Are you harnessing the power of your audience?
If you were to brainstorm all the words that describe a product of yours, do you think your audience members would think of the same words to describe the product?
At the SES Conference in New York City, Michael DeHaven, SEO Product Manager at Bazaarvoice, presented an example that did just that.
DeHaven’s slide showed the terms a company used to describe a product, and then showed the terms the audience used to describe the same product.
For instance, he showed 153 descriptive words used by a restaurant. The employees of the restaurant used the terms “Pacific”, “selections” and “steak” the most. These words serve as a description of the menu and the location.
The consumers used words like “great”, “special” and “view” the most. These user generated comments appear to describe the experience more than the restaurant itself.
It’s no surprise that people have different perceptions on the same thing. Business professionals who are selling a product, will tend to look at it from the standpoint of trying to sell the product. Their opinions, although true, may slant towards a promotional aspect so that a product will be purchased.
Users, on the other hand, will tend to describe the experience associated with a product or service.
This differing in opinion can be great if properly utilized.
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User generated content fills gaps
With businesses describing products or services and consumers discussing experiences, there is a lot of content associated with the conversation. When conversations are active, and user generated content is present, Google will be more interested in picking up the conversation.
In other words, user generated content will help build credibility within Google, which can lead to better page rank.
Three E’s of User Generated Content
According to DeHaven, user generated content can help your online business in three main ways:
-Enrich: By adding user generated content to your website, you will be adding freshness and a rich feel to your existing pages.
-Expose: An interactive archive of user generated content may end up increasing long-tail traffic as associated keywords may be used by users. Flowing content in and out of the page will keep it frequently updated. Do this process every 2 1/2 days if you have a lot of content; if not don’t have a lot of content, do it every 2 1/2 weeks.
-Engage: Turning users into contributors will help increase the amount of content within your website while facilitating conversations with your audience.
How to get user generated content
During this session, DeHaven mentioned three ways of obtaining user generated content. These include:
-Leveraging user generated content in promotional pieces
-Draw attention with inline user generated content
-Invite users into the conversation
The article pages that receive the most traffic at the Mequoda Daily all have comments from users. We believe Google rewards publishers for engaging their audience and having a conversation based around the content. According to the session, user generated content like product reviews increase search traffic by 23%.
One final piece of advice: never moderate your user generated content. An occasional negative comment will show credibility behind the content.
Have you making strides to adopt user generated content into your website? What methods have you used for getting comments from users? Please share your experiences below.
