Now that everyone knows just how huge it is to keep fresh, high-quality, interactive content on your website that’s frequently changed, updated, added to, etc., it’s now important to understand just how to make that content work to your SEO advantage. Since I’m a video nut, I totally swear by the power of video content and the huge benefits it can have for your website, your brand and your business, but not many SEO’s out there know exactly how and why to implement it correctly.
The truth is, video can be used for a number of different reasons, and all of them have differing benefits for your site. Knowing how and when to use the videos that you have can make or break the success of your content marketing strategy, so it’s definitely something you need to learn now.
Brand Awareness
Tons of companies are now jumping on the video train to create corporate commercials that give some insight into their businesses – but what do you do with those videos once they’re created? The answer involves more than just posting these videos on YouTube, although that is a good starting point for this type of content.
In order to increase your brand awareness, you want to send a message to as many people as you possibly can, and YouTube is a great way to accomplish just that. Being the second-largest search engine in the world, behind only its parent engine, Google, YouTube is a fantastic way to get your content seen, and the more people that see your video, the more aware they become of your brand.
It will take a little more work on your part, though, than simply posting to YouTube and letting Internet users do the rest of the work. Overly-commercial content on YouTube isn’t going to be successful – engaging content will. Take this Nike commercial, which was meant for web purposes based on its length (2:30 is far too long for a television ad, but online, people will spend the 2:30 to engage with content that’s entertaining like this) – 2.6 million views later, everyone knows about Nike Free sneakers and how they stand for true love (metaphorically speaking):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iozZTJB2XOw
If you wish to create this kind of content, keep in mind that your audience is much broader than your typical target audience. Insert and reflect your brand wherever and however possible, but know that the content still needs to be share-worthy. Then, after your video is posted, do what you can to share it. You can post your content across your social media platforms, write guest blog posts with the content embedded in it and simply share with your company’s contact list.
Good quality content will handle the rest – once you’ve done your part to share it, others should pick up on it.
Building Links
Say you want to get hundreds or even thousands of high-quality backlinks to your site, which has become so much harder to do in the post-Panda realm that we SEO’s now live in. It’s easier said than done, but if you have the right kind of quality video content, at least you have a starting point.
If you’re looking to build links, viral video content will be your best friend. You’re looking for something that’s going to be entertaining enough to be shared, and hence lead to more links to your website. So make sure you have a funny corporate video like the Dollar Shave Club guys (see below – this is my favorite!), or some kind of video that’s going to attract attention and encourage people to like and share your content.
Now, to help in your link-building goal with your awesome video, there are a couple of things you’ll have to do after you’ve implemented it on your website using a third-party media server (we like Vimeo Pro). First, when you’re loading your video on to your third-party server, make sure you click the settings to allow your video to be embedded anywhere. Then, embed it onto your website using HTML5 or JavaScript – steer clear of using iFrames, as these are difficult for search engines to read.
You can create custom embed codes to share with others so that when your video gets shared, your website gets credit for the additional embed. Target the page with your video content using optimized anchor text and make sure you give users the option to share the video across the major social media platforms (typically Facebook, Twitter and Google+).
Then, share away! Use your custom HTML5 or JavaScript embed code to share to your business’ own social media profiles, and let the quality of your video content do the work from there. Voila – natural, quality backlinks to your site!
Increasing CTR/Conversions
Obviously, every website’s goal is to rank on the first page of search results, if not own the #1 position. We all know how difficult that can be, and there’s no real trick to make it happen quickly, although video content, when implemented correctly, can definitely help move your website up in the rankings and increase your click-through rate.
Search users are proven 80% more likely to click on a search result that features a rich snippet thumbnail of any sort, especially video. When more users click on your search result over others, despite its position in the SERPs, Google interprets that as your site being of high-quality that people regularly find valuable information on. Then, Google begins to trust your site more, and then begins to rank you higher in the SERPs. As you rise in the SERPs, your CTR could increase by as much as 60% because of your video snippet. It’s really a cyclical win-win for all involved.
As far as your conversions go, having a video on a product page of an ecommerce site can hugely increase the likelihood of a customer purchasing a product. It gives a customer a chance to really “see” the product in a way that they can’t through images and text alone.
So, to implement a video for these purposes, simply create a product video that doesn’t necessarily have to be all too engaging outside the context of your website, and upload it to a third-party media server. Select the settings that hide the video from the third-party server to ensure the video will appear on your website and your website alone (so Vimeo or Wistia or whichever service you’re using won’t rank for content that’s yours).
Then, place it on the desired page of your website using HTML5 coding (the “old embed code”) that’s readable by search engines. There are some ups and downs to this – HTML5 is not readable by mobile devices, only iFrames are, but iFrames aren’t read by search engines. So you either have to choose which is more important to you, or program in a way to serve up different versions of the video to different servers/bots based on their entry point (mobile vs. desktop).
Mark-up your video content using schema.org Video Object tags, and submit a video XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools (some third-party media servers, such as Wistia, create these sitemaps for you – others, you’ll have to work with your web provider to create and upload to your website). Wait a week or two, sometimes more depending on the overall power of your website, and you should begin to see your video snippets appearing in search results when you enter the query for which you optimized your video for when you marked it up.
Here’s an example of a video we recently implemented earlier in 2012 for a phrase that receives 3,600 monthly searches and is highly competitive. This website ranked at the 46th position in the SERPs prior to video implementation, and after the video was placed and indexed, the search phrase jumped to the number 2 spot:
Now, that page of the website is one of the top performing pages, and the conversion rate has increased on the page, as well. The video, while not otherwise too terribly engaging, is serving its purposes of producing the video rich snippet in search results to increase keyword rankings, CTR and conversions, just as intended.
If you’re considering adding video content to your website, just make sure you have a plan in place based on your goals for the content prior to creation and implementation. How you place the video can change its overall performance drastically, so make sure you and the marketing company that your business is working with understand the goals and know how to implement your content properly to achieve them.
