Sameer Samat, Director of Product Management, Google

At our annual Social Commerce Summit in Austin today, we announced a partnership with Google to introduce an industry-first program that lets brands easily share product review content from their Bazaarvoice-enabled websites with Google properties: SyndicateVoice for Search. Sameer Samat, director of product management for Google Product Search, shared the benefits of the program with a sold-out Summit audience during his presentation, “Organizing the World’s Information for Shoppers.”

This partnership is an incredibly important milestone for Bazaarvoice and for the evolution of social commerce. Why?

We know that shoppers trust customer word of mouth, such as online product reviews, more than any other type of marketing (1). At the same time, 61% of all shoppers use search engines (2), and more people use Google Product Search than any shopping portal (3). Furthermore, user-generated content is becoming increasingly dominant in search results, with over 25% of results for searches of the world’s top 20 brands linking to UGC (4).

In partnership with Google, Bazaarvoice customers can now use SyndicateVoice for Search to combine their most trusted and valuable content – authentic reviews written by their customers – with the most popular search engine in the world to attract the most qualified shoppers to their site.

While this is a big win for brands, who face increasing competition for consumer attention and shopper loyalty each day, the real win is for consumers, who can now quickly find the information they need to make the right purchase decisions for their needs. We’re “democratizing commerce” by enabling consumers’ authentic feedback to help shoppers find exactly what they need, shifting more control of the shopping experience to the most important person in the process — the shopper.

For more information, check out Google’s blog post on the partnership, see their Google Product Reviews Program site, or read our official announcement.

(1) Edelman Trust Barometer, 2006-2009
(2) Compete Online Shopper Intelligence study, February 22, 2010
(3) Comparison Shopping Rankings from CPC Strategy, LLC, April 14, 2010
(4) Socialnomics 2009

Ajay Tejwani, Social Media Strategist, USAA

This blog post is guest-written by Ajay Tejwani, Social Media Strategist for USAA. Check out his blog and find him on Twitter.

“If I can’t search it, it doesn’t exist.” – Anonymous (Year 2000)

“If I can’t find it from my circle of trust, it doesn’t exist.” – Anonymous (Year 2010)

What are the four words any Internet marketer wants to hear? “Your Content is Searchable!” Any marketer will vouch for the power of content, and that’s why you need to explore the goldmine of user-generated content (UGC).

A 2008 eMarketer study showed:

• By 2013, nearly 155 million net users in the US will consume some type of UGC
• There will be 115 million content creators on the web by 2013
• By 2013, almost 52% of U.S. Internet users will be content creators as well

If you want to know how UGC is being used for SEO, look no further than what the search engine goliaths are doing.

Twitter and Facebook have already made pacts with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Bing that enables the search engines to access the social networks’ real-time data streams. And Google has implemented Social Search, which allows people to view relevant content created on Twitter or Facebook to show up in search results, based on keywords.

These social media channels have made UGC available on the entire web, and more and more users on Facebook and Twitter are keeping their profiles public, because it’s a great way to network with others.

A recent Nielsen Buzzmetrics report suggests that 26% of all search results on major search engines link to UGC. Why? Most importantly, user-generated content is deemed reliable by other users when making key value judgment decisions, and search engines have recognized this fact.

Search Engine Results (Source: Nielsen Online)

Businesses need SEO to thrive in this harsh economic climate, and UGC is a great resource for boosting SEO campaigns. User reviews can have a huge impact on SEO.

• Close to 83% of online shoppers admitted that product reviews submitted by users on different websites are one of the main influences on their purchase decision. (Source: Opinion Research Corporation)
• Nearly half of adult net users in the U.S. read product reviews and ratings at least once a month. (Source: Bazaarvoice)
• USAA, a full financial services company that proudly serves the military and their families, estimates that the increase in application starts resulted in 15,978 additional products and policies across its five main product lines in the first year, after launching ratings and reviews on their site. (Source: Forrester Research)

The latest stats from Hitwise show that Facebook is now the most visited website, beating Google for the week ending March 13, 2010.

This should drive home the fact that social networks are gaining high popularity and people are looking for information from their friends and family more than faceless search engines.

