UGC: Scaling Up SEO Success

Deck from Tory's presentation to the TOFU Content Marketing Community in November 2023. Live edition can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/live/VH2HvgiEGSE?si=mjHwE-kwv1Aeb8mr

Learn:
- What user-generated content is (and why it's so much more than social content)
- What SEO-boosting user-generated content looks like (with tonne of examples from the wild)
- How to encourage high-quality user-generated content from customers
- How to set up your user-generated content program (and optimize it for SEO)

Transcript

1. UGC: Scaling Up SEO Success
2. Meet… Me!
3. What we’ll cover What is it? Expanding definitions Why it matters Setting & scaling up When & where can we get it
4. Listen… There’s more to UGC than you might think.
5. What marketing thinks UGC is #1 #2
6. What SEO thinks UGC is (usually) #3 #4
8. More UGC examples: https://thegray.company/blog/user-generated-content-examples
9. Cool, but why should I care? • Brand awareness • Social proof • Site traffic • Partnership opps • Link building opps • Free content! • AUTHENTIC content customized to real human experiences
10. SGE, *cough cough* maybe? *hint hint* More details: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how- ugc-help-you-optimize-googles-sea rch-generative-experience-gray/ https://blog.google/products/search/ generative-ai-search/
11. We think you should love UGC, too.
12. Okay, okay I want it. When can I get it? Brand Affinity Relevancy Incentives! Shelf Life
13. HOW do I make this all happen?
14. Ask Yourself: • Who’s the target audience? • What sorts of content are they engaging with today? • Can you identify any existing user demand (maybe via search query data)? • Can UGC fulfill this demand effectively (fully or partially)? • …. Or, does an existing UGC create SEO problems you need to solve?
15. If your UGC program can grow…
16. Think Through: Permissions • Confirm and explicitly get permission to publish, promote, or share the content for marketing purposes. • Get confirmation of ownership. • Set guidelines for tagging and accreditation, and republishing permissions. • Stated ownership ≠ (inherently) real ownership
17. Think Through: Brand Perception Where • Image use • URL setting • Header & page copy setting What • The usual suspects - profanity, nudity, politics, general hatred How • Policies & permissions • Automated checking & filtering • User-driven enforcement • Manual review
18. Think Through: Enabling Quality Submissions • Define & enable compelling/helpful/insightful forms and fields • Consider character limitations, minimums, and required fields • Give examples, show value, and consider incentives
19. Think Through: On-page Optimization • Leverage dynamic fields • … and don’t forget schema!
20. Think Through: Content Groupings • If your UGC program will scale, how will you organize it into helpful … ◦ Landing pages? ◦ Facets & filters? ◦ Categorization? • How can you optimize those?
21. Think Through: Indexing • Avoid: thin, duplicate content • Automation of: ◦ Robots Meta ◦ Canonical ◦ Robots.txt • Considering things like: ◦ Required minimums, in required fields ◦ Submittor popularity ◦ Item like/engagement • Manual overrides!
22. Problems to Rectify: User Value, Business Value
23. Let’s meet! Tory Gray CEO, Gray Dot Co @ToryGray @ToryLynne @GrayDotCo
24. Thank You!