User Generated Content and SEO (Part 6)

So, let’s wrap this discussion up.

The bottom line is that UGC can be your best friend if you really make a point of encouraging and managing it.  Its value will be minimal if you don’t get the snowball rolling and its negative repercussions can be severe if you’re not willing to tend to it correctly.

Think about it, though.  You can have countless people develop a personal stake in returning to your site.  You can create vital hubs of activity within a niche.  You can have a massive crew of niche-educated writers supplying your site with new, fresh, original content.  You can start getting more long-tail traffic from the search engines and you can even boost your performance with respect to your bigger, more competitive keywords.  

That’s a hefty list of advantages.  If you’re site is in a space that will lend itself to UGC and you’re willing to take on the responsibilitiy for managing the content as it pours in, it can be a spectacular strategy.

I thought we’d close this series of posts on UGC and SEO by providing you with some additional resources on the subject.  If you’re going to make a play for more UGC at your site, these will make some excellent foundational reading.

Lee Odden, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, User Generated Content for SEO.

Industrial Search Engine Marketing, Take Advantage of User Generated Content.

SearchWritten, Checklist User Generated Content and SEO.

Search Engine Roundtable, SEO and User Generated Content

Search Engine Roundtable, Maximizing SEO Returns with User Generated Content

Search Engine Land, The Search Engine Friendly Appeal of User Generated Content 

SEOptimize, User Generated Content Can Ruin Your SEO

Wet Paint Injected Blog, User Generated Content Requires a New Kind of SEO