If you are monitoring social networks using tools like Radian6, Umbria, etc., you should look for hot keywords associated with your brand. Use those keywords on your website to drive more traffic to your site. And don’t limit your search efforts to traditional search engines; look at social search engines like Delver, SamePoint, SocialMention, Serph, OneRiot and see how to get higher ranking (short answer: better and more robust content from users, not you).

Tip: Do your research for keywords in real time to ensure you are not relying on last month’s data!

In closing, here are a few things to keep in mind: -

• The participation from even a few of your customers is truly helpful in converting a more engaged audience in the future.
• UGC is for everyone. Your target audience also includes Gen X and Baby Boomers, who are no less conversant with UGC. So make sure that the UGC you use caters to them as well.
• Include everything in UGC – not just text, but also images, video and audio. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) is the new SEO. Don’t hesitate to be creative and make the most of available marketable resources.
• Achieve your goal of a high search engine ranking by selecting the right form of UGC for your site. Articles, blogs, product reviews, etc. – all could work well if your targeted keywords are present in the content created by users.
• Integrate UGC on your site. Create a vibrant community of people, with your products or services as the common link they use to interact and create content. The successful use of UGC allows your loyal customers to feel more “involved” in your business, and brings you closer to them.

Having defined objectives, a good implementation plan, measurable results and flexibility to adapt based on results seen will drive your SEO success.

Matthew Lawson, Appliances Online

This post was guest-written by Matthew Lawson, Web & SEO Manager, DRL Limited (Appliances Online).

In selling UGC to your executives internally, proving ROI is crucial. Focussing only on the end of the purchase path – the final sale – doesn’t tell the full story of your UGC benefit.

While it can be difficult to do, understanding customers’ online shopping habits is highly valuable for brands. Studying search to determine how customers travel through hundreds of products and categories can reveal insights worth their weight in gold.

Shopping Stage

As consumers search for products online, they commonly fall into three main “buckets.”

Researchers – these searchers have a need, but they’ve only narrowed it down to the product category, such as “washing machines.”

Browsers – these searchers have narrowed their query to the next level, and have started to apply their desired product attributes, features, and maybe even brands. They might search for “black Hotpoint washing machine.”

Shoppers – these customers have done their researching and browsing, and have decided on the specific product model they want to purchase, searching for “Hotpoint WMD960K Black Washing Machine.”

Their Searches

Breaking your customers down into these groups tells you something about their specific needs and motivations. Searchers in the Research stage, for example, are less likely to buy during their visit than those in the Shopping stage. By examining the search queries driving traffic to your site, and categorizing them in the same way, you’ll find that conversion rates for and revenue generated by Shoppers is significantly higher than Researchers.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise. But traditional analytics attribute too much of the sale to that final Shopping stage, ignoring the work toward a purchase done in the Research and Browsing stages. Engaging searchers in these stages does the ground work, building the brand and making visitors more likely to return later as Shoppers and convert.

How can you do these early search stages justice, and show the ROI of UGC in every phase of the purchase path?

Attribution Modeling

The illustration below shows the click path a searcher may take in researching and shopping for washing machines. Traditional analytics would attribute all revenue of the final sale to the last click – in this example, a PPC ad. Attributing revenue in this way gives no credit to the hardest working traffic –searchers in the Research and Browsing stages, brought to your site organically by your UGC.

To show the true value of social commerce, this revenue should be split among the various stages of search.  Attributing 30% of revenue to the first click, 50% to the last click, and spreading the remaining 20% equally across the middle clicks, gives a more rounded and holistic picture of your search traffic and its value – and demonstrates the ROI of UGC on your site.

This model also opens opportunities to more cleverly target visitors in each search stage, allowing you to attribute value to previously unprofitable methods of marketing, such as generic PPC bidding.

Results

On Appliances Online’s kitchen appliance ecommerce site, we found that the majority of traffic generated by our customer review microsite were searchers in the Browsing phase of their buying cycle. Attribution modeling, compared to attribution based on the last click, attributed 18.4% more revenue to the review microsite.

If you’re having trouble selling the business value of UGC internally in your business, attribution modeling makes it easier to prove the ROI of customer feedback.