While there is plenty of disagreement among marketers as to the best method to improve your search rankings, there is one specific strategy that is sure to benefit your business. What’s the secret sauce? Believe it or not, leveraging your online videos is often key to increasing search rankings.
We all know that the search engines use social signals as a factor in their overall ranking algorithm, and as the role of social signals becomes increasingly important, so will the role of online video in your overall search and social strategy.
This year, the number of consumers viewing videos online is predicted to reach 169.3 million in the US alone. With numbers that significant, what marketer would argue against the tremendous opportunity video can offer to enhance online presence search rankings?
Customers prefer two minutes to ten
Let’s face it; most people would rather spend two minutes watching an interesting video than spend ten minutes reading an article. Consumers are extremely busy, and they are constantly bombarded with messages that may or may not be relevant to them.
Video is the fastest way for your company to show your audience why they should do business with you. Not only is video a great way to share your story, it’s also a great way to build links back to your site, and if all of the stars align, maybe your video will even go viral. This is where the major search engine optimization benefit comes into play.
Videos are shared
In their simplest form, search engines bring searchers the most relevant data to their query, and inbound links help the search engines determine the data’s relevancy. When viewers find your video to be valuable content, they are likely to share it, thus facilitating the linking-fest.
Whether it is in the form of information, humor, controversy, entertainment, instruction, or inspiration, the video needs to be compelling enough to make the viewer want to share it. The more shares, the better for your overall online presence.
Videos increase engagement
A recent comScore study showed websites that contain videos hold a viewer’s attention two+ minutes longer than sites without video content. Visitor time spent onsite is just one more factor that the search engines are looking for to determine relevancy. The fact that your website can hold your viewers’ attention is a big thumbs up.Another recent study, from aimClear, states that videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click-through rate than plain-text results.
It is no secret that SEO is essentially one giant puzzle with numerous moving pieces, but with universal search, videos offer businesses one more way to get heightened exposure in the search engines. According to a Forrester research study, having a good online video marketing strategy can actually increase your likelihood of achieving first page Google rankings by up to 53 times. For as popular as online videos have become, video marketing is still widely underused by businesses.
Grab it while you can
The “video” search is far less competitive than the “everything” search on Google, yet most marketers are ignoring this opportunity to jump ahead in the search results by implementing an online video strategy. There have been many instances where I have performed a web search using the “Everything” option. A particular business may not rank in the top ten positions on the first page, but when I perform the exact same search using the “videos” option that same business is number one.
This is a tremendous opportunity for businesses to get a one up on their competitors. Granted, the content contained within the video needs to offer value to the viewer. Google tends to show favoritism to informative videos versus strictly sales videos, so this is something that you may want to keep in mind as you develop your strategy.
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