Gagan says: “You’ve got to have the voices of people in your content. The experience and expertise of authors are not enough.”

Which people are we talking about here?

“We are talking about real users of your content.

So, if you are a publisher – you write about product reviews or something like that – you've got to have the real opinions of people who are actually using those products, and maybe try to get some videos of them and embed those into your blog pages as well.

Okay, so you’re talking about people who are active customers of yours and then have them create the content for you?

“Yes.”

How do you encourage them to create the content?

“It's not about encouraging them. I think it's more about you reaching out to them.

For example, let's say you run an affiliate content website, on your pages and on your homepage, you can just have a callout option that says, ‘If you own these kinds of products, reach out to us and we can give you a little Amazon voucher for 50 bucks, if you can give some input, come on board with us, and maybe we can record a one-minute YouTube short video with you sharing your experience of using that product so that we can embed those videos in our pages.’”

The main reason for creating that piece of content is to have the piece of content on your site, to publish the piece of content on your site, and to have that as some kind of social proof that your product is as you say it is.

“Yeah.

Coming back to EEAT, where I mentioned that experience and expertise are not enough, right now, if you're an expert and you're writing a piece of content, that is not something that directly connects with people.

However, if you have 10 different people saying, ‘Oh, I used this product and it was really, really good, and here are the reasons why it is really, really good’, then it helps to connect with people.

That's what you’ve got to focus on right now.”

Now, do you attempt to lead them in terms of what to include in the content they produce?

“Yes, by giving them a sort of mini brief, where you can ask them their specific experience of using the product, how they are finding it, and things along those lines.”

What would be an example of that type of video that you're really happy with, and what was the reason why it turned out so well?

Then, what would be an example of that type of video that you're not so happy with, and what was the reason why it didn't turn out so well?

“What I would be really happy with is where they are just doing raw talking about their experience.

For example, if it's a page about credit cards and someone who actually bought that credit card and has been using it for, let's say, five years – they're just talking about it like, ‘I use it for these specific cases. Here are what rewards I'm getting. Here are the places where it does not work.’

I just want them to share their raw experience rather than it being a heavily structured one.

That's why (coming back to my tip, ‘voice of people’) you've got to be as raw as possible, rather than it being a heavily structured video where I'm just asking specific pointer-based questions.”

Do you edit the video at all? Obviously, some people ramble more than others. Some people include ums and ahs and silences as part of what they're saying.

Do you edit the video?

“Yes, I prefer it to be as clear as possible, but it's not doing heavily cinematic editing or something like that.

It’s just got to be like a real conversation where someone who is watching on the other end will feel, ‘Oh, it was just a raw interview. Someone just asked someone's opinion about a certain product or something, and there is no bias in it.’”

Is there any particular format of the video that works best? Is it vertical or horizontal? Any particular specs that you'd like to give for the video?

“Right now, I'm just doing YouTube Shorts-style or TikTok-style videos, where it's less than three minutes and it's on top of a half-and-half breakdown.”

So, vertical then?

“Vertical, yeah.”

All right, so it's an interview. Sorry, just to clarify that. I wasn't aware that you were actually interviewing or advocating that you interview the person.

So, one person is above the other person. That would be a 9:16-type video that you're talking about, but two heads on the same video.

“Of course, yeah.”

Okay, so you'd never actually give them the ability just to go away and create the video themselves.

They have to be led; they have to be interviewed in order to actually come up with the answers that you're looking for.

“Yeah, sure. Yeah.”

Does it work just as well to actually embed a vertical video on your site? Because most of the time I see vertical videos on YouTube Shorts, as you say, and perhaps they're discovered organically on there.

It doesn't seem so common that you see vertical videos embedded on websites.

“That's what's new, because what people want to get is, when you are in ‘buying mode’ and you are trying to read a review of certain products, you just want to quickly skim through as much information as possible. You don't want to be sitting around watching a 60-minute review.

You just want short clips; three or four short clips that add up to about 12 minutes on the page. You can just like watch those and, based upon that, you can make your decision to go ahead and buy that product or not.”

From a consumer's perspective, who's consuming the content, does it work better from a desktop perspective, mobile, or does it not really matter?

“It doesn't matter.

Most of my clients and their target audience are around 95% mobile users, so on mobile it works out really well, because it's in vertical format – but on desktop it also works out really well as well.”

How do you measure the success from an SEO perspective?

“I think it's really, really hard to exactly quantify that as a metric and say, ‘We did this change, that's why ranking improved,’ or something like that.

However, what that does is it makes your pages better compared to your competitors because, once you have the opinions of real people, most likely, if users are coming to those pages they want to spend more time on those pages, which also factors into other things related to SEO and other ranking factors, and helps to improve the ranking over time.

But the overall goal is to look like a Reddit page because, what I have analysed over the last year is that, with any Reddit post and the comments underneath, there are tens of opinions about certain things on the page.

