Over and over we hear that SEO needs to be done for the user, not for the search engine – that’s true. Part of doing SEO is optimizing your site with rich content media. One of those medias is video. Below is a list of benefits that come from video optimization for your website, YouTube and various social media sites.
Videos Can Decrease Your Bounce Rate
With Google updates, Panda and Penguin, we know that the motive of these updates is to increase visibility for sites that Google deems as high quality sites – while decreasing the rank of sites that are deemed low quality. Bounce Rate, as defined by Google is “the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page.) Bounce rate is a measure of visit quality and a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance (landing) pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”
Providing an engaging – content rich video on your site can help decrease your bounce rate. It reduces your bounce rate by providing the potential customer or existing client with engaging material that will keep the visitor on the page longer. And as we know, the longer a visitor is on your site the more your bounce rate decreases and the more likely it is that Google will deem the site as being high quality.
Videos Can Help You Rank
You are 53 times more likely to rank with a video, versus ranking with text alone. The reason for this variance is that there is still less competition for videos than there is for text content. A video showcased through a YouTube account can further help you reach first page placement because YouTube is the MVP for Google search results; after all Google owns YouTube.
As a matter of fact, around 80% of videos on Google search result pages are from YouTube while the other 20% are from sites such as DailyMotion, Vimeo and Metacafe. Of the Google search result videos, over 80% are informational videos.
Why is that?
People want to know how to do things. EricTheCarGuy, on YouTube does exactly this. He is a mechanic, but he has tons of videos on how to fix various car problems and even how to identify them. Not only is it informative, but he also demonstrates his knowledge thus building his reputation. As a potential client, it aids in building trust and assurance that if you were to take your car into him he would know exactly what to do.
Get Your Links, Videos
Videos get links. Have you seen the viral Harlem Shake videos? Everyone from corporations to news teams to sports teams have gotten in on this viral video sensation. While a viral video is different from say, a company video, it illustrates the sharing and linking power of videos. If you upload your videos to various video search engines you can increase your exposure. Sites like YouTube – DailyMotion – Vimeo – Metacafe can all aid in increasing your exposure thus increasing your links and link building opportunities.
Social Media Links
There are tons of other sites that you can submit your video to other than just Facebook and Twitter. Sites that you may not even be familiar with. Sites like Reddit, Tumblr, Digg, StumbleUpon and Google+. You can even edit your video down to a clip or teaser and post it with Twitter’s Vine. You can then use the Vine video to push traffic directly to your website so that they can view the entire video. Vine videos are even beginning to have more link power because they are shared so easily and you have to be creative to engage a potential client in 6 seconds. Vine’s streaming power is similar to that of Instagram as well so it gets to a bunch of viewers. By creating videos on these various social media outlets you are also increasing the potential link value of your video. Not only will this boost your viewership and subsequently your ranking, but it will also aid in creating more conversions.
Embed Source Links
Including a script in your videos embed code, with a link back to your website as the source, can also further link building. Including this information, not only helps move your video to the top of Google search results because there is text content and video content, but it also aids in building links and directing traffic to your website.
Video as Content Creation
One of the awesome things about creating a video is that you can repurpose the video for a multitude of other content creation. Some people suggest that video creation can be limiting and considered “thin content” so to reinforce the video you can do things like a text transcription which is exactly what it says it is – literally a transcription of your video into text.
As part of my job I read a multitude of articles throughout the day to conduct research. I am not always able to turn on my speakers so even putting a text transcription below the video can aid people like myself who want the information but don’t have access to speakers (this will also aid in decreasing your bounce rate). You can also turn a text transcription into a PDF download. Turning a video into something like a PowerPoint or a SlideShare presentation is another way to repurpose the video. If you do turn it into a PowerPoint, then you can share it on SlideShare which will then provide you many other SEO benefits as I discussed in my previous post. Screen shots are another way to share the video in a different medium while still linking back to the video. You can also use the audio as a podcast, if the audio by itself is suitable.
Traffic
Our websites are the only places we find solace in traffic. Traffic means people are coming to your site. Traffic means potential conversions. One of the issues when deciding to do videos is where you want the traffic to go.
As I mentioned above, YouTube rules the Google search engine result pages. The potential trouble with that is, if your videos are all posted through YouTube you are probably not seeing a lot of the YouTube traffic translate into website traffic.
The reason?
Less than 1% of YouTube visitors convert to website visitors. So the question then is how do we implement the benefits of YouTube’s power and still get traffic to our websites?
First, if you have a YouTube account set up and feature your video on YouTube. Any views of this video through YouTube will not decrease your website’s bounce rate since the platforms are different. Also, the traffic will then be directed to the YouTube channel rather than the website. However, in the YouTube description box you can link to your website and provide any information that might aid in creating a conversion. It would also be to your benefit to include this information within the context of the video. In terms of featuring the video on your website, you should do this even if you have the video on YouTube. YouTube is going to help with indexing (i.e. ranking on the search engine result pages), but having the video on your website will aid in creating rich content on your site making your site more engaging for users who are driven there either through YouTube or organic search queries.
Video is a great medium to communicate information to various clientele and potential clients. Instead of dense text, video provides visual and auditory stimulation. It is also a medium that allows your business creative license to engage your website visitors and build trust and reputation. While there are many aspects of SEO that revolve around coding and meta data, video optimization is a great way to decrease your bounce rate as well as increase links and traffic. SEO is about online marketing, so creating a strong online marketing portfolio means using the best tools around you to build the best site that you can.
