How to Make Video Marketing Work for Your SEO Strategy
If you are running your business online, you are probably doing your best to create an effective SEO strategy. You may invest your time researching keywords, improving your site experience, or identifying shopping patterns.
But you forget one crucial element – video marketing.
With millions of videos being watched every day, video marketing has grown exponentially, and the number keeps growing every year.
Studies reveal that 54% of consumers want to watch more video content from brands and businesses. This suggests that video marketing is an effective tool to enhance your SEO strategy.
So, if you are wondering how to integrate video marketing with your SEO strategy, here is a guide to building a solid video SEO strategy for your business.
What Is Video SEO and Why Should You Care About It?
Before we jump into how to do video marketing for SEO, it helps to understand what Video SEO means first. Video SEO is optimizing videos in a way that helps you rank higher across search engines, such as Google, Youtube, Bing, and more.
It includes applying technical and creative techniques that make the search engine understand your content better. With 86% of businesses using videos, it is time that you start caring about video SEO and create strategies that help you capitalize on it.
7 Ways You Optimize Small Business Videos for Your SEO Strategy!
Now that you have a rough idea of how Video SEO works, it is time to start applying the best industry practices to ensure that you generate a positive ROI.
Choose an appropriate hosting site!
There are two ways you can promote small business videos – you can do it either on your own site or on a third-party website. It is crucial to keep your audience’s interests in mind.
For instance, if your goal is to educate or entertain consumers, it is best to distribute the videos on third-party websites like Youtube or Instagram. These will generate views and increase brand awareness.
However, if your goal is to bring potential traffic to your website and drive conversion rates, you can use videos in your blog posts or list them on your site. It all boils down to doing proper customer research and determining the intent of the videos.
Be intentional with your titles, descriptions, and thumbnails!
Like a blog post, creating a compelling title, description, and thumbnail for videos is one of the best ways to get clicks. However, most people mistakenly cramp too many keywords into the video description or use unattractive thumbnails that push the viewers away.
It isn’t tough to pick out a good title or description, but while doing so, it is crucial to integrate keywords smartly and keep the description user-friendly.
Taking extra time to be creative about using all the elements and researching everything about your customers is the key to increasing the click-through rates.
Start using timestamps
A timestamp is a way to link a specific movement in your video. Using them helps to increase the viewer’s retention rate and makes the videos more user-friendly. More often than not, viewers may bounce off early as a part of the video may not seem interesting to them.
Dividing the video into smaller parts directs the viewers to the most relevant part that they are looking for and saves time. Whether you want to upload a video on Youtube or over your site, adding timestamps can help you improve the viewer’s experience.
Insert a video transcript
You may find many small business videos on the internet without any captions or subtitles. That is because they do not have transcripts. These videos help a business grow and to show the market their capabilities.
The text that pairs with your videos is a transcript. These are helpful in not only increasing the accessibility of the videos but also helping search bots to understand the context behind the videos, boosting your rankings.
It is often regarded as a best practice to modify the video transcript such that it enhances the readability on the screen.
Use high-quality end-screens
When someone finishes watching your video, most creators think that the viewers will turn back to the home page or go to the sidebar. But you can keep the viewers hooked to your channel with an end-screen.
With a visually engaging and well-designed end-screen, you can generate traffic, increase the watch time, and even boost your subscriber count.
Here are some essentials you can add to your end-screen to capture the viewers’ attention!
- A Subscribe button
- Link to recommended videos
- A compelling call-to-action
- A link to your website
- Name of any supporters or sponsors
Focus on creating a video schema markup
On-page video markup is one of the most effective ways to inform search engines about what you offer to the viewers.
Without it, the search engines will only know about the video’s title, description, and thumbnail. But with it, you are telling them about the video content more richly and clearly. Thus, failing to implement it can offer less visibility to your content.
Don’t forget to promote your content across multiple platforms!
Finally, you have created, published, and optimised your videos for visibility on the hosting platform. But your work doesn’t end here. It’s time to get the word out.
After publishing, you still need to promote it across different platforms to generate buzz. From social media channels to display ads, there are multiple ways you can encourage audiences to share, like, or comment on your video.
The bottom line is that thousands of small business videos are floating over the internet. Going the extra mile and sharing it with the world can make a difference in your efforts.
Kickstart Your Journey into Video SEO Today!
Video content consumption is a trend that has disrupted the digital world. It is an amazing medium to educate, entertain, and engage your consumers. And when done right, it can reap great rewards.
With Google and Youtube algorithms changing every day, it is crucial for business owners to keep updating themselves with recent trends. Dig into what drives traffic and how you can experiment with small business videos to keep your consumers invested in you.
If you want more tips on creating successful videos for Youtube or tips to drive your digital marketing strategy, you can check out our blog to leverage recent trends for your business.