How Video Content will benefit your SEO
Google is a juggernaut in the online space with over 70% of all internet searches being made on its platform. Every single business wants to be on the first page because it essentially translates to being seen by their target audiences. After all, search engines are used by people doing targeted research.
Organically ranking on Google is the process known as SEO. It’s a fairly simple process but it needs constant attention and devotion. It’s also a highly competitive process so a business will need to take advantage of every possible opportunity.
One such opportunity is to increase your SEO ranking by adding Video SEO (VSEO) to your SEO strategy.
In this article we will discuss what SEO is, its importance, what Video SEO is, its importance, the 3 benefits of Video SEO, and how to optimize your videos for SEO.
What is SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of organically increasing targeted traffic to your website from search engines.
SEO consists of creating high quality content, optimizing content around relevant keywords, and generating backlinks.
SEO benefits for your website
SEO is important because it determines how much traffic your business will receive from search engines.
The higher your ranking the more clicks you generate and the more clicks you generate the bigger your lead list.
A high rank also determines your authority in the online world. Websites on the first page of Google seem more trustworthy than websites on page 7. Ask yourself if you’ve ever clicked past page 3 of Google?
What is Video SEO
Video SEO is the practice of optimizing your video content so that it can be indexed and rank on the search engines.
How does Video improve SEO
Video SEO is important because it can help your video content, and as a result your website, rank higher in search results.
Search results featuring video rich snippets are more eye-catching than regular search results. Google even prioritizes them over regular search results.
It’s important to note that Google favours YouTube videos over videos hosted on other platforms. YouTube videos now result for over 80% of Google’s video search results.
5 Ways Video SEO will improve your SEO Ranking
1. Pages with video content rank higher
Pages with video content rank higher on search engines because video content increases the amount of time a user is on your website.
This is called having a long dwell time and low bounce rate. A dwell time is the length of a session and bounce rate is how long before the user left. For bounce rate, anything in the range of 26-40% is excellent.
Google considers dwell times and bounce rates in their ranking algorithm and it makes sense that they do. Google is a search engine and so they want to provide their users with the best possible search results for their queries. If your answers (in this case your business) does not provide the answers that they are looking for then you just wasted their time.
2. Increase Video SEO Conversions
Video SEO content can be used to increase conversions on your website. Video content can be used on landing pages or other pages on your website to keep visitor engagement. Longer engagement times are correlated with higher conversion rates.
There are two methods to increase conversions: 1) Using video on a landing page and 2) using video rich snippets.
Landing page videos will be the first video item that your audience will see and they will be more effective than having your audience read your pitch. The reason for this is that you can visually communicate more effectively with video than you can with only words.
For example, at Lapse Productions we have our pitch video on our homepage.
Video SEO Rich snippets allow your video to be eligible to appear on Google search results. They help your content stand out from other results. In a noisy world its important to stand out.
3. Increase Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Videos that appear in the search results carousel will tend to have higher click-through rates (CTR). CTR is simply the ratio of users that clicked on a specific link, in this case a video link.
4. Increase brand awareness
Having your video content rank on search engines creates more exposure for your brand. This can result in future opportunities for growth.
5. Increase backlinks
Backlinks are when a website links to your website. They are an important ranking factor for SEO. However, not all backlinks are created equally. A backlink from a brand new website is not the same as a backlink from the Toronto Star. One way to increase the amount of backlinks to your website is to create high quality video content that other websites will want to showcase on their websites.
For example if your business website produces a promotional video that ends up going viral in your market niche then you can have other news websites in your niche write an article and reference your video and link to your website. That is how you generate a backlink.
How to Optimize Your Video for SEO
1) Base your videos around keyword research
Determine which short tail keywords and long tail keywords you want to rank for based on your competitor analysis. Once you have that you can start to create video content around those keywords. If you have a lot of high quality video content around your research keywords then you should be able to rank higher.
2) Upload a Video Transcript
Uploading a video transcript helps fix incorrect closed captions and it helps Google understand the relevance of the video. The relevancy of the video transcript is determined by the short tail and long tail keywords that you are trying to rank for. For example, if you are trying to rank for “Video production toronto” or “corporate video production toronto” then you should say those words in the video and also have them in the transcript.
3) Upload an eye catching thumbnail
Uploading an eye catching thumbnail that contains relevant information to the search keywords will result in more clicks compared to randomly generated and irrelevant keywords.
4) Add timestamps
Google refers to these as “key moments” and they can be shown directly on video search results.
Adding timestamps to your video will allow your target audience to skip to the section they are interested in or scan the overall content of the video.
This is an added measure so that you can avoid a bounce rate. Remember you want to keep your target audience’s attention for as long as possible. If your audience leaves after 10 seconds then all the work you did was for nothing.
5) Add your relevant keywords
Add your short tail keywords and long tail keywords that you want to rank for on the title, transcript, tags, video description, and script itself.
6) Add schema makeup
Schema markup helps Google and other search engines decipher the contents of your video.
7) Embed videos to relevant pages
Embedding videos to relevant pages that are high ranking will increase the amount of views that the video will receive and in turn the SEO of that video will increase.
9) Add video transcriptions to pages with low content
You can increase the content on a low content page by embedding a relevant video and including the transcript of the video. This will increase the ranking for that page.
Let’s Create Your Video Today
If you’re looking for top-notch quality, industry expertise, dependability, and competitive pricing, don’t wait any longer. Contact us now for a quote and let’s get started on your project.
