SEO experts employ various techniques to increase their brand’s search visibility. They create and optimize blogs, infographics, images and so much more. But, one category of content remains underutilized, and that is video content.
There is no denying that “content is King”; but another undeniable fact is that “video is the king amongst all marketing content”. This is due to the fact that there are now a billion users on YouTube. Interesting yet obvious, YouTube, seconds Google in being the second largest search engine.
Now with those statistics, SEO Professionals need to pull up their socks and leverage video content to boost Google rankings.
Here are some more statistics to substantiate our claims:
- 6 out of 10 people prefer watching videos online rather than television.
- There is a 100 percent hike in mobile video consumption every year.
- Online videos will consume 85 percent of all internet traffic by 2022.
- 57 percent of people watch online videos every single day.
- 59 percent of users admit that they would watch videos rather than read text.
- At least 92 percent users agreed that they share videos they like watching.
- 95 percent of the audience retains a message when they watch it in a video.
- 73 percent of users would prefer watching videos instead of text when learning about a product.
The above-mentioned data establishes that video content is here to stay and can definitely help you boost your Google ranking.
Let us walkthrough how video content can help you boost your business’s rankings on Google.
Video Content is Effective
Such rapid growth observed in video content is due to its effectiveness. If images are worth a thousand words, then a video is worth much more, without any doubt.
According to a study by Forrester, a 60 second video is equivalent to approximately 1.8 million words of text.
A video might be loaded with a lot of information, but consumers still remember videos.
Without useful or interesting information, leave alone sharing, users wouldn’t prefer watching it. Therefore, it is important to create videos that entice your audience with the information they want.
The ideal video content must-haves:
- Enticing Story - Use emotions to create videos. For instance, Dove focuses videos around emotions instead of the product. Try working on those lines.
- Engaging Introduction - To hook viewers to view the entire video, the introduction must be inspiring, engaging and informative.
- Invigorating title - The title of the video must be eye-catching in order to grab the attention of the audience.
- Mobile Optimization is important - With more than 70% viewers accessing videos on their mobile phones, it becomes imperative that videos are mobile-friendly.
- Add keywords to video description tags.
- Video length - It has been proven that long videos garner more traffic. The video length to be more than 15 minutes.
- Add CTA - this will ensure that the site visitors will give you their contact information or may convert to a marketing qualified lead through video content engagement.
- Add URL - this enables your business to reach a greater number of users.
- Embed the video to your website to drive more traffic.
Therefore, video effectiveness can drive traffic to your website and boost your Google rankings.
[insert page='25-handpicked-best-free-stock-photo-websites-for-royalty-free-images' display='single-related-article-02.php']
Improved Backlink Profile Through Video Content
Viewers will share content that is valuable and interesting; therefore, good video content will help you generate high-quality backlinks from reputable websites.
How can you get video backlinks to your website/page?
- Creating a video and submitting it. This will enable you to get a link from your website on many websites that allow you to host your video.
- You can include a link to your own website, when you comment on someone else’s video on websites that host videos. Remember to comment about the video and not something random.
- Create a profile on video hosting websites. Add your website links in the specified sections, include your website link and get a powerful video backlinks to boost your ranking.
When you create engaging videos, users will be encouraged to link to your sites, which will help you build a strong link profile for your business.
Augment time spent on the website and decrease in bounce rate
Apart from getting more unique traffic to your website, videos can entice viewers to stay longer and generate more exposure for your content.
When viewers stay longer on your website, it is an indication to search engines that your website is laden with quality and useful information. This further gives an upward push to your website in Google’s search results.
A study by Wistia has indicated that a video on your webpage can increase the time visitors spend on your website 2.6X fold. Therefore, it makes it furthermore important to embed your web pages with high-quality and useful information to garner more engagement and increase visits.
Types of videos
Landing page videos - With only a few seconds to impress visitors who land on your website, it is imperative to impress and engage them with what you have. And with so much rich media available online, honestly, text cannot keep them engaged.
Hence, a video is the best tool to allure them to stay longer. Videos not only encourage viewers to stay longer, but also lead to conversions for sale.
Product videos - This is the most common strategy used by retailers to increase the conversion rates of their website.
A study conducted by Invodo, revealed that at least 52 percent of consumers made a purchase due to the product video.
Another study conducted by Zappos, confirmed that product videos increased the sales of products between 5 percent and 30 percent.
Business Introductory Videos - Service providing businesses can add an explainer about their domain to ensure people have a better understanding about the brand.
Dropbox acknowledged the fact that an explainer on their landing page lead to an increased conversion rate by over 10 percent.
High-quality informative videos can enhance dwell times and reduce the bounce rates for your website. This can help you improve your Google rankings and divert loads of organic traffic to your website.
Live Videos - This is the best way to get close and personal with your target audience. You can easily announce the timing of the live chat on your social media accounts. Answer consumer queries to create better relationships.
Here are a few tips on how to use Videos to Improve SEO and get your website and videos to be found:
- A video on your website will help Google to acknowledge that your website contains rich media and thereby, boosting your rankings.
- Search engines need information about the media; therefore, keywords must be incorporated wherever needed.
- Include keywords to describe the video in titles, file names, descriptions and tags. A study conducted by Briggsby has confirmed that more than 90 percent of high-ranking videos include at least a part of the target keyword in the title.
- Keep your video titles shorter than 60 characters. This is a recommendation by YouTube. It also entails that the title must start with the keyword for better results.
- Boring titles don’t help. In such a competitive digital scenario, anything boring is NO NO.
- Incorporate thumbnails. The thumbnail is like a description of the video therefore, its presence is important as well an interesting description is recommended.
- Incorporate semantic keywords for better search results. Do a competitor analysis and include semantic keywords to include in descriptions. This may be a small, yet potential effort to outrank them.
- The audio portion of the video must be supported by a transcript. This will improve the video’s search ability and enhances its relevance for search engines
- Include a video sitemap for better understanding of the media. These are an extension of the sitemap of your website. Include keyword labels to give identification to the media. Remember to customize the video metadata to include the duration of the video, rating, and where all has the video been embedded - give links of all the sites.
- Host you videos on other video hosting site, preferably YouTube. And embed them to your website. By doing this you have a branded hosting platform for your website and you don’t risk slowing down the speed of your website too.
[insert page='how-to-build-an-inbound-marketing-strategy-powered-by-video' display='single-related-article.php']
Wrapping up
Videos have become the new traffic and conversion boosters. And they are the most popular forms of content and are here to stay in the times to come.
In this fast paced world, humans crave connection and personality, and videos can provide just that. They want to see and hear people in real-life context. Emotions as well fun can very well be depicted in videos; therefore, people prefer consuming them instead of reading text.
Videos can engage (consumers), convert (consumers), and increase (traffic). Because consumers like video, use video and remember video. And these signify that video is a great component for a successful marketing strategy.