How to Use Video to Boost Your SEO Rankings
Many don’t realize the importance of video for SEO, but properly formatted and hosted videos can dramatically boost search engine rankings for a business or virtually any website. Adding video to your website is a simple and effective way to generate an added boost to your rankings and drive more people to your website. We’re showing you how to use video to boost your SEO rankings below.
What are Search Engine Rankings?
Before we go into detail about the ways that video will boost your SEO rankings, first let’s talk about what SEO rankings are? Search engine rankings are the location on which your website comes up during a search for a particular keyword or phrase. If you show up in the first few spots or at least on the first page of the search results, you are doing pretty good. If you show up somewhere past that point, it’s time to do some work.
Video SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of working specifically on your website and the content that you produce for your site in a way that is focused on improving your search engine rankings. For instance, if you would like to be on the first page when someone searches for “Business Event Planning” and you currently don’t show up at all, you could start some SEO in an effort to boost your rankings.
What SEO Might Involve From You
Some of the things that might be done include:
- Writing content that focuses on “Business event planning”
- Posting a video to your website that focuses on “Business event planning”
- Including images or other forms of content that relate to “Business event planning”
Boost your organic search results
The idea here is that IF you can offer the best information in the industry when it comes to “Business Event Planning” then Google will notice your efforts and begin to show your website more frequently and higher up in the search engines when a user seeks information about that particular phrase.
You have likely already taken some steps to improve your SEO without even realizing it. However, many are unaware of the positive impact that video can have on SEO rankings. In fact, videos are an excellent resource for businesses to improve their rankings in a very powerful way.
How Video Boosts SEO
Google changes the way that it values websites and their content on a daily basis. This is known as an algorithm. The algorithm is always changing and as outsiders, we know very little about the 200 or more elements that are considered in the algorithm that Google uses to rank billions of websites and webpages in its search engine.
Add value with relevant video content
What we do know is that valuable content does best and that videos which add value to content have a tendency to improve rankings. We’ve seen videos improve rankings as follows:
- Videos tend to increase the potential for a user to click and view content. The click through rate is 157% higher when there is a video on the page.
- Videos lower the bounce rate. This means that pages with a video keep the visitor around longer–they do not quickly “bounce from” or leave the page.
- Videos offer a unique opportunity for people to share which produces natural backlinks. What are Backlinks? They are a known resource that is necessary as part of Google’s ranking algorithm.
Now that you know why videos are so great for SEO, here’s a look at how to use videos to boost your rankings:
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Include Videos on Your Website
To boost your website rankings, include videos on the site. If you create a video, don’t be afraid to host it on your website before you share it anywhere else on the web. Google will rank your website pages higher simply because there is a video there and, if your visitors start to stick around longer because of the video, you can enjoy added rank improvements thanks to a lower bounce rate.
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Include a Transcript of Your Video on the Page
Since a video can only be viewed and is hard to “rank” for keywords, a great way to add additional SEO value to the video is to include a transcript. The transcript should depict, word for word, what the video says. Include keywords in the content to rank higher for specific industry related terms.
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Educate and Inform with Your Video
Educational and informative videos that offer something that is not already found excessively online will rank better than those that repeat common knowledge. Provide potential customers with answers about your brand, products or services. Offer how-to or tutorial style support to show visitors that you are an authority voice on the subject. The more value you add, the greater the search engines will rank your content.
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Be Consistent with Content
Don’t post a single video and expect to see increased rankings for thousands of terms overnight. While the “may” happen, the likelihood is slim. Instead, get consistent with the video marketing that you do and keep a steady production output with a focus on intent. With time you will see results.
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Get Technical
When you post your video to your website and to other sites like YouTube and Vimeo, be sure to include the technical details required to improve your rankings. This includes important elements like:
- Title tag
- A description that includes keywords
- Video length
- Subscribers count
- Comments
- Likes
You may not be able to control the technical elements on all video posts depending on where you share but make sure you take the added time to include these details when possible.
Follow the steps above on how to use video to boost your SEO rankings and let us know how you fare.