Indexation technique
Indexation is the much less glamorous however all too vital facet of user-generated content material. Whereas UGC is usually a catapult in scaling search engine optimization, it’s a matter of surfacing the consumer submissions that greatest help your targets. Some could also be spammy, low-quality, and even damaging to your model.
High quality is the crux of indexation
Further tech search engine optimization issues are at play when figuring out what content material Google ought to crawl and index. Some of the widespread and detrimental points is skinny content material, which dilutes your search engine optimization over time. Exhausting your crawl finances also can turn out to be an issue at a sure scale, which occurs shortly as UGC positive factors traction.
To constantly obtain the specified high quality degree, audit your UGC types and optimize fields to gather the content material you wish to index. For instance, you’ll be able to embrace required fields, ask the precise questions, and implement character-count minimums to make sure customers present enough data.
It’s a fragile stability to find out necessities to maximise the standard AND fee of consumer submissions. For instance, you don’t wish to require many fields that discourage customers from submitting. It’s price contemplating robotically deindexing content material that doesn’t meet your required minimums, versus not permitting customers to add it within the first place.
Construct automation into your indexation technique
Enhancing the system you utilize to supply content material can create a extra sturdy pool of UGC high quality. Since low-quality UGC can slip by the cracks, constructing automation into your indexation technique is important.
The meta robots directive is likely one of the most important instruments at your disposal, which tells Google whether or not to index a web page by way of an “index” or “noindex” tag. One potential strategy to keep away from skinny content material points is robotically setting the meta robots tag on new UGC pages. You may base this on high quality management components just like the variety of fields the consumer crammed out, the character rely of particular essential fields, or comparable circumstances.