Is your business using video in its SEO or marketing strategy?
If not using video, you’re soon to be in the minority. And it’s something you should consider changing immediately.
That’s because video has been blowing up in recent years and that trends only looks set to continue in 2019 and beyond. It can be a powerful marketing tool — just as long as your business knows how to leverage it.
From defining video marketing to offering strategies to help businesses use video better, this article is intended to help business website owners to extend the reach of their online content today and position their business for a better tomorrow. Simply put, the focus you place on implementing video as a mainstream support for better online visibility today will provide you with increasing dividends for the foreseeable future.
The Rise and Rise of Video
When it comes to the power and potential of video marketing, the stats speak for themselves.
Cisco is forecasting that 80% of internet traffic will be video-based by 2020. But that’s not the only statistic that should make you sit up and take notice of video. Around 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos each week.
More companies are making use of video, too. According to Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing survey, a hard-to-ignore 81 percent of companies are using video marketing in 2018 compared to 63 percent in 2017.
Still wondering if video is right for you?
Video marketing can help you boost your sales. In fact, over three-quarters of marketers say that video has helped their companies increase sales. This is also according to Wyzowl’s survey.
Google is Overhauling Search
With Google publicly confirming that it is making changes to its search results page in support of displaying even more videos and other image-based content on every single search result, you must agree that the time to implement video marketing is now.
Thanks to an update in September, there are a number of new features that have been showing up in Google search results such as introductory videos about public figures and more general topic videos. Google also changed the ranking system for images to give users more context.
Google has also integrated Google Lens — a previous standalone app that used artificial intelligence to identify the contents of an image without relying on words or alt tags — directly into searches to also provide a more visual experience. This, as well as other recent moves by Google, has alerted our leading SEO company to increase our already committed strategy to include video in ways that will support 100 percent of our SEO clients by the end of 2019.
If you haven’t yet included video into your marketing efforts, it may help to know that Google began to increase video content in its search results in an effort to support better search results back in 2017.
In October of that year STAT reported that the number of video carousels nearly doubled after an update. When they checked 1.3 million mobile keywords (video carousels are more common on mobile devices), video carousels went from appearing on 23.46 percent of them to 41.1 percent of them.
The Rise and Rise of Video on Facebook
It’s not just SEO and search engines where video is becoming more and more popular. Video is crushing it on social media. If you browse Facebook just a couple of times a day you’ll know how powerful and popular video is.
It’s been that way for a couple of years now. In 2016, it was reported that 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook every day. That is a staggering amount of content being watched.
In all likelihood, video will only become more popular on Facebook — particularly with brands. For one, the most recent updates to Facebook’s algorithm aimed at creating more meaningful relationships put more emphasis on content that users want to see and share. Guess what content that’s likely to be?
Facebook has even said itself that a lot of the content on the platform will be video. In 2016, Ted Zagat, Facebook ad product lead, said that in a year or two Facebook will be mostly video.
How Can Your Brand use Video in 2019?
There are many ways your brand can use video marketing in 2019 and beyond. Whatever your business, at least one of the suggestions below should be achievable:
- Explainer videos: These typically animated videos are a staple of SaaS companies. They are a great way to sell your brand or product. But they may struggle to rank in Google unless someone is searching for your company specifically.
- Video blogs: Why not turn a blog post into video content? SEO software firm Moz do this brilliantly with their Whiteboard Friday videos. Choose topics and keywords carefully and there’s every chance that you can rank.
- Product demos: Video is a great way to show off your wares. Compile a detailed review of your products or run through some of the best products on offer. These also have great potential to rank.
- Live video: If you want to boost social media engagement, live video could be the perfect way to do so.
You don’t even have to hire a company to help you create these videos. Cameras on smartphones have become so advanced that a new iPhone is practically as good for capturing most videos as an expensive camera. There’s simply no excuse for businesses not to start investing in video.
For the record, Verti Group International a.k.a. SEO Seattle® believes video will offer almost any website not already using video an increase in the visibility of their online content without any question.
Already Have a Video? Here Are Some Optimization Tips
Creating a video isn’t enough to rank. If you want to maximize the amount of traffic and engagement that your video drives then optimization is key. Here are a few important tips to get you started.
1. Add a transcript to your video
Google may be making the SERPs more video-friendly, but that doesn’t mean you should do away with good old text completely. Not only will it make your videos more indexable, but it will also provide a way for users to follow along and take notes while listening to videos.
2. Choose the most engaging thumbnail
One of the biggest factors that impact whether your video gets watched or not is your thumbnail image. Boring images get bypassed so make your thumbnail as engaging and eye-catching as possible. With video, your thumbnail is more important than the title you give to your video.
3. But don’t forget about the title and description
The title and description of your video will play a big role in whether it ranks. We consider a video title much in the same way we do a title for a respective webpage. Titles should be written for both humans and bots. They should be engaging and make users want to watch, but they need to contain keywords, too.
4. Integrate video into optimized pages
While video can be great standalone content, it works best when it is integrated into a page that is also optimized for relevant SEO keywords supporting the video content. Pages that include video should have great H1s, alt tags, other images and lots of content if you want to stand the best chances of ranking.
If you want to a more in-depth guide on how to boost your rankings and traffic on YouTube, check out Brian Dean’s article on the topic.
If you need help ranking your videos on Google, or Search Engine Optimization (SEO), then we invite you to reach out to Verti Group International a.k.a. SEO Seattle® for the type of online marketing solutions that will get your online content noticed by more of the people that matter most. We specialize in real SEO solutions and are always found implementing methods supported by the Google official guidelines and offering support for a respective website’s most optimal visibility online.
If you want to know more about ways that Verti Group International a.k.a. SEO Seattle® can help you to better leverage video, just ask us.
