What is User-Generated Content?

User-generated content is quite literally content generated by users. It can take many forms, including reviews, testimonials, pictures, videos, audio, and more.

As a business owner, you should jump at any chance at user-generated content as it significantly improves your SEO. Like building backlinks, optimizing social media profiles, and planning marketing campaigns, user-generated content can build credibility, boost visibility, and reach a wider audience, all with minimal effort.

In this article, an SEO expert in Orange County, Drive Traffic Media, highlights and goes into detail on why user-generated content is so beneficial for your brand.

You Get New, Diverse Content

Coming up with new and interesting content regularly can burn you out fairly quickly, so why not get exciting insights from your customers? Not only do you get fresh content for your brand, but you also get to improve customer interaction, boost visibility, and save time and effort on marketing campaigns!

Say that you’re an online store selling cookies, for example. You’ve done all that you could, but you’re not generating any new leads, and your business seems to be at a standstill. What better way to spice things up by conducting a survey and asking your customers what kind of new cookie flavor they’d like to see released next? Here, you gain valuable insights into your customers’ behavior and also come up with ideas for new products.

Seems impossible? Not really. Oreo did exactly that by hosting a contest and releasing fun, limited-edition flavors like Churro, Firework, Pina Colada, and Kettle Corn through it.

Another way of having new content is by reposting user-generated content on your website or social media profiles (with permission, of course). Encourage your customers to post on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok with your product and tag you for easy sharing. You can also get a challenge going, like when Jif challenged people to rap with a mouthful of peanut butter!

2. It’s a Confirmed Ranking Factor

Did you know that user-generated content is a confirmed ranking factor for SEO? Google tends to rank websites with user-generated content higher than others because customer feedback has always been a huge factor in a buyer’s journey—the more prospective customers see people enjoying your product or service, the likelier they are to purchase from you.

Keep in mind that Google doesn’t just accept any user-generated content. It has to be real and accurate, which means that you can’t just start flooding your website with fake 5-star reviews. This is a very shady practice, and even if Google’s crawlers won’t catch it, your readers certainly will. In fact, people tend to trust 5-star significantly less than 4-star ones, as they’re aware that not every product is made perfect.

User-generated content also needs to be free from malicious links, which is a characteristic found in most spam comments. User safety and experience still trump all, and Google will demote any website that makes searchers vulnerable to cyberattack.

So, you should always have a secure review system in place on your e-commerce website. Only accept reviews from people who have actually bought from you, and actively look for comments that seem out of place or are risky-looking.

3. It Helps Build Credibility

As we mentioned earlier, people are more likely to buy from your brand if they see things like reviews, pictures, and videos on your website and social media profiles. That’s because user-generated content offers unique insights—they’re coming from people who have bought your products and felt strongly enough about them to post something about it. Research has shown that the number of real, positive reviews on a product is directly correlated to its sales.

Think about the last time you browsed through Amazon. Weren’t you naturally attracted to the products with the most reviews? Didn’t you actively avoid or ignore ones with negative or no reviews? Didn’t you feel more confident about your purchase after seeing a detailed review with pictures?

Think about all the times you were browsing Instagram and YouTube too. Have you ever seen a product advertised so much by influencers and regular users that you felt compelled to check it out for yourself? Didn’t you enjoy looking through their photos and videos even if you didn’t have the product yourself?

That’s what user-generated content does. It makes your brand look more reputable and relatable!

4. It Keeps Readers Browsing Longer

Valuable and engaging content is a must for your e-commerce website. It increases the time they spend scrolling through, thereby keeping bounce rates to a minimum. One type of content sometimes isn’t enough, and you’ll need to diversify with all sorts of formats from not only yourself but also your customers.

For example, I’m easily impressed by bold, fun pictures that appeal to my visual senses. If your website has more text than pictures, I’ll be less likely to stay longer as there’s just nothing else to look at. In the same way, people who love reading might get bored scrolling through a website full of pictures, and people who read reviews religiously before buying anything might be turned off by a website without any reviews.

Additionally, you need to diversify. Content will inevitably become stale the more it’s used and reused, so it’s good to experiment and branch out to something new. This way, there’ll be something for everyone on your website that will make their user experience more memorable.

Conclusion

Having user-generated content on your website is a highly effective and reliable way of boosting your search engine rankings. It’s a great way of interacting with your customers and coming up with new content for your website, so get on out there and start incorporating user-generated content into your marketing strategy.

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