Category Archives: Social software

Driving SEO revenue from user generated content

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It’s great to come across a slide-share on the valuable topic of generating SEO revenue from your user generated content, as that’s certainly a topic I worked on at Shopping.com post-Google Panda to try and raise our ranking. What has used to be called social media optimization (SMO) has now migrated to the more specific term ‘social SEO’ in an era when reviews and guides are increasingly core to e-commerce success, and when getting full SEO value from them post-Panda can make a measurable dollar difference.

A top 40 comparison HD TV product guide enabled for SEO purposes on Shopping.com UK

There my approach was to research four or five keywords, based on a combination of share of voice (SOV) and keyword competition, using Google Adwords tool as the now defunct Google Wonder Wheel tool. I then employed Gemma and Tim at The Copywriting People to write guide text for a trial 40 comparison product guides using those chosen keywords, taking the choice of products from our most popular products for the month of May. What I have heard since then (thanks to this webinar with the founder of Trackur, from Hubspot: 23:00 mins) as a tactic to improve backlinks from top blogs is to use a social tracking tool based on keywords you are focusing on, and spotting when top bloggers are writing on a relevant subject. Then reaching out to them to see if they’d review your product, or leave a comment on that blog piece with a link back to your content without making the content too ‘spammy’. You can try this out with Alterian’s free SM2 tool for example.

To measure the effect I recorded the ranking of the products on Shopping.com UK and DealTime UK at the outset. Then with the aim of returning 6 weeks later to record the results.

For comparison check out the slideshare in question below from PowerReviews, which details how to self-assess your own ugc value for SEO – based on the estimate that 60% of US e-commerce sites which carry reviews don’t get full SEO value from them.

It may also worth checking out the Smart SEO tool launch by Bazaarvoice earlier this year. Clearly there’s a real demand for such a product/service in the marketplace, the trick as always is to match a method which fits your budget and delivers to your ‘social commerce‘ objectives.

Webinar: Social SEO – Drive More Traffic with User-generated Content

How to Build an Online Community Using Rich and Social Media

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The summary for my BrightTALK webinar on 12 October 15 November, below. I believe we already have 70 150 subscribers, so please join the party – starts 9am!

I will look at both how to use rich and social media within your community to add more engagement; and how to use social tools externally to reach out to potential new members. But the business bottom line is that you’re investing time and money in using the new tools because they add value for the end user, so they feel amazing, and come back for more.

I’m a great believer in only using social & rich media where it supports the growth strategy to build your online community. Set in this context the kind of tools and when you deploy them depends on what’s going to appeal to community members. For example a B2B community for accountants may initially involved relatively little rich social media, except for the opportunity to share the content externally.

It’s all too easy for community managers to launch communities with all the bells and whistles, without considering whether they are wanted by members in any depth. As well as strategy this underlines the need for proper analytics which show where you’re being successful, and where you need to make greater efforts.

I should know, having set up a YouTube channel at Shopping.com it gained a lot of appreciation from my colleagues, but attracted few visits as it was tactically rather than strategically led. So please learn from my experience, and consider the strategically-led approach to using rich media within your community, and externally to reach out to new members, outlined in this webinar.