We all know by now how critical it is to have a steady supply of fresh content for many SEO reasons, but knowing this really is only a small amount of the battle. If you’ve got a site to run, you still either have to find content, or create it yourself, and that can take a lot of time and effort, and also takes away your focus from other things. So what’s the answer? Quite possibly, user generated content.
What Is User Generated Content?
User generated content is literally anything that your followers, or people who read your website contribute. It can be a simple blog comment, a review of one of your products, an image that has been shared on your site by a follower or even social media updates by your consumers.
How Does User Generated Content Help You?
Quite simply it helps in a number of ways, but in terms of SEO, every single piece of user generated content is an arrow for all of the major search engines to your website. Imagine you have an e-commerce site, which sells products much the same as many other e-commerce sites. You may have product descriptions that are very similar to other sites out there. First off, Google Panda is not going to be your friend, and secondly, how are you going to get ahead of the field? With a good amount of user generated content out there directly relating to your individual products on sale, you have every chance of being picked up by those search engines, desperately trying to seek out information to try to separate all of these sites. Effectively, any unique content on the web about your site or company is a good thing, and needs encouraging and embracing!
How Do I Make the Most of User Generated Content?
The importance of course, is how you use, user generated content. It’s probably there already, but if you’re not aware of it, you can’t take advantage of it. One of the most important things you can do is to go out there and find it. Keep a very close eye on social media platforms to find out who is talking about you, and what they are saying. A good example is if you came across someone who is talking positively about your brand. You can obviously use this to your advantage, but perhaps most importantly, finding a few comments is going to start to help you to build up an idea of how your brand is being thought of.
How Can You Increase User Generated Content?
Since we know user generated content is good for your site, your brand, and your SEO, it’s obviously a good idea to get more of it, but how can you do that if it is out of your control? The simple answer is to bring it within your control! You can quite easily run social media campaigns, offering some sort of reward for the best review of your product, or the best photo of something you are trying to sell. All of these efforts will be uploaded onto said social media sharing site, and immediately, there’s more user generated content directly related to your product or brand, right there on the internet!
User generated content can be a huge positive influence on your company or site, but getting a handle on what’s being produced right now, and finding ways to increase the generation of this content, are key.