SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) continues to be a hot topic in 2018. Everyone wants to know the secret to getting their company’s website to rank on the 1st page of Google. Not a simple task, as technology keeps evolving and Google is constantly improving their algorithms. These changes help to guide Google’s users to more quality content, which is great, but they also make a business owner’s job much harder.

What has been considered best practise one year may not necessarily be in the next. Between Google bots, spiders, keywords and crawlers it’s tough to know where to start. (And yes that is a huge understatement!) One thing that most SEO experts can agree on is that online video is a huge, and still growing, trend.

Currently video makes up 76% of all internet traffic, and despite the fact that there are more videos out there than ever, HubSpot states that, “43% of people want to see even more video content online”. In short, if you’re not creating video content then you’re missing out. Here’s why you should be taking advantage of the SEO benefits of video in 2018.

Your customers love Video and Google does too

We’re all familiar with the saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. If that’s the case, video is worth millions when it comes to SEO. Gradually, our online interactions have become far more visual. We watch videos online everyday using our phones, computers and even on our smart TVs. Faster internet speeds, more visual friendly social media platforms and a general desire from the public to engage with more videos has led to this major surge in visual online content.

As a result, Google gives higher priority to websites using videos over those only using text. In fact, having a video on your company’s landing page makes it 53% more likely to appear on page 1 of Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Simply put, video is a great way to increase your SEO, because people love to watch videos and Google bots love to crawl them.  

Sites with video content are also far more likely to rank for competitive keywords, which increases your chances of appearing in a search made by your target audience. A study by Forbes shows that, “65% of business decision-makers will visit a website after viewing a branded video.” Making it pretty clear that relevant and good quality video content can dramatically improve your site’s SEO by driving, not just people, but the right people to your homepage.

Video Improves your UX

User experience (UX) is crucial when it comes to the success of your website. Think of UX as the online equivalent of customer service. If your customers are happy with the service, they are more likely to visit again. If your UX is good people will stay, and return to, your website increasing their chances of buying your product.

“A user interface is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it’s not that good.”

Martin LeBlanc, Iconfinder

Having a video on your site increases customer engagement. People prefer watching a video than reading text as we process visual content much faster than written information. This makes videos important to improving the user experience.

If your product has lots of complicated features, for example complex technical machinery, it’s tough to explain just using text. If people don’t understand how your product works, then how can you expect them to buy it? By adding video you can make people understand your product easily and accurately.

Improving your UX also leads to improved SEO, as there is a correlation between these two aspects. When users are more engaged with your site, Google sees this as a sign that your website contains high quality content. This helps to get you higher search engine rankings.

Improve your SEO with a sharable video

Video sharing is another way to improve your SEO and expand your reach further, as most people will share a video that they’ve watched with their friends online. Video is the easiest content to spread on social media. In fact, a video has 12 times more chances to be shared online than both text and links combined. Sharing is the 1st step to going viral, and that’s every online marketer’s dream!

Make sure that you only produce good quality videos, a bad video ruins your credibility and a high bounce rate will lower your search engine ranking. Before you start your video project, always ask yourself, “Would I like to watch/share this?” If the answer is no, then it may be time to start your project again.

Why do tags, descriptions, and titles matter?

Having good quality video content will help to boost your SEO, but don’t forget to make your video SEO friendly too. The title and the description of your video are both important elements that can affect your search engine rankings.

Your video title should be SEO friendly but also clickable, remember the title needs to be interesting enough to make people want to watch your video. Your title should ideally have at least 5 or more words including a keyword that you want to rank for. This will not only help you to rank in the SERPs but it can also get you more watches on YouTube, spreading your reach even further.

The video description is also really important. That’s because Google’s spiders can’t read videos. They rely entirely on the description you give to find out what your video is about. Rather than just throwing a few random words in the description box, try to describe the video content in plenty of detail. This information tells Google, as well as your customers, exactly what your video is about. And since most of your competitors aren’t doing this yet, it will also help you to rank in the SERPs much faster. (Easy win!)

Improving Search-ability with a few tricks

Making your video SEO friendly doesn’t need to be complicated or time consuming. But it will make a huge difference when it comes to widening the reach your video. If improving the search-ability of your video sounds like a scary prospect, here are a few simple tips to get you started.

Titles and Thumbnails:

Create compelling titles and thumbnails (like this) that stand out and make people click on, and of course watch, your video. Include your keyword to make them even more friendly to search engines.

Descriptions:

The first 2-3 lines matter if you want to get your video ranking highly in search engines. Give a short description in 2-3 lines, covering the theme of your video. Don’t forget to include your keyword to increase your chances of getting a higher ranking.

Tags:

When writing your tags, use keywords that you would like your video to rank for. Make sure they are relevant to the content in your video. Write your main keyword first, doing this will put more weight on it in algorithms.

Links:

Promote your video to reach a wider audience. You’ve got great content so why not share it with as many people as possible? Post a link to your video on your blog, social media pages or even on your email signature.  

CC:

Use the closed caption (CC) feature of YouTube. This will enable text to be shown over your video and can be translated into different languages. Using CC gives your video a new way to get indexed by search engines.

See the full list of tips from shoutmeloud.com.

The Stats to Prove The Theory

Here are 15 compelling facts that you should know about video marketing and why your company should be using it. The facts not only show how video can improve your SEO rankings, they also prove that video helps to engage your audience and explain why video is the best form of content for suiting most people’s online habits.

Better SEO 

• Having video on a landing page makes it 53% more likely to appear on the 1st page of the SERP.
• Video drives an increase of 157% in organic traffic from SERPs.
• The average user spends 88% more time on a website with video.
• Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more.
• An email containing a video receives an increased click-through rate of 96%.

Audience Engagement 

• Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video compared to 10% when reading it in text.
• 97% of marketers say that video has helped to increase understanding of their product.
• 92% of people who watch a video on their mobile will share videos with others.
• 87% of online marketers choose to use video content.
• 51% of marketing professionals around the world agree that video content is the type of content with the best ROI (Return on Investment).

Online Habits 

• ⅓ of online activity time is spent watching videos.
• Social video (for example videos posted on facebook, instagram and twitter) generates 1200% more shares than text and image combined.
• 82% of all Twitter users watch video content on Twitter.
• 45% of people watch more than an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos per week.
• More than a billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.

(Information provided by wordstream.com)

Why now is the time to optimise your video content

The facts speak for themselves. But if you’re still not convinced, we have one more prediction for you. By 2019 internet video traffic will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic. It’s safe to say that the popularity of videos isn’t going to die down anytime soon! So now is the perfect time to invest in video content.

Video is a trend that’s too big to be ignored. Not only is it a great way to engage your audience, it can simplify complex products and processes, it can spread your reach through social shares, and of course boost your SEO. The fact is, videos are easy to digest, remember and share, making them the perfect online content to improve your SEO ranking!

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