Take Advantage of User-Generated Content Part 1: Customer Reviews

Filed under: General — Red Rider

This is the first in a three part series exploring the relationship between UGC (user generated content) and SEO, and how you can take advantage of user generated content to potentially boost your search engine rankings. Together, we will explore Customer Reviews, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and Problem Solving Issues with UGC.

You’ve more than likely participated in a forum discussion, posted on a blog or message board, or written a review for a product or service, and if so, you have created ‘user generated content’. Other examples of UGC are: wikis, social networking sites, trip planners or travel sites, customer review sites, experience or photo sharing sites, news sites or any other website that offers the opportunity for a web user to share their knowledge and familiarity with a product or experience.

The importance of UGC to the consumer/marketer relationship is on the rise. Consumers are relying increasingly on UGC when making purchasing decisions. For example, online product reviews and evaluations were cited by 83% of shoppers as influencing their purchasing decisions* and nearly one-half of adults in the US regularly read ratings or reviews at least one a month.**

Businesses are also relying on UGC to influence their conversion rates. For example, a case study of a large electronics retailer website showed that visitors landing on user review pages spent 50% more time on the site, viewed 82% more pages and and conveted 60% more often than visitors on other pages.***

From the point of view of SEO, Neislen Buzz Metrics reports that 26% of all search results link to user-generated content. With web users increasingly relying on UGC to make purchasing and value-judgement decisions and the fact that search engines are regularly ranking UGC, its clear that finding ways to harness UGC in an SEO program is key to staying competitive!

As a business, you often rely on customer feedback to gauge the quality of your products and services. By integrating a UGC area in your website, you take advantage of the powerful and traditional ‘word of mouth’ referral system, but in an online setting.

Integrate ‘Customer Reviews’ Into Your Website

There are quite a few strategies to integrating reviews into your business website:

Featured Reviews, where reviews with the highest ratings appear nearer to the top of the page, but never with all positive at the top and all negative at the bottom, as your users might consider that manipulation of your reviews.
Inviting ‘opt in’ email purchasers to review the product with a non-monetary incentive
Make sure that all reviews passing your spam tests go lilve right away. Timely updates are good for your rankings!
Don’t ‘silo’ positive and negative reviews into separate areas of the site. Keep all reviews in the same place and keep any negative reviews to provide authenticity to your reviews in general and allow you to offer solutions to any problems with your product or service.

You can also take your review opportuntiies offsite, by encouraging your customers to review your business at internet yellow pages and local search sites such as Yahoo Local, Google Maps, etc. Top search engines such as Google use the reviews of a business in determining its rank in local search results and reviews can often make or break your placement in the search engines. The more good quality reviews you have, the higher your rank! Ask your SEO account manager about local search optimization opportunities for your business!

User Generated Content