How Does Video Content Improve Your SEO Strategy?

Does Video Content Improve SEO?

Content is a key part of any comprehensive Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. At a time when generative AI is bringing down the cost of your competition’s generic blog posts, professional content creation can help you keep the leading edge. But if you’re looking to stand head and shoulders above the crowd, there’s one clear tactic that continues to outperform the rest:

Video.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the importance of video content for SEO and how you can leverage video to improve your overall SEO strategy.

What Is SEO?

Before we dive into how video can boost your SEO efforts, let’s have a quick recap of on-page and off-page SEO to better understand how businesses improve their search engine rankings.

On-Page SEO

Everything you do on your website to improve your visibility on Google, Bing, and other search engines is on-page SEO. The goal here is to make sure that your site is error-free and hyper-optimized, so it can be seen and understood by search engines while still offering a great experience for your visitors.

Some actions you can take to improve your on-page SEO include:

• Consistently create high-quality content
• Ensure your website is as accessible as possible to all visitors
• Optimize for user experience with fast load times, easy navigation, clean layouts, etc.
• Establish strong content structures and internal linking practices
• Monitor for technical SEO errors and issues regularly

Off-Page SEO

Having a well-optimized website goes a long way to hitting the top of Google. But to rank for highly competitive search terms, you may need some support in the form of backlinks.

Anytime an external website links to yours, it’s a kind of vote of confidence that your content is worth looking into. Off-page SEO focuses on attracting good quality links through activities like PR, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and more.

By creating content that’s worth linking to, you’ll naturally acquire more and more backlinks over time as more people discover your website.

How Can Videos Help Your Search Rankings

Now let’s look at why adding relevant videos to your website can translate to a huge boost to your SEO rankings and overall marketing strategy.

Increased Click-Through Rate

Try this: search on Google for something that can be explained visually like “how to remove a tree stump” or “leg extension exercises.” You’ll often find video content displayed prominently as a rich snippet at the top of the search engine results page.

But how can this help you?

Videos have broad appeal, so searchers are drawn to this type of content. One study found that including video in marketing emails improved clickthrough rates by 65%. If you sell something that can be explained on screen, you have a great way to encourage potential customers to click on your content.

Improved User Experience

Videos are engaging, dynamic, and allow you to appeal to users with different learning styles and attention spans in a relatable way. That’s just part of the reason why 91% of customers want to see more videos from brands in 2023. While some users prefer written content over video, including both contributes to greater user engagement and signals to Google that people are finding value in your website.

Longer Dwell Time

A long dwell time (how long visitors stay on your webpage) is a strong signal to Google that your content is giving value to searchers, which improves your overall search engine ranking.

Video content is a great tool for encouraging people to stay longer on each page—especially if you’re able to produce attention-grabbing marketing videos that speak directly to your target audience. A video marketing survey by Wyzowl reports that 80% of marketers say adding video increased their average dwell time.

Lower Bounce Rate

Ever click through the organic search results to a webpage only to immediately see that it’s not really for you? Landing on a website and then “bouncing” back to the search results without visiting any of the other pages is a classic signal of low user engagement.

Research from Backlinko found that pages with video content achieved an 11% lower bounce rate than pages without (even when third-party video content was embedded).

Earn More Backlinks

The web is built on backlinks. They’re a powerful ranking factor showing the search engines which content users are finding helpful and worth mentioning.

By pouring more effort into your content production, you can dramatically increase the likelihood that others will link to it. If your site isn’t well established or you’re aiming for highly competitive search terms, you’ll want to create content that’s 10x better than the next best alternative.

Interactive content, original research, graphics, and video are some of the tools you can use to get there.

Video SEO Tips

Let’s say you’re convinced and ready to start using video marketing to boost your organic traffic. What’s the best way to leverage video content with a limited marketing budget to reach a larger audience?

Tell Stories with Video

In one study, 89% of consumers reported that watching a video persuaded them to buy a product or service. Video has the potential to connect with your audience and bring your products and services to life. With video, you can give customers a fresh new perspective on what you do.

