Have you heard of Video SEO?
What about Video Content Marketing?
You can use video production to drive traffic to your website and create better content.
Doing both is important because you have to stay ahead of the curve for your business to succeed online.
Just ask the companies who failed to create mobile websites and lost their rankings after mobilegeddon.
Ask those who lost traffic because they didn’t improve their content after Google’s Panda update.
Google introduces new updates like these all the time like Google penguin and recently Google Rank Brain.
With each update, business owners like you must alter your strategies to keep getting traffic, leads, and sales to your website through Google.
What’s the SEO focus in 2018? Google wants quality content and not just written content, either. Video and multimedia are now cornerstones of both SEO, paid marketing, and content marketing. Just take a look at the numbers.
Video SEO and Content Marketing by the Numbers
There are also compelling statistics behind the wave of multimedia in SEO and content marketing:
- 59% of those surveyed in this study agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.
- Social video generates 1200% more shares than written content and images combined.
- Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more.
- Landing pages with videos are 53% more likely to show up on page 1 of the SERP.
- Blog posts with videos receive triple the number of backlinks as blog posts without video.
Are you missing out on web visits and leads if you’re not using video? The numbers say ‘yes’ emphatically.
You can use Video in two different ways — as an SEO tool or as part of your content marketing.
How to Use Video SEO to Drive Traffic to Your Website
You’d have to be living under a rock to ignore the fact that ranking highly on Google can send visitors to your website.
What many business owners don’t know, however, is that Youtube – a company owned by Google – has its own unique ecosystem and search function with comparable power to send new leads to your website.
Imagine the following scenario. You’re an e-commerce store selling uniquely branded makeup. The makeup industry is one where video search makes a huge impact. Just look at these results for the query ‘makeup tutorial’:
The top search results for this query have millions of views. If your company creates makeup tutorials, ranks them highly, and siphons some traffic from your videos to your e-commerce store, you have the potential to dramatically increase your sales.
Even better videos for certain subjects — mainly how to material — ranks at the top of search results themselves:
Here’s an example of video potential for a healthy snack company:
And one for a fish and tackle company:
The bottom line is this — if you have creative videos to share, you can use them to drive traffic with video SEO.
Some key points to understand about Video SEO using Youtube are:
- Videos can be optimized – Videos on Youtube utilize titles, descriptions, and tags for SEO purposes. The same methods of keyword research and use of key phrase rich content derived from website SEO apply to Video SEO.
- Youtube uses similar ranking factors – Google uses time spent on page as a ranking factor for websites. Youtube uses time spent watching videos as a ranking factor. Google measures click-through rates of search engine results pages as a ranking factor. Youtube does the same. Google measures engagement as a ranking factor and experts say social sharing matters. Youtube ranks videos using similar metrics like comments per video.
- Content is king – When it comes to ranking highly on Google, nothing is more important than the quality of the content itself, especially with new Google updates like Rank Brain suggesting depth and quality of content will soon become the top ranking factor. Conversely, your videos must also provide content that informs your audience about the topic you optimize your videos for. Yes, Youtube can track the content of your videos just like Google tracks keywords in your content.
The steps to building a traffic engine using Youtube and Video SEO are:
- Do your research – In search engine optimization, keyword research is the cornerstone of a successful SEO campaign. You must know how many people are searching for certain terms to decide how to optimize the pages on your site. For Video SEO, follow tried and true methods like brainstorming, using the Google keyword planner and following suggested results on Google search engine results pages. After you have your list of words, take them to Youtube and test your results by typing the researched phrases into Youtube search box. Youtube has a different results page and the words you research won’t have the exact number of viewers as they do searches on Google. Using the results strategy helps you see if there are viable numbers of viewers for your topic.
- Leverage existing videos – If you have company videos available that match researched topics, use them! Make sure the video title, descriptions, and tags include an optimized keyword. For each video, you’re allowed to enter a URL in the description – this is where you want to add your site’s URL. You can also add calls to action within the video itself. You can find a guide for doing that here.
- Create new videos – If after doing your research you discover a huge potential for site traffic and views, consider shooting new professional quality videos. Using a video production company like MLT group will help your videos rank higher on both Google and Youtube because high-quality videos increase viewer engagement and retention.
- Promote your videos – Share your videos on social media repeatedly, send them to your email list if you have one, and embed them into the content on your website. Speaking of the last point, there are more benefits to video than ranking on Youtube and Google.
How Video Has Become a Content Marketing and SEO Staple
We’re long past the days of newspapers. Even “newer” methods of content creation like blogging are seeing rapid changes. Video has become a major part of the content marketing conversation and will only grow from here.
Let’s just take a look at a few of the goals of content marketing and SEO:
- Engage your target audience – You want your target audience to know, like, and trust you. What better way to build a relationship with them than provide your content in a medium that’s both easy to digest and fun to use?
- Keep visitors on your website – You want visitors to stay on your website for long periods because Google uses this as a ranking factor. Users have been known to visit sites and leave quickly. If however, while reading your content a user discovers a video in the middle of the page, they may find themselves staying on your site well past the industry standard two to three-minute mark for effective SEO.
- Give the people want they want – The easiest way to turn off site visitors is to give them content in a way they don’t want to receive it – think providing a written manual where a video could be much more informative. Some people simply don’t enjoy reading, so video provides all-inclusive option to attract new visitors, leads, and customers.
You don’t have to create videos for SEO purposes only. You can create them with the intent to provide a fun and unique way to market your business.
Blendtec provides a great example of video content marketing.
How do you market something as simple as a blender?
Blendtec thought outside the box and created a video of their blender shredding different items like iPhones. The campaign went viral.
When you think of marketing your business, don’t look for the obvious only. Be creative with your marketing because it’s more fun for customers and ‘Mother Google’ wants you to as well.
Let MLT Group Take Your Digital Marketing to the Next Level
If this post made you interested in the power of video production, let’s talk about creating amazing video together.
Thinking of putting together a cool campaign to build buzz for your business? We offer full marketing strategy, social media management, and an entire suite of services to draw eyeballs to your business.
Does the thought of keyword research and SEO make your head spin a little? No worries, that’s what the pros are for. From start to finish, we can help you achieve results that help you grow your business.
When you’re looking for a digital marketing company to work with, check their digital marketing strategy.
With literally thousands of pieces of content, we aim to prove we’re the cutting edge and go to option in Rochester, Minneapolis, the Twin Cities, and across the U.S.
You’ve made it to the end of this post, which means you’re interested. If you’re interested, what you do next is simple. Pick up the phone, call 507-281-3490 and learn how to skyrocket your business’s marketing.