What Is a UGC and How Do You Use It to Boost SEO Success?

User-generated content, or UGC, has been a hot topic for a while. Brands and marketers are embracing it for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness, and it seems to bring excellent results across a variety of media.

While many brands already recognize the effectiveness of a solid user-generated content strategy for building trust and attracting new leads nearly effortlessly, not many realize its massive potential for search engine optimization. In this guide, we’ll explore the role of UGC in improving your brand awareness and rankings and share some effective tips on how you can start gaining the most out of it right now.

What Is a UGC?

In short, it’s just what it sounds like. The abbreviation UGC stands for user-generated content. The term is used to define any form of content created by an individual rather than a company or its employees. It can take many forms, including video, photo, text, etc. And it’s incredibly trending now. You can see user-generated content examples everywhere, including such big brands as Apple, Coca-Cola, and many others.

The Role and Advantages of User-Generated Content for SEO and Business

The main characteristics of UGC are authenticity and first-hand experience because this form of content is typically developed by people who aren’t experts in the field, and who just want to share their experience with others. And that’s what makes it so powerful today.

Today, consumers no longer appreciate traditional advertising as much as they used before—they use YouTube ad blockers and click “close” as soon as they can when an ad appears on the screen. This happens because people no longer see such marketing as worth trusting. They find it plastic.

UGC, on the other hand, comes directly from regular users that other consumers can relate to more easily. They feel like the creators of such copy share their pain points, problems, and values. This creates an unparalleled sense of bonding and trust. No wonder, 55% of people of all ages tend to trust UGC more than other marketing strategies.

Besides trust, there are also a few more benefits of UGC for SEO, in particular:

• Lots of fresh and authentic copy delivered under your brand’s name.
• An enhanced diversity of primary and secondary keywords that users put in their copy naturally.
• More active use of high-purpose, long-tail keywords.
• Greater engagement from the audience and better dwell time.
• Increased authority and trust through social proof.

All in all, using user-generated content marketing and SEO together can help you expand your content without additional investment, enhance semantic relevance, boost your core metrics, and thus, rank higher in search engines. Additionally, some types of UGC, such as comments and reviews published on third-party sites, can also include links to your website, which will expand your backlink profile and drive extra traffic.

Bonus tip: Although receiving more backlinks (especially from real customers) is generally a good thing, it’s worth remembering that not all backlinks are good for your rankings. Thus, it’s important to leverage specialized tools to monitor and moderate UGC and backlinks it gives you to get rid of any toxic or irrelevant mentions. You can explore the list of best SEO tools of 2025 to find solutions that will help you get the most out of your UGC SEO.

Top Tips for Encouraging and Managing UGC

1. Encourage People to Participate

If you are wondering how to get user-generated content, one way to stimulate it is by creating special activities that encourage people to participate and create UGC for your brand. Different kinds of competitions and challenges work great for this purpose.

All you need is to plan an event that will encourage users to share something related to your brand, let’s say a photo, review, or anything else. Then, use the channels you have to spread the word about it—post an announcement about an upcoming competition or challenge on your website and social media.

2. Offer an Incentive

After you announce your competition or challenge, most likely, you won’t see many willing to participate. This is natural because most people want to get benefits for their actions, which is why a system of incentives won’t hurt.

Come up with a measurable reward your brand can offer in exchange for the best user-generated copy. For example, you can offer:

• Free products
• Free subscription to your service for a certain time
• Personalized discounts
• Cash prizes, etc.

Incentives will spark interest and stimulate more people to participate in your event. Respectively, your brand will be able to get more UGC and more chances to improve your SEO.

3. Incorporate Branded Keywords

As you already know, UGC has the potential to extend the semantic relevance of your website and brand as a whole. This happens because users can naturally integrate various short-tail and long-tail keywords into the stories they share about your brand, even without realizing it.

Of course, in most cases, they will integrate secondary and LSI keywords. However, there is a way for you to control the keywords they use.

A smart way to use UGC and strengthen SEO at the same time is by creating a branded search query or hashtag and encouraging people to use it in their copy. This tactic will let you rank for branded searches and thus, drive high-intent traffic and, hopefully, improve your conversions.

A good example of using a branded hashtag is shown by Apple. The company’s “Shot on iPhone” challenge has generated thousands of quality user-generated photos and made their products even more viral.

Source: Apple

4. Give Your Creators Some Recognition

While discounts and other incentives work well for encouraging participation, many people out there also want to be noticed. When you give them recognition and credit for creating UGC for you, it gives them a sense of participation and reward. Respectively, it will make them want to participate more.

On top of that, highlighting UGC can have two additional purposes:

• Provide social proof for your brand. Seeing UGC can build trust in people who are not familiar with your company yet. This can give you additional traffic and potential conversions, which are crucial for growth and SEO.
• Encourage more people to participate. After you highlight some UGC and reward winners, this can show others that participating in your competition or challenge is a real deal. Respectively, more people will want to join it, and you will be able to get more content.

5. Consider Working With Professional Creators

Running competitions and rewarding participants are time-tested and effective ways to encourage UGC. However, strategies like these take time and effort to get into full swing. Luckily, if you want to speed up the process, there is an alternative solution–hiring professional creators.

Due to the growing popularity and effectiveness of user-generated content, the job of a UGC creator is becoming more and more in demand. In a nutshell, people in this role are professional content creators who specialize in crafting high-quality, engaging, and brand-focused copy.

The biggest downside of this tactic is that it will require some investment in your site. The perks?—An opportunity to control the quality and content of UGC. Working with creators, you can provide a full technical assignment, specifying the form of content, keywords, and other details of UGC that you want to see.

6. Just Ask

Although it may not be the most obvious tactic, it’s definitely the most straightforward way to receive lots of content from your existing customers. All you need to do is ask them directly.

Does this really work? It sure does. The thing is that people who are already your customers and enjoy using your products or services are your loyal audience. Many of them are ready to advocate for your brand. So when you ask them to share their opinions, many of them will be willing to do it. Furthermore, when you ask for it, it will show that you care about them and their experience to many existing customers. This can enhance their trust and loyalty.

Simple Ways to Implement UGC SEO for Maximum Outcomes

Now that you know about the potential benefits and ways to encourage people to create UGC for your brand, you must be wondering how to leverage user-generated content and SEO together in order to achieve maximum outcomes. Let’s look at a few effective ways:

• Actively encourage contributions. As you now know, UGC holds huge power in SEO. Moreover, it contributes to your content variety. So the more contributions you get, the more materials you will have for enhancing your SEO strategy.
• When launching competitions or challenges, find ways to encourage relevant UGC. To do this, come up with specific guidelines for participation and communicate them clearly to your audience. For example, in your guidelines, you can clarify the specific type of content you are looking for, hashtags or keywords to be used, and so on.
• Embrace different content formats. As you should know, Google embraces all types of copy, including blogs, reviews, videos, and more. Furthermore, variety is one of the factors contributing to your SEO and growth because it lets you cater to different audience needs and boost engagement. You can look up user-generated content ideas from your competitors or the web to identify copy types that you may use for your strategy.
• Showcase the best contributions on your website and other channels. This will help you get maximum exposure and amplify the benefits. Also, don’t forget to use the rel=“ugc” attribute to signal to Google that a certain copy on your site is made by users.
• Don’t neglect the importance of local SEO. Local optimization is a great way to get in front of a broader audience and drive offline traffic to your office or store, along with the web traffic you receive from traditional SEO. Besides, local SEO gives you one more way to utilize UGC–it relies a lot on customer feedback, so you can leverage user-generated content to enhance your local strategy with social proof.

Featured Image by Freepik.