User-generated content (UGC) is content created by people outside the company: reviews, community forum threads, shared templates, tutorials, social posts and answers in a help community. For SaaS companies it can add authentic perspectives and cover far more topics than an in-house team could. It also brings risks: spam, inaccurate advice and low-quality pages that the company is still responsible for.
Types of UGC for SaaS
Some forms are especially common in software.
- Community forums and Q&A
- Template galleries with user submissions
- Reviews on the company's site or third-party review platforms
- User tutorials, videos and integrations
- Social posts and screenshots of the product in use
SEO considerations
UGC pages can rank for long-tail questions that a marketing team would never target. They also need management. Google asks sites to mark links in user-generated content with rel="ugc" or rel="nofollow", and its spam policies hold sites responsible for spam their users post. Thin or empty community pages can add many low-value URLs to the index.
<a href="https://example.com" rel="ugc">user's link</a>Moderation and rights
Set clear rules, moderate actively and make sure terms of service cover how you can use what users submit. Ask permission before featuring a user's content in marketing.
Example
A community forum that answers long-tail questions
Hypothetical company Larkspire runs a forum for its automation product. Users answer each other's questions about specific integrations. The team marks accepted answers, links forum threads to relevant docs, uses rel="ugc" on user links, and keeps threads with no replies out of the index until they are answered.
Common mistakes
Unmoderated spaces
Spam and abuse in community areas reflect on the company and can create search problems.
Using content without permission
Featuring a customer's post in ads or on the homepage without asking can damage the relationship and may breach their rights.
Questions
It can be, when it is useful and moderated. Unmoderated, thin or spammy UGC can be a liability.
