The might of videos becomes truly visible when they are combined with SEO. The latter will attract users to a website, while the former will engage them in visual content, together leading to the aim of every business: conversions. Thus, in this article, we will focus on video marketing and SEO – the way they intertwine and may be utilized together for the profit of your business.
The Power of Video Marketing
Video marketing is a potent player in the content marketing funnel. It may not only be used to attract attention but also to influence purchase decisions and build brand image. Thus, before discussing how to use video marketing for SEO, let’s take a look at the most powerful elements of the video marketing itself:
User Engagement
The first element in which video marketing thrives is user engagement. With every generation, the attention span is dropping, making short-form videos the most consumable content. To add to that, the human brain processes visuals much faster than text and retains more information – approximately up to 95% when compared to barely 10% for texts, making videos the best way to convey information.
Additionally, videos evoke much more emotions. They are the key to keeping the users on the edge of their seats. This is further proved in the 2020 HubSpot Report where marketers were asked about the most successful post type for engaging social audience. Videos were the second, losing only to images, with a considerable advantage over text-based posts (via rockcontent).
Conversion Rates
Due to the fact that videos evoke emotions, they have also emerged as an effective tool for influencing purchase decisions. 90% of the marketers that participated in the 2022 Vidyard State of Video Report, claimed that videos drive conversions equally good or better than any other type of content, with 70% saying that it was indeed better. The ROI on video marketing campaigns is also growing steadily, proving that this type of content is the way to go.
Brand Recall
Finally, the last powerful aspect of video marketing is its effect on brand recognition and identity. Since videos attract attention, they are an excellent tool to drive users who previously had no idea about your brand to your website or social media. What’s more, their format enables you to create a deep, easily digestible narrative that will acquaint the potential customer with your values, build your desired brand image, and evoke trust.
Videos are also among the most widely shared content across social media. This means that by creating engaging, rich-in-value videos, the users will spread the information about your brand themselves, increasing brand recall even further.
Did you know that we share our marketing knowledge on our YouTube channel?
How Video Boosts SEO
Using video marketing for SEO is an effective way to rank up in SERPs and attract more organic traffic to your website. It is so because videos come with many benefits which are advantageous for SEO as well. How exactly does video content enhance your search engine optimization efforts? Here’s a list:
- User Engagement – It is one of the most crucial metrics for any page since Google rewards engaging content. The more time users spend on your web pages, the better it affects your rating since you gain active users. And, since video marketing has proven to be much more effective than text in terms of user engagement, it is the ideal solution to give your SEO a major boost.
- Rich Snippets and SERP Features – Videos are proven to be clicked much more often than other elements. By including them in your webpage, you gain a chance to display snippets with thumbnails leading to them, thus getting more users to actually visit your page. This, on the other hand, improves your CTR, further sending signals to Google that you offer valuable content.
- Backlinks and Shares – We’ve already mentioned that videos are most likely to be shared in comparison to other forms of content. But, what does this feature of video marketing mean for SEO? That you can generate free backlinks, without any effort. Additionally, this makes it easier for you to attract users from social media platforms, further enhancing organic traffic flow to your website.
Join our Newsletter
Stay up to Date with News from the SEO World
Best Practices for Video SEO
Understanding the power of video content and knowing how it may affect your rank in SERPs, let’s proceed with a few tips for video marketing SEO. There are several practices that you may include to further amplify the benefits coming from these two strategies. How to do that? Through video content optimization. Its most important elements include:
Video transcripts
Transcribing your video content is an excellent way to give your SEO metrics a boost. There is a plethora of reasons why you should do that, namely:
- Increased accessibility – By transcribing videos you make the content available for those who are unable to simply watch videos, for instance, deaf people. This, on the other hand, leads to a drop in the rejection rates and more users actively staying on your website, boosting your user engagement.
- Additional keywords – Transcribing gives you the opportunity to present the keywords that the video contains to Google. As a result, you may attract additional users who might not be able to see your content otherwise.
- Internal links – Transcriptions are also an excellent field to add internal links – a crucial part of any on-site SEO strategy.
- Content repurposing – You may use your transcripts as a base for a separate blog article, to make it reach a wider audience.
Video Titles and Descriptions Optimization
Find the right keywords in Semrush or Ahrefs and include them in your video descriptions and titles. Remember that the texts still need to be attractive to the users – don’t stuff the keywords, make natural and engaging copy.
How to do that? Keep the descriptions short, be consistent with the thumbnails, and adjust them to your target audience. Don’t trick your viewers but use positive clickbaits – those which attract attention but are in line with the content that you offer.
Hosting Platforms
Finally, a crucial element for your merge of SEO and video marketing is the hosting platform on which you publish your videos. While YouTube seems the most common choice, it has both pros and cons and so is the case with other platforms. Let’s take a deeper look into the matter.
YouTube | Other Hosting Platforms | Self-Hosting |
---|---|---|
+ Simple account set-up | + More control over videos and their descriptions | + More control over videos and their descriptions |
+ Fast | + Videos of a higher quality | + Video generates a direct link to your website |
+ Brand channel after reaching only 50 subscribers | + Possibility to include CTA | - May slow down your loading speed |
+ Driving traffic from YouTube searches to your website | + Driving traffic from hosting platform searches to your website | - Often harder to share |
- Less control over your videos |
Conclusion
Video marketing and SEO are an inseparable pair. The former helps boost the results of the latter, while the latter makes the former more visible. Thus, it’s crucial to stay updated in both fields – knowing the current trends and best practices of the two of them will lead you to higher visibility, enhanced user engagement, improved brand recognition, and better conversion rates.
At Delante we always stay up to date – book a content marketing consultation now and see how our knowledge can help you elevate your business!
Sources:
Wyzlow Report
6 video marketing statistics for 2022
Vidyard Report