We already know that video is a highly useful tool in marketing. Video is highly searchable and engaging for your customers. It also builds trust, as your audience can connect your message to an actual human.
If you are using video in your digital marketing strategy, you are likely already enjoying the benefits of improved engagement, higher email open rates, and, hopefully, increased sales.
In addition to all that goodness, video is also amazing for SEO as it opens up a whole new world of search engine results possibilities. Your customers love video, and so does Google. It’s the perfect marriage of delight and engagement – with a side order of authority, which is what triggers the results you need to help you grow.
Today, we’ll look at how video marketing boosts SEO; but let’s start by talking about why you need SEO and what you can expect from your efforts.
Why SEO is Important
Search engine optimization is critical for driving organic traffic on the web – in other words, web traffic you don’t pay advertising dollars for. SEO is about making your website search-engine friendly so that Google, Bing, and Yahoo! know what you’re all about.
While many elements contribute to SEO, the more people that click on your link in search results, the better it is for your rank. The better your rank, the greater your authority, which means—hypothetically at least—that your site will come up on page one in the SERPs.
Arguably, SEO could actually be more important than paid advertising, in large part because people are weary of online ads and tend to tune them out. They have more trust in search engine results, and they don’t often look beyond page one to find what they’re looking for.
That being said, most top businesses rely on a combination of SEO and paid advertising to drive growth, with SEO representing the solid foundation on which everything else is built.
How Video Helps SEO
There are dozens of things that go into a good SEO strategy, but video factors as one of the most critical aspects. As for why, ask your customers. They love video! And anything your audience enjoys that much matters to Google, because that’s what they are all about.
Search engine algorithms are continually changing in the effort to improve user experience, so if video is what most of them want, that’s what they’re going to get. Check out these stats:
- Video drives up to 300 percent more unique site visitors per month.
- Your website has a 53 times greater chance of landing on page one if it includes video.
- To Google, video means your site is content-rich, and content is the number one ranking factor.
When your video is highly relevant and engaging to your audience, your bounce rates are lower, too – also a contributing factor in search engine results. Ultimately, you want to use video in your SEO strategy because of all these reasons – plus, video content tends to be remembered more reliably than text alone, so your message has a much better chance of achieving its goal.
How to Use Video in Your SEO Strategy
If you’re unsure how to get started with video marketing, or wondering how to use it to your best advantage, here are some examples of ways you can apply video for best SEO results.
- Blogs. Even if your blog gets excellent engagement, adding video will push that metric over the top. By most estimates, your views will more than double simply by including video. Some ideas include explainers, how-to’s, tutorials, or simply summarizing your blog post in a video for those who don’t want to read.
- Landing Pages. Great landing pages do an excellent job of illustrating products and promoting your services. Adding video to your landing pages takes those efforts to the next level, providing your prospective customers with an engaging, non-static visual representation of your message. Video makes complex subjects more digestible and turns dry topics into entertainment, driving conversions, and generating more qualified leads.
- Emails. Adding video to your emails is a great idea – in fact, emails that include video achieve 300% higher open rates than emails that do not. The takeaway here is, if you want people to open your emails, adding video is a good strategy. To double your open rate, try mentioning the word ‘video’ in your subject line. Video emails can be segmented and personalized according to your needs, and here’s the kick that ties it all back into our SEO discussion – videos in your email boosts SEO! Think about it. Your customers open the email, click on the video, and are taken to your landing page, website, or social channel. Think of each click as SEO currency. Email is just one more way to drive traffic, and because it’s coming from a list of opt-ins who are already interested in what you have to say, it’s far more likely to get you the results you want. It’s like steroids (the good kind) for your marketing campaign.
- Social Channels. Social networks see some of the most active video views on the web, accounting for search volumes that are almost 200 percent higher than any other type of content. Facebook alone accounts for more than four billion video views every day, which is only 25 percent less than all daily views on YouTube. Though YouTube and Facebook are the top channels for video, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn are all influential outlets as well. Keep in mind that social isn’t just where people watch videos; it’s also where they share videos with their connections and interact with them via comments, likes, etc. The more interactions you have with your video, the greater your social proof, which is one of the best metrics to measure if you are focused on audience-building or increasing brand awareness.
Final Thoughts
In the never-ending effort to improve SEO and grow your audience, video is an essential and versatile tool that should not be ignored. To learn more about ZipperHQ and how we help, sign up for updates today.