Yep its an old chestnut, we all know that Google loves content; fresh regularly updated content. But generating content is a pain in the backside, its very very time consuming to write good quality content regularly.
So, what better than to encourage your visitors to write it for you? This is what happened with my recent Prince Concert Review post. A few weeks ago I posted a review of the awesomely fantastic Prince gig at the O2 in London, because this blog ranks well in Google and has a little bit of "authority" it started showing up high for all sorts of Prince related search terms. This in turn attracted a few people who had been to the concert to post their own reviews, on this very blog.
Now these reviews brought some additional content to my page and gave the search engines some more "food". So my post then started showing up for even more search terms and therefore attracted more visitors. And the new visitors posted some more content, which Google lapped up and the circle of life (or something like it) went round and round.
So I'm now in a situation where this 1 blog post has attracted 256 comments. And as the concerts haven't finished yet then I'm sure there will be more to come. Some users have even started to use it as a type of message board to chat to each other. Thats cool though, I am happy to help Prince fans communicate.
So, moral of the story? Well, I guess its all about encouraging your users to participate in your blog by leaving comments. So, time for some more tips for encouraging commentators and managing them.
1. Allow comments. Some blogs don't, believe it or not. I just see this as madness, why wouldn't your want your users not to communicate with you?
2. Install the Akismet anti-spam plugin for WordPress. This really is a clever piece of jiggery pokery. Since I moved over to WordPress in May, Akismet has automatically detected and blocked over 7000 spam comments automatically.
3. Install the Link Love plugin. This is a WordPress plugin that removes the rel=”nofollow” bit from your hyperlink in the comments after you have had something to say at least 10 times. This then "rewards" your regular contributors with some link love from your blog. Because as default WordPress doesn't share link juice by using the nofollow tag as standard. Thanks to Fraser for making me aware of this plugin. However, I've just installed it but it pretty much blew up my comments so have had to uninstall it. Fraser, I will catch you on MSN tomorrow to see what I've done wrong!
4. Install the Top Commentators plugin. This displays a "top 10 chart" of the people who comment the most on your blog. Its just a nice way to say thanks for taking part. N.B. I haven't installed this yet but its coming soon!
5. Write long descriptive blog titles for the search engines to love up. You will notice that my Prince concert review post wasn't just called "Prince Concert Review" it was called "Prince concert review - O2 arena London Friday 3rd August 2007". This meant that my blog post showed for searches like "Prince at the O2", "Prince O2 seat plans", "O2 review", "Prince 2007" and so on and so on.
There you go, I hope my thoughts on commentators, plug-ins and content are useful to you. Please feel free to leave a comment, lol.
What I'm listening to right now: Robin Thicke - "The Evolution of Robin Thicke"
(user generated) content really is King, appreciate your commentators and some more blogging tips
11 Responses to (user generated) content really is King, appreciate your commentators and some more blogging tips
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about me
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
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Top tips Kieron. You mention a few pligins you’re going to add shortly but would you mind sharing those plugins you’ve already added and which you’d recommend?
Good tips Kieron.
I’ve lost count the number of blogs where i would have commented but did’nt because they required people to register before commenting.
Presumably they do this to combat Spam but as you point out Akismet is pretty effective.
I’m really beginning to regret using Blogger instead of WordPress – you miss out on all the cool toys. I had my reasons at the time but having your own blog on your own hosting account gives so much more flexibility.
At least I had the sense to use Feedburner so at least when I do decide to move to WordPress I won’t lose all my RSS subscribers.
I’ve been using a non-nofollow plugin on my blog for a while. Considering any spammy posts get removed anyway, it makes sense to
I never noticed!
Now 260 comments, amazing!
Just shows what the searches engines can do for you, not just ppc. Was a good enthusiastic fan post though, and that was probably what inspired the quantity of comments.
Good stuff Kieron. Looks like another plug-in installation afternoon for me. Thanks for the tips.
I agree 100%.. It was partially due to user-generated content that my website became so popular.. it was such a big factor that I wrote about this in my eBook – using almost the same words you used in your post (did you read my ebook?) .. Visitors generate your content, the GoogleBot eats up the content which brings more visitors, who, you guessed it – generate more content.
Content truly IS king !
No, I don’t do eBooks.
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Its amazing that you can get so much unique content by making a post as a designer unique content takes forever. Been looking to put a blog together and your recommendations for additions like the spam filtering (Akismet) and top commentators are great. Thanks for the heads up.