Why is SEO important, you might ask. Search engines are significantly likely to be the way that someone discovers your business for the first time. The closer you are to the top position for a particular keyword, the more likely someone is to click on your link. At that point, you can let your website take things from there… but only if it has the opportunity to do so in the first place.
Therefore, it stands to reason that any opportunity you have to increase your SEO efforts is one absolutely worth taking advantage of.
While there isn’t necessarily a “silver bullet” technique you can use to rank in the top spot for every keyword possibility out there, video marketing may be as close to that idea as we’re going to get. There are five positive impacts of video marketing on SEO in particular that you should definitely be aware of.
People Are Already Actively Seeking Out Video
The main job of a search engine is to provide someone with the most relevant content possible given the terms or phrases they’re searching for. If you ask a question, it’s Google’s job to provide the answer. Yes, the algorithm is complicated and the finer points of SEO are shrouded in secrecy, but at its core, the situation really isn’t more complicated than that.
This is important to understand because according to one recent study from Marketingland, about 62% of Google universal searches already include video content of some type. Google is already serving up more video content to users than ever, and by creating thoughtful, relevant and valuable content, you’re making sure that as many of those searches as possible include the videos that YOU are creating.
Video Content in Search Results Have a Dramatically Higher Click-Through Rate
Along the same lines, a video does more than just help your content rank highly in the SERPs. People are also 41% more likely to click on a video than they are a text-based search result. We already knew that people would rather watch a video on a subject than read a blog post or white paper containing that same information. Now, those preferences are carrying over into the way people use search engines, too.
Time on Site Will Go Through the Roof
One of the major factors that impact your SEO rankings is time on site, which is exactly what it sounds like. The longer people stay on your site after clicking a link, the more “relevant” and “helpful” you’re seen in the eyes of Google. That, in turn, increases your rankings across the board.
Another study conducted by Comscore revealed that people tend to stay on your site for at least two minutes longer than normal if they come by way of an engaging video. Therefore, the more video content you create, the higher you’re likely to rank! When you create a video website and post content there in addition to your primary domain, you’re also creating new opportunities to show up multiple times on a search results page as well.
You’ll Attract More Inbound Links With Video
Another one of the things we know for certain about Google’s SEO algorithm is that inbound links matter a great deal. Just as with time on site, the more people link to your content, the more “relevant” Google deems that content to be.
A study recently conducted by Moz revealed that posts with videos tend to attract roughly three times as many inbound links that regular blog posts or other text-based items. That’s huge because not only do inbound links positively impact your ranking, but they’re also the source for more organic traffic than ever. That traffic will then grow and build upon itself, thus increasing your ranking opportunities even further. This is one of the reasons why SVOD services are so popular these days – the attention you get grows over time as more people are exposed to your messaging.
The Video Ripple Effect
Finally, a video is an undeniably popular tool on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Not only are more than 500 million hours of video watched on YouTube every single day, but 82% of Twitter users say they actively watch content on the service. We also know that social media activity (especially content that gets shared) has a direct, positive impact on your SEO.
Therefore, the more OTT content you create and publish on social networking, the higher your content is likely to rank in the search results. Visual content is already shared more than any other type, so this is a great way to attract the right type of attention. Plus, every retweet or share gives you another opportunity to expose your brand to someone who may not have discovered it on their own.
For most people, any one of these would be reasons to begin exploring the possibilities of video marketing if you aren’t already doing so. But when taken together, it’s absolutely clear that the SEO benefits alone are more than worth the (modest) investment that it takes to start creating this type of content on a mass scale.