Winning SGE with User-Generated Content

Slide 1

Slide 1 text

Slide 2

Slide 2 text

Meet… me!

Slide 3

Slide 3 text

What we’ll cover The AI & SGE landscape Why & how UGC can help How to launch It What to make

Slide 4

Slide 4 text

What’s happening?

Slide 5

Slide 5 text

(2019-2022) Everyone’s talking about TikTok

Slide 6

Slide 6 text

(2019-2022) Everyone’s adding “on Reddit”

Slide 7

Slide 7 text

(2022) Hello, “Voices” More: https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-discussions-forums-news/

Slide 8

Slide 8 text

(2023) Hello, SGE More: https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/

Slide 9

Slide 9 text

(2023) Hello, Perspectives More: https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-perspectives/

Slide 10

Slide 10 text

(2024) Hello, Forums

Slide 11

Slide 11 text

(2024) Hello, Reddit

Slide 12

Slide 12 text

But… why?

Slide 13

Slide 13 text

Information gain

Slide 14

Slide 14 text

Turns out people like… people

Slide 15

Slide 15 text

UGC connects the dots for Google (and users, too)

Slide 16

Slide 16 text

Enter… UGC

Slide 17

Slide 17 text

What… is it, again?

Slide 18

Slide 18 text

Meaningful product reviews More on SGE & UGC: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-ugc-help-you-optimize-googles-search-generative -experience-gray/

Slide 19

Slide 19 text

No content

Slide 20

Slide 20 text

More UGC examples: https://thegray.company/blog/user-generated-content-examples

Slide 21

Slide 21 text

Ask yourself… ● Who’s the target audience? ● What sorts of content do they engage with today? ● Can you identify any existing, perhaps under-served user demand? ● How effectively does that tie to your user’s journey? ● Can UGC fulfill this demand effectively (fully or partially)... ● …or, does existing UGC create SEO problems you need to solve?

Slide 22

Slide 22 text

For what beneﬁt?

Slide 23

Slide 23 text

How does it help me? SEO Partner- ships Brand Marketing

Slide 24

Slide 24 text

… how, exactly?

Slide 25

Slide 25 text

Business Logistics

Slide 26

Slide 26 text

Think through… Separating Brand-Content from User-Content Ensure users can quickly & easily differentiate the things that your brand created, vs. your user base.

Slide 27

Slide 27 text

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 ● Visual design

Slide 28

Slide 28 text

Think through… Permissions ● Confirm and explicitly get permission to publish, promote, or share the content for marketing purposes. ● Set guidelines for tagging, accreditation, and republishing permissions. ● Ask users to confirm that they own the content they share.

Slide 29

Slide 29 text

Think through… Spam & scams ● Opportunity ○ Will you allow links? ○ Can they contact your users? ● Developer-led ○ User verification: Emails, 2FA ○ Akismet (Captcha!) ○ Planning & research: patterns to block/isolate ○ Monitoring & response ● User–led ○ Moderators ○ Reporting mechanisms

Slide 30

Slide 30 text

Quality, at scale

Slide 31

Slide 31 text

Think through… Prompting quality submissions ● Define & enable compelling/helpful/insightful forms and fields ● Consider character limitations, minimums, and required fields ● Give examples, show value, and consider incentives

Slide 32

Slide 32 text

Think through… On-page optimization ● Leverage dynamic fields ● … and don’t forget schema!

Slide 33

Slide 33 text

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 them?

Slide 34

Slide 34 text

Think through… Indexing ● Avoid thin, duplicate content ● Automate: ○ Robots Meta ○ Canonical ○ Robots.txt ● Consider things like: ○ Required minimums in required fields ○ Submittor popularity ○ Item like/engagement ● Include manual overrides