Are you looking to give your Search Engine Optimization strategy a boost? Or are you just beginning to optimize your website and aren’t sure how to get started?
Most people are aware that written content such as blog posts featuring keywords or phrases and more technical SEO techniques such as backlink acquisition, improving site speed, and removing broken links are all important parts of SEO strategy.
But did you know that video marketing is another thing that can boost your SEO?
The addition of video to your website can drastically improve your SEO efforts and drive more traffic. Video is currently so effective in reaching those goals that it is becoming one of the most important forms of content marketing.
Read on to learn how video marketing can improve SEO!
SEO Overview
If you’re still wondering why search engine optimization is important or are even unsure of what it is, here is a quick overview.
SEO techniques help to grow your visibility on search engine results pages (SERP). The higher your website ranks, the better as more people will be seeing your site when searching relevant queries and it’s more likely that they will click through to your website.
Good SEO can drive more traffic than any of your other digital marketing efforts so it’s definitely worth investing time in!
Search engines use algorithms to determine page rank. These algorithms are ultimately looking for high quality, valuable content and relevance to the searcher’s query (this is where keywords play a role.)
Over 90% of online activity starts with a search engine. If people search, it is targeted, they are specifically searching for that query.
So if your products or services and content relate, you want to make sure you are at the top of the search page and are one of the first sites they see and click on.
Most searchers will click on the top 3 SERP entries and very few searchers will get on to page 2. So being high up on page 1 and having a strong SEO strategy is crucial.
Want to learn more about using video in your marketing? Check out this blog article on Video Do’s & Don’ts for helpful tips on making your marketing successful.
How Video Marketing Can Improve SEO
Search engine algorithms are increasingly prioritizing websites with video content from DIY tutorials to jaw-dropping aerial drone footage.
Adding video to your website can help with a range of things including increasing click through rate from SERP, lowering bounce rate, and increasing time on page.
These are all great for your business but are also things Google and other search engines look at when determining your rank on SERP for queries.
If a lot of searchers are clicking through to your website, not leaving the page straight away, and spending a decent amount of time on the site, search engines assume your content is valuable.
This will increase the chance of others seeing it as the link will be placed links higher up on the results pages. Time on page alone increases by at least double, on average, for pages with video compared to those without.
Well executed video can help in generating lots of backlinks, even from reputable sites with high domain authority.
Algorithms also favor sites with a mix of high quality text, images, and video. Multimedia content is seen as more informative and valuable, therefore ranking higher than content with just text or text and images.
Video can additionally help in improving your content quality which makes it more likely that you will get backlinks (when other sites link to your content, indicating to Google that your content is of value which increases your SERP rank.)
You can’t however just place any video on your site and hope to see your SERP rank, CTR, time on page, and number of backlinks increase.
Even if the video placement at first drives traffic, low quality video will cause visitors to leave your site quickly which will in turn tell search engines that the content isn’t valuable and you will drop in the rankings again.
The video used needs to be of high quality in terms of both the content within the video itself and the quality of the actual footage.
How Video Generates Traffic
Search engines consider the amount of traffic your website gets when determining search rankings.
Websites don’t get a high amount of traffic for no reason; visitors are coming for something that must be valuable to them so search engines assume others with the same queries will find that website useful too.
Whilst it’s important to embed video on your website for the reasons mentioned above, you’ll get the most video views by also hosting the video on YouTube as well as on other social media channels.
You can use the caption/description from YouTube and other socials to lead viewers to your website, generating more traffic (placing a URL in the caption will also count as a backlink!)
You can use the on your YouTube video to lead viewers to your website, generating traffic and backlinks.
How Video Increases Time On Site
Search engines also consider the amount of time people are spending on your site. If traffic leaves straight away, it indicates that you don’t have useful content and your search engine ranking will suffer.
Video helps keep people on your website for longer and it’s easier to consume than reading written content. This means that visitors are more likely to stay on the website to watch the video.
