Online video is probably the most powerful marketing tool you’ll ever use online.
Perhaps many of you already know that having video on a website produces better conversion rates; but how many of you know, or even thought about the SEO benefits of having video?
Web video is a disruptive technology that is changing the SEO game; Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion – is it wise to say that their algorithms have been changed/enhanced for web video? Of course it is.
It’s been proven that one can obtain a good ranking on Google overnight using web video – this requires the right skill set and up-to-date knowledge; Google now rates video higher than large articles, videos that have good relevant (metadata) titles, descriptions and keywords used for the video’s name (i.e. instead of using 77034_jp.mp4, use hotelname-kings-lynn-norfolk-east-anglia.mp4) – are more likely to be brought forward within the SERPS (search engine results pages).
With blended search results (a combination of text, images, news, videos and local results) slowly becoming the norm – this is now changing the eye-tracking patterns (how people’s eyes scan the SERPS). To put this in a nut shell; people are more attracted to video links that are put forward other the blue text results; we humans have always been drawn to images as these include colour and they obviously stand out more against a text filled page. And now consider that once that image is clicked, you’re presented with a video – it doesn’t take much imagination to know what is more likely to get clicked within the SERPS (search engine results pages).
Video can give any sized business greater exposure and communication abilities – there is an advantage in having videos hosted with YouTube and similar; in that these sites have a pre-established page rank and authority to begin with. Videos hosted on these sites can often be optimized for first page rankings by merely optimizing the video’s title. Universal search results are biased towards YouTube videos – thus first page rankings are quite easily achieved.
Online video ultimately exists to increase revenue, by pushing traffic towards the site owner’s product/service pages; choosing the right package (i.e. shooting and editing) is paramount in delivering successful video content – the detail is in the attention giving to lighting, framing, and crisp editing which is not only pleasant to watch – bottom line is, that your company’s message to its intended audience, depends upon this attention to detail “quality”.
In today’s difficult economy, maintaining and improving upon online conversion rates and brand image is of paramount importance to the survival of any business – and as we all can agree upon, this takes a strong commitment and desire – one needs to clearly see a Return On Investment (ROI).
There are service providers that include the uploading of video files, complete with stylish Flash video player uploaded and embedded onto clients’ websites. These services may also provide an opportunity for clients to have a YouTube channel set up for their business (all inclusive).
Providing an immediate, increased link popularity opportunity to their clients’; this meets the objectives of the “off-the-page-criteria” – which search engines use to determine quality content; “off-the-page-criteria” adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. It’s not the amount of inbound links that are important, but the quality of those inbound links. An inbound link from YouTube will carry more weight than an inbound link from a smaller less popular website.
Now this also provides a further opportunity in relation to link bait – any content or feature within a site that encourages viewers to place links to it from other websites; via embeddable links provided by most video hosts, such as YouTube’s Share feature built into its player; an extremely powerful form of viral-like marketing, as it encourages video sharing. Clients’ video links can easily end up advertised on Social Networking sites, blogs and content sites.
