The Role of UGC in SEO Strategies
This article outlines user-generated content for marketing, the growing role of UGC in SEO, and how you can leverage it to expand brand reach and drive leads.
Do you include your customers in the conversation? The meteoric rise of social media proves that people love to express themselves! They also want to see and hear what others do and think.
User-generated content (UGC) helps you capitalize on this natural impulse.
What Is User Generated Content?
UGC is content written by users or customers rather than companies or brands. This includes:
- Reviews and testimonials
- Social media posts
- Photos and videos
- Blog comments
- Forum discussions
In essence, user-generated content in marketing expands your content team from your employees to a larger, collective audience. Your customers contribute to your brand’s story, shaping opinions, leveraging influence, and forging online communities.
The Role of UGC in SEO
Why should brands pay attention to user-generated content? This growing mass of content will exist with or without you. However, with your oversight, it can activate your SEO strategy. Here are reasons why UGC can be a critical component of a winning organic marketing strategy.
Experience in E-E-A-T
The newest critical importance of Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is that experience incentivizes content written by someone with direct experience of the product, service, business, or industry.
Firsthand customer experiences generate authentic content that search engines recognize as valuable. This is one significant role of UGC in SEO.
Google’s Perspectives
Google added a new search feature called “Perspectives.” This feature allows users to narrow their search results to user-generated content from discussion boards, Q&A sites, and social media platforms.
Users Gravitate to UGC
At current growth rates, more than half of the world’s population is expected to be on social media by 2028. From Yelp and Quora to YouTube and TikTok, consumers gravitate toward platforms that share authentic, first-hand experiences.
How Google Understands Reviews
Positive social proof, including favorable user-generated reviews, can help sway a prospective buyer to purchase. As Google’s technology has evolved to better interpret user feedback on platforms like Google Business Profiles, reviews also impact your SEO.
When multiple people across different platforms express similar experiences or opinions, Google sees that as a trend. Therefore, what your customers say about your business will influence how Google prioritizes them.
For marketing professionals, this translates into an opportunity to collaborate with product development and content creation teams. You want to give leads and prospects an accurate preview of what they can expect once they purchase. When experience and reality line up, you are more likely to get positive reviews.
How to Use UGC in SEO
The best strategy for leveraging UGC in SEO will depend on your industry and type of business. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that applies across the board. However, below are specific ways different sectors can use UGC in SEO, including user-generated content examples.
UGC in Technology
Technology includes different products and services. In general, most SaaS and tech products require some consumer education. The more cutting-edge your offering, the more you have to show prospects how you stand out and what your product can do for them. UGC can be a major ally in those efforts.
Here are three ways:
- Encourage customers to leave detailed reviews of your products, including performance and features. You may want to highlight specific parts of their user experience you’d like them to share.
- Invite your customers to create how-to videos and showcase them on your website, TikTok, or YouTube channel.
- Create online forums where your customers can discuss products and troubleshoot issues. Include the invite to your forums as part of the product onboarding process.
Here are a few user-generated content examples:
- A customer writes a review of their new smartphone on Amazon, sharing their experience setting it up, its camera quality, and battery life.
- A small business owner creates a YouTube video demonstrating how a new inventory tracking and billing software streamlined his daily tasks.
- A customer trying to troubleshoot a problem with her podcasting microphone goes onto the company’s forum and gets specific and actionable tips from other customers and staff.
UGC in Healthcare
UGC in healthcare is tricky because organizations have to protect the privacy of their clients and comply with HIPAA regulations and FTC guidelines. It’s also important for healthcare professionals to maintain appropriate and ethical boundaries.
Still, there are ways a healthcare organization can benefit from user-generated content. The best practices are obtaining explicit patient consent for any images or testimonials and having a rigorous content moderation process in place.
Within those guidelines, healthcare organizations can:
- Share general patient testimonials without specific medical details.
- Display before-and-after photos with patient consent and without revealing identifiable information.
- Provide accurate and unbiased educational content about health conditions or treatments.
An example would be testimonials on the organization’s Google Business Profile from patients sharing their positive experiences with the facility or specific doctors.
UGC in Fitness and Wellness
Fitness and wellness providers have several ways to leverage UGC in SEO. They include:
- Systematically ask for testimonials from satisfied customers and make it easy for them to submit reviews on your preferred platform (like Google Business Profiles).
- On your website, showcase before-and-after photos of customers during their fitness or wellness journey. Remember to take the before photos!
- Encourage customers to share their workout routines on social media, including what they like about the routine and the benefits they notice.
- Build an online community where customers can share their fitness journeys and support each other.
An example would be a gym member working with a trainer, posting weekly or monthly photos on Facebook or Instagram during their workout journey, creating a record of their progress, and tagging the gym and the trainer on each post.
UGC in E-commerce
User-generated content examples in e-commerce are everywhere. You don’t have to dig to find reviews or product comparison blogs for almost any product. Here are ways to use UGC in e-commerce to impact your SEO.
- Invite your customers to leave detailed reviews, including photos and videos. While you don’t want to bribe your customers to leave reviews (especially on Google), you can make it easy for them to do so.
- Showcase customer photos of products in use on your product pages. A happy customer using your product may not be as well-lit or refined as your professional photo, but it is engaging.
- Run social media contests where customers share their experiences with the brand using specific hashtags.
The above formula can be adapted to several industries, including hospitality, food and beverage, and real estate.
Here are a few user-generated content examples:
- A customer shares a detailed review of a pair of shoes, including photos of how they look on his feet.
- Wearing her new dress in an Instagram video, a customer tags the brand.
- To enter social media content, a user creates a short video showcasing different protein-rich smoothie recipes he makes with his new blender.
Maximizing UGC’s Impact SEO
Now that you have a general format to craft your brand’s UGC SEO strategy, here are some best practices you’ll want to consider.
Use Well-Indexed Community Platforms
When you think of building an online community, what’s the first platform that comes to mind? For many marketers, that would be Facebook or LinkedIn. However, while these are well-populated platforms with many great features, they are not the best ways to get your user-generated content indexed.
To provide community support while maintaining the privacy of your members, a private Facebook can do that. However, if you want your users to share their experience and answer questions so other prospects can benefit, these platforms will accomplish your SEO goals more effectively:
- Discourse
- Invision Community
- Higher Logic
- Reddit (if your users are already on Reddit, a subreddit can spark conversation and can be somewhat helpful for SEO)
Encourage Customers to Share
Don’t wait for your customers to share their stories; create fun and easy opportunities to encourage them.
Monitor Your Testimonials and Respond
A response to positive feedback reinforces the loop and makes your company appear engaged and personable. A proactive, helpful response to negative feedback can mitigate the impact of a negative response. No matter what users are saying, make sure you’re monitoring and responding no matter what users say. Reputation management software can assist.
Integrate UGC Into Your Website
If you sell products, integrating UGC into your product pages provides powerful social proof. In other industries, you can develop specific pages or sections highlighting customer reviews, testimonials, and user-submitted photos or videos.
Your Expert Partners in SEO Content
At ContentWriters, our extensive team of experienced writers, editors, proofreaders, and account managers can help you optimize your SEO efforts. From strategy to execution, we have the experience and expertise you need. Connect with us today to take your digital presence to the next level. Learn more about our SEO writing services.
Joan Weisman’s strong research skills, SEO knowledge, adaptability of style and voice, and passion for staying current make her an asset for freelance web content, SEO, and copywriting.
