Why Videos are Great Strategy for your SEO
One of the big trends we’re seeing in Search Engine Optimization or website promotion, is the ROI on videos on your website especially for B2C companies, some (like Forbes.com) say that this year it “outpace written content in terms of reach, engagement, effectiveness, and overall ROI.” Video apps such as Vine, Periscope, Snapchat have contributed to this trend, as well as video-sharing websites such as YouTube and Vimeo.
Another reason is effectiveness. If pictures are worth a 1000 words, videos are worth a million, as they leave a bigger impression and engage users with your story. Videos are remembered, they are shared and they motivate sales.
53% contacted a business after watching a video
51% visited the business’ website & 33% visited the store after watching a video
71% made a purchase after watching a video
The biggest obstacle for most small businesses is budget and the resources to create quality content. Although I’ve seen some well-done amateur videos with small business owners narrating their story, if you want to create a website that will leave a lasting impression you need a visual content creator and videographer.
“Starting a camera and spouting out a thousand words of brilliant prose does not make a compelling video.” – OpenForum.com
So while videos can impact your SEO, a quality video is necessary to engage, motivate, enhance your brand and encourage users to share it. If you don’t have the budget to hire a professional, there are tools like Prezi, Animato, YouTube Editor, and also here are 10 tools to get you started. If you are not creative or don’t have the time to invest, I would recommend a professional and I can recommend a few local companies that would fit into your price range.
How to Impact your SEO with Videos
- Host your video on YouTube. YouTube is owned by Google, and it is second place in the number of search queries (3 billion searches a month). While some suggest hosting it on your own site for better SEO results, SearchEngineLand.com states “my conclusion is that in universal search results, videos either come tied with big-name brands or tied to publisher sites like YouTube.” When hosted on YouTube, the video will probably load faster and automatically formatted to the user’s device/bandwidth, as well as your site won’t be bogged down during video load time. If you do host the video exclusively on YouTube, make sure to create backlinks to your website in the video description and your channel profile. (How to Create a YouTube channel)
- Host the videos additionally on your own domains. You will get more SEO value if the videos are hosted on your website, in addition to being posted to YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook. Hence the content, the meta tags, are directing traffic to your site rather than a third-party website. That does not discount the importance of hosting the videos on social media platforms as well, as they will increase chances of traffic being redirected to your site.
- Provide a transcription: Include the dialogue of your video on each specific video page so people can have the option to “read” the video content as well. In essence, you’re unlocking the content (including keywords) and making it accessible for search engines.
- Sitemap* your Videos: A video sitemap provides information search engines need to index your video. The entries in a video Sitemap must include a link to a landing page for a video and some required information. Many of the elements in a video Sitemap are optional, but they provide useful metadata that can enhance your video results and improve Google’s ability to include your video in search results.
- There are great tools out there to make the most of your videos whether hosted on your site or on YouTube or Vimeo, etc. One tool for your WordPress sites is WP Video SEO, which provides the following features: Generate a sitemap for your YouTube videos, Reduce the time taken by the search engine to index your videos, and Allow search engine to display a thumbnail of the video along with the title and description of the post/page.
- Add Keywords to your Videos: To enable your target audience to find your videos, use keywords that are pertinent to the content/theme of your video and are popular in your industry. Add these researched keywords in fields used to describe your video (in titles, file names, descriptions and tags).
- Use Social Media to Promote: Create several versions of your video of different lengths so you can show on share on various social media platforms. (The maximum length for a video on: Twitter is 30 seconds, Facebook is 45 minutes, Instagram is now 60 seconds, Vine is 6.5 seconds, YouTube is 15 minutes, but you can increase your limit by verifying your account. Google+ will post YouTube videos, since Google owns YouTube.) Also, boost your post, write an engaging introduction, and share a link to your website so they can watch the full version, if needed.
Watch our Video:
*A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design, or a Web page that lists the pages on a Web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion.