With the video format, what I am also trying to do is provide as many opinions as possible about a certain thing on the page. I'm trying to be like Reddit without being Reddit.”

Which page, specifically, on a website would you have this content on? I would imagine you wouldn't want it on too soon.

Perhaps someone's exploring what products you offer and looking to actually find out more information, specifically about the products, and they're not wanting to get distracted by the opinions of other people who have used the product at that time.

Is it when they're partially through the purchase consideration phase? Can you be quite specific about where to include this content?

“I think, for e-commerce sites, you can just have this as a carousel on your homepage, but you have to make sure that it's not at the top. Rather, you start with your product information, you go into more detail, and then, just around the bottom of the site (around the footer), you have that carousel so that people can watch.

But you’ve got to start with all the information about your product. Talk about all the positive factors and everything else before people get to that point on the page.”

Okay, and you also talk about the importance of incorporating expertise. Your tip was really a two-pronged approach: expertise combined with opinions of people who matter.

The people who matter are obviously the users who have purchased your product before and whom they’re trying to influence – who are people who you want to buy your product in the future.

Where does the expertise come in? Are you talking about demonstrating your own expertise or the expertise of the users somehow?

“Yeah, of course: demonstrating your own expertise and experience as well.

What you have got to make sure of is that you are not trying to prove that you are the expert, or that you have the relevant experience, but rather you are focusing more on showing things.

For me, EEAT, I see it as not that you have to prove that you have experience or expertise on the page, but what you have to do is you need to show as much of it as possible for you.

A simple example can be, if you are a product reviewer and you review tech products, what you have got to show is, in the images, you need to show yourself rather than it being just the product images.

By showing yourself, you are building a trust factor with the user. You are sitting in a café and you are using this laptop or a specific smartphone, and then you are talking about it, rather than it just being you trying to present some information which is not backed by your real experience.”

Got you, so it's going to be congruent. What the users say about you has to relate directly to your expertise. I guess that's why you advocate leading the conversation as well. You want to make sure that they talk about the things that you want to be known as an expert at.

Can we talk a little bit about how to incorporate this into an overarching content strategy?

How often do you want to create this kind of content? Is it a case of reaching out and doing it once as a big project and then forgetting about it? Or do you do this, for instance, on a monthly basis?

“I think it should be done on, let's say, a quarterly basis – where you are trying to get, in bulk, maybe 10 to 20 YouTube Shorts videos that you can embed in your pages over time, rather than it being a one-week or two-week kind of thing.

You should run the campaign for 2 weeks or 3 weeks and try to get as much content out of it as possible.

What I'm trying to do right now is mostly trying to get people from socials. Some of my clients have a strong presence on TikTok, so what they do is they just create a TikTok video saying, ‘We are looking for opinions of people around these subjects. If you want to participate, you can just click the link in the bio, and we will reach out to you, and the reward for that is a $100 Amazon voucher.’ or something so that.

That is working out really well, just doing a call out on socials, because my clients already have a strong presence on TikTok. But if you don't have that, then you have to find another way – maybe by trying to do a survey, where you can use different survey websites and try to find the relevant people.”

Okay, that's a good point. Maybe as part of an existing survey, perhaps even as part of an existing email sign-up, if you're collecting their information.

Then, would you recommend adding an additional question that is along the lines of, ‘Would you be willing to actually jump on a call and just record a brief video of your experience with our product?’ or something like that?

“Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's a good approach.”

Finally, I'd like to get a feel for the tools that you would recommend using, including AI.

Are there any tools that you recommend for recording videos like this, and perhaps editing things? Also, are you using AI as part of this, to identify people or assist with the production of the content?

“Yes. So, I will start with the tools. For example, you can just use Riverside and, for editing, if you want to go with a basic one, you can try out CapCut. Or, if you are a really advanced user, you can just use Adobe.

In terms of AI, for this one, what I'm using AI for is tracking different Reddit threads to see if there are specific mentions of products or services over there. If there are, I'm trying to reach out to those Reddit users via direct messages and see if they can give us some real feedback that they have left as a comment under some thread.”

You mentioned TikTok earlier. Would you ever actually republish some of these videos on your socials as well, or is it solely for the use of embedding on your website?

“What I like to do is, I like to concentrate on the content for the first month or two. Once you have the video with you, you publish it on your website first and try to see how the performance goes for a one-month/two-month period.

Then you should look into publishing it on other platforms, like TikTok or Instagram, if you want to do that.

By doing it at the same time, it sort of creates a problem where Google is trying to identify where the exact source of the video is, and you want that source to be your website, from an SEO perspective. Once that is settled, then you can look into republishing it on other platforms.”

So, Gagan, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“The key takeaway will be to get the opinions of people as YouTube Shorts videos, and then try to embed those on your pages, like the homepage.”

Gagan Ghotra is an SEO Consultant, and you can find him over at GaganGhotra.com.