The SEO Benefits of Video

Business videos have numerous advantages over plain text on a website – it is, indeed a selling point.

Videos are, now, one of the most valuable tools for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These days, we take a blended search results – video, text, PDF, blogs, and images – for granted, however a couple of years ago, people used to have to dig very deep for video online. Yes, it is that important. Adding a video to your website can work wonders for your business. Videos have become a vital feature for anyone and any business that is sensitive about SEO, brand recognition, or conversion rates.

Everyone can, benefit, from an SEO perspective, from this extremely powerful SEO tool in the following ways:

• Providing content on your site that can help you build links and generate social shares –  If it’s handled correctly and is done well, a video can generate a large number of links for a website; and often from some pretty reputable domains, too. We are talking about hundreds or thousands of high-quality links in some cases (you never know, yours might be the one!)
• Be listed in more search engines — the video search engines, in particular: Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. are all examples of video search engines. YouTube, however, is a hugely important search engine. Therefore, getting videos into YouTube (and other video-search sites) gets your video-search game high and increases your chances to succeed greatly.
• Grabbing search engine real estate – This is in one way or the other, more important because Google likes to insert videos into its search results. Usually when videos are embedded into the search results, they are almost at all times from major video sites, such as YouTube.com and Vimeo.com.

InFocus Studios realizes that videos are essential because if they are present on your website, your visitors will be more inclined to watch them than spend their time reading plain old text. That’s what branding with business videos is all about. So that makes them stay on your site for longer, which ultimately translates to lower bounce rates! Because your video has to offer something for everyone. It might amuse them, educate them on a subject, amaze them with new facts, surprise them, or impress them (better yet, a combination of these). Either way, the point lies in the fact that it needs to evoke a strong enough emotional reaction that they might want to share it, either by writing a post about it on the social media of their choice (also providing the link to your site, of course) or simply by clicking the Tweet/Share button provided.

Having said that, it is absolutely essential you optimize your videos such that you get the results you are aiming for. Here’s how:

• Pay attention to your content – All too often, people believe that simple creating and posting a video does the trick. This, however, is not the case. Your content matters. People don’t waste time and energy on sharing rubbish with their peers. Moreover, staying on top of trends while creating your video is another strategy that may come in handy.
• Tag, tag, tag – Tagging your videos is good practice; titles and tags are a major factor in making your videos more discoverable for obvious reasons.
• Call to action – Don’t be afraid to ask your viewers to share your videos wherever they can. You never know who a certain someone might be associated to.