Most businesses know that their website should have video content, somewhere, somehow. But where many people get stuck is exactly there – “I know I need it, but how do I get it, where do I put it on my website and what exactly do I do with it?”
While some of the common video questions business owners have get into highly detailed and technical responses, there are always the basics to go over, and that includes where to play your video content on your website. There are tons of options for placement that will help increase your site’s engagement and interactivity, but 3 places on your site in particular will help you right off the bat in terms of optimizing your site with video content.
So get the content made, and start posting in these places as soon as possible!
Your Homepage
First and foremost, you know the importance of good, quality text and images on your homepage, along with a good, functional design and easy navigation menus (check out this post by our friends at HubSpot that outlines the key elements of a good page). These are all the basic elements of a good website in general – so I’m simply adding to the list by mentioning video content on your homepage.
If you’re working to increase brand awareness, which every business should be focused on throughout their marketing strategies, especially online, a company overview video is a great way to introduce people to who you are and what you do. The benefit of sharing this information in video form is that people don’t get bored reading paragraphs of text on your company, and instead they get a great visual representation of your company.
Think of it this way – an IT company, for example, might have some issues explaining to potential clients exactly the services that they offer. Many people may not want to read a bunch of text trying to explain the purpose or mission statement of the company, but people will want to see a video of the people behind the company, and see a visual explanation of the services that they offer.
A video on your homepage can help introduce your company and encourage customers to take a look around the rest of your site, which can help decrease your bounce rate (which can also affect your overall SEO metrics – read about how here).
Category Pages
Your website’s category pages are the next logical step for video content. Once you have quality content to place on the homepage, move on to the top category levels that drive a good amount of traffic and/or business for your site.
Video content on category pages are great because, when optimized correctly, they can benefit the power of that particular page so much. For starters, once again, you’re giving potential customers valuable information in a more entertaining and engaging way than text alone, so you’ll encourage them to stay on the page and check out more of what you have to offer.
In addition to this, when properly optimized for SEO benefit, a video on a category page can produce some of the strongest rich snippets results we’ve tested and seen here at Mountain Media. Here’s an example – we’ve posted a video on our category page for our guest blogging (check it out!), optimized it for SEO and watched as our search rankings have steadily climbed. Here’s why:
That little video thumbnail next to our search result increases our click through rate (CTR) and helps build trust to the page, which Google sees and in turn ranks us higher for. And since you’re optimizing a category page with this, you’re giving the visitor further opportunities to explore deeper into the site, or contact you for information.
Product Pages
On an Ecommerce site, this is the next progression where video content makes sense. Again, when optimized properly, a product page video can help increase your search engine rankings, click through rates and user engagement once the visitor reaches your product page.
The content of a product video, though, would be much different than the content of a homepage or even category page video. A product video should be seen as your last chance to sell a product to your online customer – think about when people call your business and ask for more information on a product. You have about 1:00 to catch the person’s attention before they hang up the phone on you. Or when a customer comes into your storefront location looking to buy a product, but they want to know more about it before they make a purchase, you give them your one last sales pitch before they either leave your store or buy your product.
Your product videos are going to give you this same chance to “sell” your online customer one last time before they leave your store, or in this case, your website. Product videos are meant to be kind of boring – in other words, they’re not shareable, simply because the content of the video is directed specifically to a person who is already interested in something that you have on your website.
Check out Zappos‘ page for great examples of product videos. These guys do it right – over 50,000 product videos in under a year! And while you don’t necessarily have to implement product videos in this sort of volume, having any kind of this rich content on your site can help improve so many performance numbers that the costs associated with producing and implementing these videos will prove to be well worth it.
The first step in all of this, obviously, is to get your video content made. Know which area of your site you’re tailoring the content to, and create your videos around that. In general, good web videos are one or more of the following:
- Entertaining
- Shareable
- Informative
- Link-worthy
- Sales-ey (yes, I think I just made that word up.)
When the content is made, find the appropriate place for it on your website, and do not hesitate to post it – especially now that you know where to do so!
