Optimizing User Generated Content

Posted by JohnCarcutt
February 8, 2006

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

As Web 2.0 expands its reach into our Internet work spaces, we are faced with the growing challenge of optimizing content which we have no control over. User generated content or UGC is becoming one of the primary forms of content generation online. The proliferation of new content delivery systems such as Blogs or Wikis and new virtual community structures such as MySpace or Flickr are changing the way people use and interface with the Internet. People now not only expect to find information online, they expect to be able to create it on the fly as well.

The challenge to the SEO in this environment has become one of foundation building. These new UGC sites typically have an automated engine that facilitates the users content creation. This engine can be in the form of blog software, wiki software or any number of other types of content management systems (CMS). Out of the box, most of the engines are not very SEO friendly. If the SEO is lucky, they can get in on the ground floor of custom built CMS systems and help to direct the development team to a SEO/Search friendly end product. Otherwise, optimizing the sites built on pre-packaged systems can be very tedious. Most of the time it entails custom code and even some changes to the basic structure of the system. Your IT dept may not take kindly to you requesting custom coding when they spend the time and effort to pick the program that that worked best under their specifications.

Lets talk about some specific items that may help optimizing a content engine.

First, its rather obvious that a large portion (if not all) of these types of sites will be using dynamically generated pages. You need to do your best to make sure these pages are search friendly from the outset. Suggest creating a mod-rewrite tool to remove parameters from the URL strings. If this is not possible, make sure your Dev team understands that having more than 3 parameters in a URL is extremely detrimental to getting the pages indexed in the search engines. An additional issue with dynamic pages is that they are built off of templates. In a template, there are two types of code, static code (the template) and dynamic code (imported data). It is VERY important to make sure the dynamic data portion of the page is well over 50% of the pages’ code. Less than 50% and your sites’ pages are not unique enough, risking the dreaded “Duplicate Content” penalty. One of the easiest ways to help do this is with extensive use of CSS.

The technology used to build the dynamic pages is key as well. While most web scripting languages will be fine, some are still not read or understood my the search spiders. Stay away from anything javascript if at all possible. If you must use it, make sure that any javascript is located in external files and not directly in the page code. PHP, ASP and .net are all search friendly if used correctly. AJAX is one of the newer coding choices and from early impressions seems to be search friendly as well.

Most of the time it seems javascript is used to do flashy cosmetic trickery. Things like mouse over effects can now be done using style sheets. Using CSS to its full capabilities will be another major set to optimizing these content engines. CSS can be assigned dynamically which will give the user the custom feel they will probably want while keeping the underlying code sound and clean. Many SEOs use CSS to some degree already, but I can stress enough here that “Complete CSS integration” will be key to keeping these UGC pages indexed. Remember during template page brainstorms to be mindful of how content is used on a page. Will pages have headings, bullet lists, paragraphs of text, images? Meta tags should be dynamic, images should have “alt” tags etc. etc. Basic SEO must apply to these templates.

Since we are trending towards giving users wide control over the content they create, they will inevitably link out to other web pages. Since linking to bad neighborhoods can get a site in serious trouble, it would be a good idea to make sure your system includes the nofollow tag in all user created off site links. While this will eliminate some of the good having a fresh new stream of outgoing links could create, the risk out weighs the rewards.

There is allot to consider and any new project will have unique situations to resolve. But keep your eyes focused on best practice SEO and do everything you can to help the automated content engine produce web pages that are search friendly. UGC will do the rest.