Your bounce rate will therefore decrease and time on site will increase, helping your ranking to improve.
How Video Helps Gain Backlinks
The number of backlinks you have is another factor that will determine your website ranking. Number as well as quality of backlinks is important.
Quality refers to who is linking to you. The higher the domain authority of the linking sites the better. Number of links shows that people find your content valuable enough to share which is great but high-quality backlinks are even better.
These links show that not just average web users but well-regarded websites find your content valuable enough that they want to share it with their audience.
To be shared, your videos will need to stand out. Think about who you would ideally like to share and link the video and make sure it offers something to that audience.
Whether it informs them, entertains them, or even shocks them! To get shares and backlinks, you need to evoke an emotion from the viewer.
As the video connects with your original target audience, and they share on social or link to it on blogs/websites, it will build traction (or start going “viral”) and will start to be seen by more who relate and will in turn share/link, with the video ideally reaching and appealing to popular sites with high domain authority.
Back in 2012, Dollar Shave Club went viral on social media with their unconventional and humorous video ad campaign featuring a leaf blower and a lot of dollar bills.
When planning video aimed at building links and generating social sharing, ask yourself the following questions. If the response to any questions is “no”, rethink your video:
Would you link to the content?
Is the content interesting to your target audience?
Does the content elicit emotion?
How To Create A Video Marketing Strategy To Improve SEO
Don’t just jump into video creation without a strategy. You need to know what you want to get out of using video.
Without knowing this, planning, creating, and promoting video content will be difficult and won’t provide the SEO results you are looking for.
Make sure goals are well defined and that video complements other content you have or are planning to create.
Plan your video so that it is interesting, engaging, and has all the info the viewer needs about the topic.
Embed Video On Website Landing Pages
Once your videos are created, they need to be published on relevant pages of your website. Visitors to your site need to be impressed straight away or they will leave. Your landing pages need to keep visitors engaged to stop this happening.
As people are getting so used to seeing text content, it can be difficult to keep visitors engaged with text alone.
Embedding video on your site is a proven way to keep your website visitors engaged. It will also increase the time they spend on the site and the number of conversions you receive.
Visitors to your site need to be impressed straight away or they will leave. Video helps to impress dramatically.
Give Your Video Context
Don’t publish video to your website on a page all by itself or with just a short caption.
Video is a great content format. High-quality written and well-optimized content is a good start too. But if you really want to boost your content quality and improve SEO, combining the two will help you see the best results.
Therefore, make sure the video is embedded within relevant and well-optimized written and visual content.
The written content could be a transcript of the video or the video could be used to help explain something from the text in more depth or add more value in another way.
Create Video That's Informative And Valuable
Don’t include video that isn’t helpful to visitors. Make sure it is giving them information they need that is answering questions and helping them to make a better purchasing decision.
By giving information in a few formats such as once in a written piece and again in video, the consumer is more trusting of you and you are gaining credibility.
As the search engines notice this, your ranking will increase.
Consistency Is Key
Don’t just create and add a few videos to your site and then abandon video strategy all together. You’ll need to work continuously to improve your video marketing campaign and add new video content to relevant pages.
Try ranking for as many relevant keywords relating to your target customer’s search intent as possible. For each of these keywords, you will need to create valuable content so you can do that in part by creating and uploading more videos.
In Conclusion
There are a vast number of ways that video marketing can improve SEO. From making backlink acquisition more likely to increasing time on site, video is a must.
Hopefully these tips will help you in improving your SEO strategy through the use of video content.
If you want to take advantage of video marketing but don’t have the time or experience to do so, Brand Hause can help!
We offer strategic, high quality, and creative video production services to help you take your digital marketing and SEO to the next level.
Interested? Contact us for a free consultation.
Pages with video are 53x more likely to rank on the first page of a Google search. Ready to improve your organic page ranking with SEO optimized video?
1 thought on “How Video Marketing Can Improve SEO”
This article provides a great overview of the different types of online marketing and how they can be used together to create a comprehensive strategy.