Authoritative expression in the long-tail

As with most social media firms, a key component of our business model is the creation of User Generated Content (“UGC”). However, simply having users fill your database with gobs of content is not a golden ticket to high Google rankings and massive organic search traffic. If this were the case, every Google result would be clouded with MySpace pages and random blog posts.

So why doesn’t UGC normally score high in organic search? Well, there are many reasons (we could write a pretty thick book and not cover it all) but the single biggest is that most UGC represents the voice of one person and the content is not authoritative.

Dictionary.com defines authoritative as “substantiated or supported by documentary evidence and accepted by most authorities in a field.”

So, does a blog post from Joe Public titled “The best place to SCUBA dive in North America is Key West” meet the definition of authoritative? Probably not, and if a user performs a Google search for ‘Key West SCUBA Diving’ they are not likely to find Joe’s post in the top results, but look what’s there at number 3, the Wikipedia page for ‘Key West’.

Now, if you have ever done a search on Google you have seen result listings of UGC from Wikipedia. Why do Wikipedia pages rank so high in organic search? Again, that’s a long story but the biggest reason is the authoritative nature of this content.

Wikipedia represents a collaborative effort from a large user base to provide the most authoritative content on a given topic. Instead of having all Wikipedia contributors telling their own version of the story they all work together and speak with a fact based single voice. Millions of websites then link to these Wikipedia pages for reference. This teaches Google that the content is useful and should score high in search but none of this would have ever happened if the content were not collaborative, and therefore authoritative, in the first place.

A big downside of doing UGC the Wikipedia way is that it robs people of self-expression, which is a big motivator to create UGC. For example, Wikipedia is no place for Joe’s post giving Key West the best dive spot designation. If Joe was not able to express this opinion in his writings he might not even have the desire to create the content. While Wikipedia has a fanatical user base it’s numbers pale in comparison to the people like Joe creating more expressive content on other sites.

So, our goal with the Lifefitter platform is to give our members the tools to create authoritative content without taking away the self-expression that makes UGC fun and entertaining. How are we going to do it? Well, we won’t go into all of that just yet, but stay tuned.


Post by: Jeff