Here are some video marketing ideas you can achieve with just a smartphone:

• Behind-the-Scenes Footage – Give your audience a glimpse of your production process or your team at work in the office or on a job site. It’s a great way to show your personality and humanize your brand.
• How-To Content – Is there a routine service call or task your customers could handle themselves? By educating your audience on how you approach these tasks themselves, you communicate that you value their success above your own profit. It’s a great way to build trust and stay top of mind when they need expert help
• Product Demonstrations – If your target customer is shopping around for a solution to their problem, show them what yours can do. Product videos get customers excited about your products and show whether it’s a good fit for them
• Customer Reviews – Have any loyal fans who would love to tell the world about your business? After word-of-mouth referrals, video testimonials are the most powerful social proof around. Add these testimonials near call-to-action buttons on your website and monitor for increased conversions

Use Different Types of Videos Across the Buying Journey

The best marketers understand where customers are on their buying journey. As customers move from becoming more aware of their problem to evaluating competing solutions, your video content can move them forward to the next step.

• Awareness Stage – Customers are trying to articulate their problem and find the cause. This is where a pest control company might have a helpful video on their Facebook page answering the question: “Why do I have ants in my kitchen?”
• Consideration Stage – Once your customer knows what their problem is, they’ll begin comparing possible solutions, including yours. A pest control company might have a video at the top of a blog post called “Getting Rid of Ants: When to Call an Exterminator” to advertise themselves as a potential solution.
• Decision Stage – At this point, your potential customer is inclined to go with your product or service and needs help in deciding for sure. This is where video testimonials on your Home, About, and Contact pages can seal the deal.

Hosting Your Video Content

The two main approaches here are to host videos on your own website or to embed them via a third-party video hosting platform like YouTube or Vimeo. There are a few pros and cons for each:

Self-hosted Video

The main advantage to uploading videos to your own website is that you have better control of the user experience. You’ll be able to create more customized players, get very focused analytics, and create specific calls to action when the user finishes the video.

A big downside is that this setup takes move development time, and video is a huge drain on your website’s resources. Your servers would need to be capable of streaming high-resolution video to multiple users at the same time, which can represent a big additional cost with low return on investment.

Third-Party Video Hosting

With third-party hosting, you get all the resources of a major video hosting website with almost no setup overhead. As an added bonus, you’ll benefit from wider reach as the video platform can serve your content to a relevant audience without them ever visiting your website.

The only downside is that you may need to rely on the third-party website’s proprietary analytics tools to understand total video views, engagement, watch time, and key audience insights.

For the vast majority of businesses, we’d recommend using a third-party service for ease of use, cost savings, and better overall reach.

Add Transcripts and Subtitles

An important final piece of your video marketing strategy is to include your video transcripts and consider adding subtitles depending on the context of where it will be shared.

Transcripts are the text-only version of your video which don’t necessarily appear on screen as your video is viewed. Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo will automatically generate them and give users the option to enable closed captioning for better accessibility.

Google is able to read transcripts and include them alongside your video titles and descriptions in determining the value of your webpage. To create a good experience for your users (and to ensure Google is getting the best data), it’s a good idea to manually check and correct your transcripts. Luckily, Vimeo and YouTube make this relatively easy so that it’s easier to make your website accessible to everyone.

Subtitles are text that appear on screen as your viewers watch your content. They need to be added before uploading your content to a video hosting platform if you plan to use them.

The closed captions driven by your video transcript are sufficient for a video that appears on your own website, so you won’t need to add subtitles. However, subtitles are crucial for getting engagement for videos shared on social media since users often scroll through video posts but don’t want to enable sound.

Video SEO with PHOS

With PHOS, you not only have access to dedicated inbound marketing experts to manage your SEO strategy, but also our award-winning creative team who can help you tell your story with beautiful custom videography.

Video is the SEO game-changer you’ve been looking for. It enhances click-through rates, user experience, dwell time, and backlinks. Incorporate engaging video content strategically, and you’ll elevate your SEO efforts in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

If you need help creating beautiful, original video content for your business, be sure to reach out to the team at PHOS.