Using Video to Improve Your SEO: HUGE Benefits (And How to Do it)

If you needed a reason why video content creation is such a great idea for your business, let it be search engine optimization. 

Not only is SEO the building block of your entire marketing presence, but it also has a direct impact on your user engagement, conversion rates, and revenue. In fact, 55% of people watch videos daily and 85% of marketers are using YouTube, making it the most widely-used platform for video. 

It’s no secret that video is a rapidly growing trend in digital marketing. Video content offers many benefits over text-based content, such as being more entertaining and memorable. In fact, share rate on social videos is 12x higher than images and text combined. Video content can also directly influence some of the most important Google ranking factors.

Let’s start with how you can improve your SEO with video by understanding the following three major ranking factors:

Dwell Time

Studies suggest that the average person spends around 2 hours and 20 minutes a day watching video content. That said, dwell time is a huge factor in video content. Dwell time is when a user remains on your page before bouncing back to the search results page.

You can usually increase your dwell time by writing longer content and making it more engaging for the visitor. But the truth is, nothing is better for dwell time than a video.

A video immediately captures a user’s attention, and ideally, keeps them engaged for the duration of the video. An attractive video thumbnail can only go so far, you need engaging content for your videos that can improve your SEO rankings. 

You can notice improvements in dwell time that go beyond just the length of the video. A study performed by Wistia discovered that users spent over twice as much time on pages with video content than on pages without.

Google interprets dwell time as your website providing value to its visitors. Keyword research is a great way to bring in organic traffic; however, a video can keep a user on your page longer which results in better conversion rates. As a result, Google will place your website higher on the SERPs, earning you more organic traffic for your SEO efforts.

Page Quality

If you want your pages to rank on Google, they need to offer valuable, high-quality content by combining a variety of media such as useful videos which creates a better user experience for your target audience. 

You may already know that pages with longer content will rank better than pages with short content, but why not add videos to further increase the amount of content on your page? It’s a good idea to remember that long-form content holds value for your reader as well as visuals such as infographics and other helpful illustrations.

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If you limit your web pages to strictly text-based content, you’ll continually be outranked by pages with stronger and more diverse content such as Youtube videos. Incorporating text, images, and of course, video, is a great way to boost your page quality and brand awareness. 

A page that is more informative and unique thanks to the inclusion of video content will receive a higher page quality rating by Google’s search results. Needless to say, a higher page quality means higher rankings! You can learn more about page quality and Google’s search quality guidelines here.

Backlinks

As we mentioned before, embedding videos onto your web pages will increase the overall quality of your website and is a great start for any content marketing strategy.

As you provide more value with this form of content, an increasing number of websites will begin linking to your content which may increase conversions. 

One study found that having both text and video on your webpage can nearly triple the number of backlinks it receives.

On top of that, when you host your videos on YouTube, Vimeo, or other platforms (we recommend YouTube – more on that later), you can place links back to your website in the description. 

That means with each video you create, you’ll secure yourself a new backlink. 

That’s the beauty of video marketing! 

How to Get the Most Out of Your Videos

The SEO benefits of video content are glaring. Now that you know these benefits, you’re probably wondering how you can get the most out of your video content by using Google’s algorithm and SEO basics. 

And, as you probably know, Google analyzes many aspects of your website to determine where it will rank for a given Google search and video content is one of them! If you aren’t too sure where to start, try using some of these tips to maximize the reach of your content.

Let’s explore some great ways to improve your SEO with video: 

Plan your videos around relevant, educational content

First and foremost, your video needs to provide value to your website’s visitors. Otherwise, it will have very little benefit. You can have a great concept, but if your content isn’t helpful or educational with some entertainment you may not get very far. 

One reason it is a great idea to create educational content about your service or product is that product videos can help eCommerce stores increase product purchases by up to 144%! 

You need to create your videos with a purpose in mind, whether it is to educate customers about a product, help them solve a problem, or shed some light on your brand.

A study found that 71% of people made a purchase after watching an online video from that brand. So, it’s safe to say if you plan your videos with the right type of content then your conversion rates have a huge chance to increase which boosts your business. 

You probably already have content that does this – and that’s a good thing!

Try modeling your videos after popular content from your blog or other pages on your website.

If you aren’t really sure what type of content to start with, explainers and demos are the best video formats for generating conversions and sales. 

Upload your videos to YouTube

YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, with over 2 billion active monthly users. 

This is a huge audience that you may not be taking advantage of yet. By uploading your videos to YouTube, you’ll tap into an entirely new traffic source. If you can succeed on Youtube, then your brand is sure to follow. 

If you are linking back to your website with each upload, you can get a huge increase in traffic through YouTube alone.

In fact, Brian Dean of Backlinko performed a study and analyzed 1.3 million Youtube videos. The findings resulted in a realization that comment count, number of videos, number of shares, and likes are all connected with higher Youtube rankings. 

In the same study, Brian Dean also found that videos that ranked on the top page of Youtube results had an average video length of 14 minutes and 50 seconds. That supports the concept that long-form content is great for video SEO as well as article length. 

Not sure how to get started with YouTube? Don’t worry. We’ve got a simple step-by-step guide for you.

Add a compelling title, description, and tags

During the upload process, you should be filling out every detail of your video! Metadata such as rich snippets is important for Googles crawlers to understand what your content is all about. Including a great meta description and even including subtitles can increase your viewership.

This provides both YouTube and Google with extra information about your content. It will also increase traffic on your Youtube channel and boost your website ranking. 

Once these search engines know what your video is about, they will be able to properly rank it in search results.

Make sure to fill your title, description, and tags with relevant keywords to help it rank as high as possible!

Embed videos to your website

Embedding your videos is one of the most important aspects of using video content!

Embed each video onto a webpage with similar text-based content. This will help relevant web pages rank better in Google while also fueling traffic.

You’ll want to embed your video content using the embed code from YouTube instead of uploading it directly, this method may increase your rankings on search engine results pages.

The presence of links between YouTube and your website is what creates all of these benefits!

Create and upload videos consistently

Any SEO strategy is incomplete without consistent effort! Actually, 90% of brands post at least one YouTube video per week as a part of their social media marketing strategy. So, the consistency of video creation is a factor in video SEO. If your competitors are doing it, you should be too. 

You need to consistently make videos and add them to your website in order to achieve all of the results that video content can offer. You also need to share your video content on all of your social media platforms. 

It would be best to upload your content on the top three video channels which will give you the most views. Your website (85%), your social media platforms (84%), and Youtube (67%).

Once you get the hang of the process, it can help to make a schedule for your video productions. As an example, people watch more business videos on Thursday (about 22% more) than any other day of the week. If you publish business-related content, Thursday might be a good day to schedule your videos. 

Aim for regular uploads – once a week, for example – to keep yourself accountable.

As an additional tip, the quality of your video really does matter, HD videos account for nearly 69% of the videos on the first page of Youtube. So, the time your content is published, the length of your content, and the quality of your videos are all video SEO ranking factors to keep in mind. 

You’re Ready to Improve Your SEO with Video!

If you stick to these simple rules, you’ll be on your way to successful video content in no time!

Of course, not everyone has the time or the ability to churn out SEO-optimized videos week after week. 

If you fall into this category, but would still like to enjoy all the benefits of video content, then you are the perfect candidate for HOTH Video. In fact, most marketers express that their top challenge for video creation is that it’s just too time consuming. 

With HOTH Video, we take your existing web content and turn it into a high-quality video that is optimized for SEO. 

You don’t have to write, shoot or edit a thing. All you have to do is provide us with a link to your content, and we take care of the rest. Schedule a call today!

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