Boost your SEO with user-generated content and discover how customer reviews and user posts can enhance your online visibility and credibility.
Ieva Treiliha
We live in a world where brands are expected to deliver a vast amount of unique and valuable content across multiple devices and channels to keep consumers engaged, interested and satisfied.
It is not enough to simply produce engaging content – it must also be authentic and visually appealing. One way to achieve this is by leveraging content created by real customers – otherwise known as user-generated content (UGC).
In this blog post, you will learn what user-generated content is and how you can use it to boost your SEO and online reputation. At the end, I will also share 4 easy tips for cultivating and collecting user-generated content!
User-generated content can take many different forms. It might be videos, blog posts, discussions on social media, images, audio files or other media created by consumers of a product or service, which are then made publicly available for other consumers.
Happy consumers are the best marketers. You can benefit from using 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 others just as much as they trust recommendations from their personal networks.
In fact, 91% of consumers aged 18-34 have said they trust other consumers’ reviews as much as personal recommendations from their network. This is shown in the Local Consumer Review Survey.
A brand can try to communicate how good its products or services are, but for consumers, it is far more credible and relatable when another consumer shares their experience.
This is why combining user-generated content with brand-created 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 may not always deliver the desired results. That is why it is important to use user-generated content to your advantage.
By leveraging user-generated content effectively, you can 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. This gives search engines new content, making it easier for them to rank your products and services in search results.
Effectively utilising user-generated content demonstrates that your business has a genuine dialogue with its customers and values their opinions.
Long-tail keywords are typically search phrases with a low number of monthly searches. In SEO, these are often referred to as “low-hanging fruit”, yet many businesses overlook their potential.
If, for example, you sell vacuum cleaners, you will want to rank well for the word “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 type of search, as you are competing with some of the biggest brands.
On the other hand, a phrase like “best vacuum cleaner test” has 1,000 monthly searches but much less competition. This phrase is used by users with a specific intention to find and purchase a product, and they are often closer to making a buying decision.
By researching relevant long-tail keywords in your industry, you can gain valuable insight into your audience’s pain points, goals, and expectations for your product. What challenges do your customers face? How can your products help them solve these challenges? What results do they expect?
Furthermore, researching long-tail keywords gives you a better understanding of customer intent.
Customer intent refers to the considerations that influence a customer’s decisions or actions towards making a purchase. By understanding what your customers are thinking during the consideration process, you can identify how best to engage, communicate with and convert your audience.
User-generated content is an excellent way to build more social proof. Social proof refers to the herd mentality of people and highlights that we trust the opinions 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 platforms is a great way to build more social proof.
You can use your customers’ photos from social media where your products or services are visible or mentioned. BUT: always remember to ask for permission first. By sharing your customers’ photos or reviews on your website or social channels, you strengthen your social proof among both potential and existing customers.
Using user-generated content helps your brand appear more transparent and trustworthy, which often leads to more engagement in the form of new followers, likes, comments and shares.
As mentioned, search engines use a number of factors to rank websites in search results. When it comes to user-generated content and search engines, your website can be evaluated in two different ways:
Search engine algorithms use “spiders” to look for customer reviews and testimonials as part of their evaluation of a website.
Companies like Google also have people who manually assess websites.
These quality raters evaluate a website’s trustworthiness, expertise and authority in its industry based on various factors – including user-generated content elsewhere on the internet.
User-generated content will help you earn SEO points from both quality systems.
Using user-generated content should be an essential part of any SEO checklist, as reviews and customer testimonials can make it easier to deliver exceptional results for search engines.
You can benefit from sending automated emails to your previous customers and asking for a review on your preferred reputation management platform. If you are not already collecting reviews, now is the time to start!
Reviews of your products or services are important not only for your social proof but also for conversion optimisation and SEO.
You can find a guide and an email template for collecting reviews here.
You can, for example, create a brand-specific hashtag for Instagram.
Hashtags let you build conversations around your brand and products online. Your chosen hashtag should be short and memorable. For example, see Essie below:
To foster a sense of community around your brand, you can create a Facebook group for your customers and followers.
The group can focus on shared interests between you and your customers. For example, if you sell beauty products, you could have a group dedicated to beauty tips & tricks, makeup or hair care.
The key is to create a space where your customers can interact with each other, but try to avoid too many sales pitches – the group’s purpose should be to act as a community for your potential and existing customers.
You can choose whether the group is public or closed, and you should clearly define its 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 shifted away from desktop – nowadays, our primary focus for marketing, sales and engagement is on mobile devices.
Social media platforms like Facebook have evolved from being text-based and originally designed for desktop, to more mobile-friendly platforms that allow users to capture moments, experiences and stories.
Almost every social media platform now offers stories – Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and even WhatsApp. Therefore, it is 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 and share them on your Instagram. This way, you make use of user-generated content, engage with your customers and have the opportunity to capture the attention of potential new customers.
You can also post stories with everyday photos and videos from the office to give your customers insight into how your business operates. These glimpses behind the scenes show your customers a different side to your business and make your brand easier to relate to.
Stories from production facilities and/or showrooms can be used to build anticipation for new products, create curiosity and capture your target 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.
Remember, user-generated content increases conversion rates, customer trust in your brand, and word-of-mouth marketing. All of these factors also impact traffic from search engines and keyword rankings.
Almost all customer journeys begin on Google, so it is essential for brands to leverage one of their strongest marketing tools – user-generated content – to establish strong 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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