Word-of-mouth has always been a highly effective form of advertising. In fact, over 80% of consumers will trust peer recommendations over all other advertisements. The importance of reviews has only increased as we’ve transitioned into the world of e-commerce, and what better endorsements are there than user-generated content?

But user-generated content does more than simply build brand credibility and trust. It also helps your Wirral business’s SEO – improving visibility, increasing site traffic, and gaining conversions.

With that in mind, let’s explain what user-generated content looks like and how it can dramatically impact the SEO performance of your Wirral-based website.

What is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

User-generated content (UGC) includes images, videos, audio, text, and reviews posted online by anyone who uses your product or service. If you are a business of any size, then the chances are your customers will talk about your business in content created for their personal social media pages, blogs, or forums.

The assumption is that if a business is popular, there’s a reason. New customers will often look at UGC when deciding whether to trust your brand or go to a competitor.

Five Ways User-Generated Content Can Improve Your SEO

Google and other search engines are advancing daily and can interpret and understand user intent better than ever before. UGC is a powerful addition to your SEO strategy for the following reasons:

1. Makes Use of Basic SEO Principles

When a customer writes a review of your product or service or mentions your business in a blog post, they unknowingly contribute to your SEO. Their posts contain keywords, links, or even images, which all work together to boost your Wirral SEO rankings organically.

2. Provides Google with Relevant Content

Google understands who content is published for, which encourages brands to create content that appeals to their customers, as opposed to content designed purely for search engine’s algorithms.
Google interprets UGC as a sign that your brand provides a product or service that genuinely benefits your customers. Why else would they mention your brand on their personal social media pages?

3. Helps Rank for Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific terms that have lower traffic but high conversion rates. They help you gain traffic from users with specific intent – they want an answer to their question or a solution to their problem.

Your current SEO strategy no doubt captures high volume keywords, but this increased volume makes them competitive and difficult to rank for. UGC helps you to win prominent search positions for long-tail keywords without lifting a finger yourself. Win-win!

4. Improves Social Media Optimisation

UGC boosts your business’s social signals – the human interaction metrics on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. These include likes, dislikes, shares, pins, views, and more, which help illustrate brand popularity.

Search engines look at and factor in social signals when determining whether your brand is trustworthy or not. UGC increases your brand mentions which in turn encourages user engagement and trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.

5. Saves Time

Running a UGC campaign means that your customers create content on your behalf. And while it is definitely less direct than typical SEO strategies, utilising UGC is an increasingly valuable way to build brand trust and encourage further customer engagement.

Making use of UGC saves you both time and precious digital marketing resources, which you can then pour into improving your performance on other vital SEO metrics.

Choose Ctrl Alt Create to Benefit from a Holistic SEO Approach For Your Wirral Business

By now, you should understand just how much UGC can benefit your business and your overall SEO performance.

Weaving UGC into your digital marketing strategy can take some practice, but is well worth the effort. By encouraging your customers to talk about your brand on their social media and similar platforms, you can reap the benefits of increased engagement, a boost to your organic rankings, and higher conversions.

Here at Ctrl Alt Create, we are experts in creating all-encompassing SEO campaigns that include ideas that help your company develop positive UGC.

So if you aren’t sure where to get started, contact us today to learn more about UGC and all things SEO.