When you run a blog, the most precious thing you can provide your readers with is your content. The more unique and authentic your content is the better chances to get better traffic and lots of repeat users you get.
Why do you need better traffic? Good traffic leads to more interest and better engagement of target users -> better engagement leads to better conversions -> your website becomes trusted by the search engines -> better trust equals more repeat users -> such users are more likely to become your target customers.
What is conversion? For instance, you want your visitor to fill out a contact form or buy a product, this is your goal and this is what a user should do when attending your website. If a visitor doesn’t leave your site at once and stays to complete a goal (takes a required action like filling out a contact form or buying a product) the conversion occurs. The conversion is considered to be good when a great number of all users that visited your website had taken an action and completed the desired goal.
How to make users interested and engaged? Of course, it’s great to encourage them to stay on your web-page for longer and get them to take actions. Their actions can suppose posting a comment, leaving a testimonial, a product review or feedback and even writing a guest post. All of this content is generated by users only, but of course, it impacts your SEO and your website’s reputation.
Let’s talk on types of content that users can publish on your website and how helpful each of them can be for your website development.
1. Comments
There is probably no content more unique than comments. Comments can be the desired goal you need a user to complete and can become a great way to develop your website on the way to popularity and success.
By default, WordPress comes with commenting functionality, so if you run a blog based on this CMS, then leaving a comment to your post is not a problem. Moreover, there are specific solutions for WordPress that allow to upload images in comments to make them more expressive. If you’ve got a business website, you can create a blog page and share some current business articles to get comments of interested users.
How to encourage visitors to comment your posts?
– ask questions in your posts to encourage users answer them in comments;
– send automatic email notifications on comment replies (after subscription);
– allow users to rate comments;
– show the best rated comments first.
Just keep your user informed that you are interested in their comments and participation.
2. Testimonials and Customer Reviews
Testimonials and feedbacks published by users bring a kind of social proof which means that if a user sees that others also like and approve a certain product, they are more likely to also try this product and even buy it again.
Please read our small guide on how to add a feedback form to your website and collect feedbacks on your services, products or articles.
If you run an online store, allow customers leave their reviews on every certain product page. Make this option available only for users who have already purchased a product to make sure their reviews are reliable.
You can also add a testimonial rotator on your web-page to show random customer reviews on every page update.
3. Guest Posts
Guest posts are effective both for a guest blogger and a website who accepts a post for publishing. A guest blogger can promote their product on a reputable blog, and a blog that provides a platform for publishing will receive target traffic. Of course the guest post should correspond the main direction and purpose of a blog where it is published.
If you accept guest posts, you can create a page and list the requirements for this kind of posts to be accepted, for instance: no obtrusive promotion, no referral links, etc.
If you’ve got a blog platform with front-end submission, then such posts can be published by users themselves. Of course you can enable the pre-moderation to make sure the submitted content is unique and quality one.
Conclusion:
All content published by your users influences the overall quality of all your website’s content as well as your SEO score and reputation in your niche. It’s better to control spam submission, moderate the comments and posts you receive for publishing or set reCaptcha to protect your web-page from unwanted publications.
