Businesses looking into video marketing mostly see it as getting into YouTube — and somehow they are not wrong. YouTube is the largest video-sharing site with over 2.1 billion monthly active users today.
However, video marketing and optimizing your video for search go beyond that. With global video consumption continuing to soar, there are more reasons why you should look into video SEO to support your content marketing efforts.
What is Video SEO?
Video SEO, in essence, is like any other SEO strategy. It is a comprehensive process of optimizing your video for search to improve its visibility in search engines and preferably rank on the first page of search results for your targeted keywords.
YouTube’s dominance makes it essential for you to round out your marketing strategies. It means with most of your views coming from YouTube, you should optimize your videos both for YouTube and Google search.
In 2020, there were over 3 billion internet users consuming video content at least once a month, and it is projected to reach nearly 3.5 billion by 2023. A similar report estimated that video content will drive 82% of internet traffic until the end of 2022. This is fueled by the steady increase in video consumption that has reached a global average of 84 minutes per day.
These statistics make clear the value of creating and marketing videos — and as video content continues to gain more exposure on Google’s SERPs, the more you should optimize your videos for search.
How Does Video Help SEO?
Videos can make your content visually better, your products easier to understand, and your brand more relatable and reputable. With video SEO, you can maximize your presence on search, potentially drive traffic, boost conversions, and outperform the competition. Below are some ways video SEO can help you rank better in search engines.
- It reinforces your keyword strategies
Similar to Google, YouTube searches return the most relevant results based on the search queries. It ranks videos based on several factors including how well the title, description, and content itself match the search.
YouTube also looks at videos with the most watch time and engagement for a specific search. But the difference is that users mostly use YouTube to find product reviews, unboxing videos, and product specifications.
With video keyword research, you can discover keywords you would otherwise miss if you were only targeting terms based on Google’s search results. It allows you to better understand the users’ buying journey, their problems, and how they are searching for related videos to solve them.
With a solid video keyword strategy in place, you can uncover content opportunities that will best solve their needs in video format: how-to videos, product reviews, demos, comparisons, etc. When you start researching video-driven search queries, your overall SEO strategy becomes better informed, thus increasing the likelihood of your video content ranking in SERPs and, in turn, boosting your organic traffic.
- It improves your search visibility
The past decade has seen Google’s search engine results becoming way more diverse, visual, and interactive than ever. Today, Google SERPs include rich results which include popular questions, instant answers, related images, and other non-text elements. Videos also prominently appear in the organic search results, often through video carousels or as video-rich snippets.
How you optimize your video is proportional to its ability to appear in the search results. When your video is optimized, it becomes easier for Google to index and discover it. A SERP listing with an associated video is more attractive than a text-only listing, and data proves that it is also more effective. SERP results with video links generate 157% more organic traffic. Landing pages with an embedded video are also 53% more likely to show up on SERPs.
Users today prefer watching a video more than reading a long-form article. So, optimizing your videos can boost your SEO performance. Embedding a video on your site makes your site more likely to rank higher in SERPs and users more likely to click through and watch your content.
- It builds links and generates social shares
When done correctly, a video can generate links for your site. Backlinks are an essential part of any SEO strategy with Google recognizing them as a ranking factor. They not only improve your SEO performance but also increase the number of places where your content is linked. It increases the likelihood that it will direct traffic to your site.
However, the problem is that the internet is already congested with video content. Unless you create a high-quality video with a great outreach and a solid marketing plan in place, its success will be limited. So, when you’re creating video content, think about who you want to create it for and who you want to link to it.
A successful video should have something to offer to its target audience. Depending on your brand and your objective, it should make your viewers laugh, educate them, or amaze them. It should evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that will make them want to share it or post about it.
Get Started with Video SEO Today
SEO is a constantly-changing field with more updates than you can ever keep up with. If you’re looking to get more clicks and drive traffic to your site, video SEO is a strategic route.
Reinforcing your website with video content increases its probability to attract more audiences who are more likely to stay longer on your page and watch the video. In turn, this increases their likelihood to engage with your brand more and journey deeper into the conversion funnel.
