-based platforms originally designed for desktop to more mobile-friendly platforms that allow you to capture moments, experiences and stories.
Almost all social media platforms now offer stories – Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and even WhatsApp. This makes it worth considering joining this trend to interact effectively with your customers.
You can use stories in many different ways:
If your brand is tagged in your customers’ stories, it is easy to repost these stories and share them on your Instagram. In this way, you leverage user-generated content, interact with your customers and have the opportunity to capture the attention of potential customers.
You can also share stories with everyday photos and videos from the office, giving your customers insight into how your business operates. These little glimpses into daily life show your customers another side of your company and make your brand easier to relate to.
Stories from production facilities and/or showrooms can be used to create hype around new products, spark curiosity and capture your audience’s interest.
I hope this blog post has helped you better understand what user-generated content is and how you can use it to boost your SEO efforts.
It is worth remembering that user-generated content increases conversion rates, customer confidence in your brand and word-of-mouth marketing. All of these factors also influence traffic from search engines and keyword rankings.
Virtually every customer journey begins on Google, so it is vital for brands to take advantage of one of their strongest marketing tools – user-generated content – to establish a high level of social proof and effectively strengthen SEO.
If you want to get started with SEO, reputation management, working with user-generated content, Google Ads or other marketing activities, you are always welcome to contact us!
Find more information here:
Reputation management – build a strong reputation on Google!
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