Take Advantage of User-Generated Content Pt 3-Problem Solving Issues with UGC

This is the third part 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 have explored Customer Reviews, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and now, Problem Solving Issues with UGC.  You can read part one here and part two here.

If you have participated in a forum discussion, posted on a blog or message board, or written a review for a product or service, 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.

User generated content can be of great benefit to your website, but there are potential issues with it, however, that you should be aware of.

Spam Management

Whenever you allow the general public to communicate with you via online forms, blogs, etc, you open yourself up for not-so-positive communications, such as spam comments.  You’ll want to ensure that your content management system, forms, or blog are enabled to provide spam management.  For example, a CAPTCHA can do wonders for cutting out spammy form submissions.  With your blog, you’ll always want to run anonymous commentary or feedback through a spam detection program before comments are made live.  You can easily change your blog settings to provide a customized level of spam-prevention.  If all goes well, you’ll receive mountains of communication, but you want spam protection in place to help sift through the communications and winnow out the illigitimate comments, emails, and such.

Total Transparency?

While you might want to have completely open communication with your customers, you must also have standards in place to ensure that your visitors know what you consider spam or inappropriate commentary.  To help visitors understand what your standards are, you can include a link to a page that explains the Code of Conduct for your blog or forum, or which describes what you consider spam.  You can also provide information on how to contact you if their posts or questions aren’t addressed in a timely manner or haven’t showed up online in a reasonable timeframe.  Always ensure that posts to blogs or forums aren’t set for immediate visibility and that they are properly filtered, as you want to always have control over what is said about your products, brand, etc.  You also have control over how your online customers are treated by others, so be sure to watch for flaming, harassment and any other breach of online etiquette.

You always want to be proactive when handling your UGC.  Keep an eye out for what others are saying about you and act accordingly.  For example, Google offers a free online reputation management tool called Google Alerts, which allows you to monitor your company name or brand.  Should you find that someone has made a negative comment about your company online, take steps to respond and control the situation.  You can re-post the negative commentary on your own blog and respond to it with clear, genuine feedback, and link out to positive reviews elsewhere on your site or you could comment on the negatiove post with your own feedback and suggestions to visit your positive reviews, etc.

User generated content can be a truly powerful SEO and brand management tool.  With strategic handling and diplomatic and honest communications, your UGC can work hard for you!

Source material: “The Dynamic Duo of User Generated Content & SEO”  Search Marketing Standard, Spring 09  

Share this: