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Some of the best marketers in this world are the consumers. They create user-generated content which produces a high impact on other consumers’ purchasing decisions. Moreover, statistics show that 88% of consumers are influenced in their buying decision after they have read an online review written by other people who have already bought and tried the respective product.
Therefore, when you build your penetration strategy and position on the market, you should include user-generated content in your plans. Keep reading this article and find out how to boost your SEO ranking using user-generated content.
How to Boost Your SEO Ranking Using User-Generated Content?
1. User-Generated content provides relevant content
Consumers are different from each other. They have different experiences with your products. So, even if they talk to each other, their reviews and comments on your products will be varied and diverse. On the other hand, creating unique SEO content to increase your brand’s visibility consumes a lot of financial and human resources. You can either produce the content in-house or externalize the service and collaborate with experienced writers. Either way, this demands time and money to be created.
User-generated content will take all this stress off your shoulders and provide you limitless unique and authentic content. Moreover, as it is your users who will generate content, you won’t have to use too many resources to strengthen your brand’s position on the market. What is more, by using the content generated by your users will open a communication path between you and your customers. This will make your products more trustful. What is more, you can get a direct connection with your customers and know their pain-points from the first hands. It can be an excellent source for market insights and ideas on how to improve your services and products to meet the customers’ expectations.
2. User-generated content offers a variety of keywords
The content produced by users is an immense fountain of inspiration for many marketers. When analyzing their reviews and contents, marketers will find plenty of ideas for their future marketing strategy and materials. When you give your customers the green light to express their opinions on social media, leave comments and start conversations on forums, you will find which are their expectations and feedback after trying your products and services.
Moreover, when you analyze the content generated by your users, you will discover plenty of keywords which will rank you higher on search engines. You can optimize your SEO strategy by using the long-tail keywords resulted from user-generated content. In addition, if you plan any PPC campaigns, you will find the necessary keywords in your customers’ comments and reviews. Furthermore, each long-tail keyword speaks about your customers’ pain points. Thus, it will become easier for you to improve your products and beat your competition.
3. Perfect for manual or automatic optimization
Search engines have advanced a lot in the past years. They are using now automated algorithms which evaluate a website based on the customers’ reviews and comments. Moreover, Google has also a team of professionals who manually evaluate each website and check its reputation in detail. “These teams evaluate the writers’ authority, the content’s impact and trustfulness, and the content’s quality. Their investigating methods are incredibly diverse,” explains Safah Talbot, the GetGoodGrade.com managing editor.
Therefore, apart from reading the content and using their expertise to rank websites, they also check the customers’ content and make an opinion based on what the consumers are saying. Whenever your clients express their opinion and leave coherent content after checking your products, you will earn more SEO points which will increase your ranking online. Furthermore, you should think of this tactic when you create your reviews list and assess the ratings received.
There’s one important thing to mention here, though. Not every piece of UGC is useful for your website. Spammy comments and auto-generated reviews will only worsen user experience and hence worsen your chances to rank higher. If you decided to open the comment section on your website, make sure to add some sort of user validation. It’s also important to monitor comments regularly to delete any spam and answer the actual questions about your content or products. Nothing is more frustrating than a bunch of lonely unanswered comments at the bottom of a page.
4. User-generated content improves your rankings
Blog comments are incremental in improving your rankings. Whenever Google assesses your website, it will take into consideration also the comments from your readers. Therefore, the better comments you have, the bigger the impact you will have on your audience. However, comments like “thanks” or “good post” don’t fall in this category.
“In your content, include questions that encourage meaningful answers,” recommends Stephanie O’Brien, the founder of Coach Client Connection. “Ask your readers to share their experiences and opinions on the subject you’re writing about, as well as any ‘ah, ha!’ moments they experienced while consuming the content.
A relevant blog post will attract thorough comments which will help you improve your rankings. However, high-quality comments are not easy to produce. You can encourage your customers to leave a relevant comment on your posts by following the guidelines below:
- Create calls-to-action in your posts – whenever you produce content for your website, you can always end your posts with a strong call-to-action where you encourage your readers to express their ideas and thoughts. You can even end with an open question where you ask your readers to share their experiences and opinions with you.
- Reply to your customers’ comments – when you answer your clients’ comments and you engage in conversations, your customers will feel that you care about their opinions and trust your brand even more. What is more, you can create a closer relationship with your customers if you are addressing each person by name and offer a personalized answer.
- Answer relevant questions on other blogs – this will help you strengthen your position on the market as a professional on your niche. By answering questions related to your business on other blogs, you have the opportunity to link back to your website and increase your visibility.
Finally, you can increase your website visibility by encouraging your consumers to post photos in their comments and reviews. There is no longer a surprise that Google likes photos and it uses them to rank websites higher. Therefore, when your customers post an image with one of your products, they will make your pages more visible and make them easier to find for other customers.
Also, by sharing a photo with your products, they will contribute to strengthening the trust that your audience has in your products. They offer solid proof that your product is exactly how you described it and help other customers decide faster and order it.
Conclusion
User-generated content helps build social proof for your brand and create a loyal customer base. But not only other visitors are considering reviews and comments when making a decision to buy anything. Search engines pay attention to user-generated content as well and they reward pages with an active community and real comments with higher rankings. Use the four tips mentioned above and improve your SEO strategy leveraging free content from your visitors.
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