Wordtracker‘s Gareth Davies recently posted a great article called “5 ways video can seriously help your SEO.” Video testimonials, product videos, and informational videos can all contribute to your website’s search engine rankings. Here’s why you should think about using video to improve your business’s visibility in search results.
- Video is easy to do! It’s getting easier to create near-professional-quality videos with an assortment of inexpensive video cameras, cell phone cameras, Flip-type video cameras, and point and shoot digital cameras with video capabilities. Create product videos during your word day by walking through your store. Ask your customers for video testimonials when you complete service or deliver a product. The video above an example of a great video testimonial for my client, Gimmie A Break, in Webster, TX.
- Video helps visitors “stick” on your page longer. Gareth Davies makes the point that video will keep visitors on your web pages longer (to watch the video) and they’ll be less likely to “bounce” off the page quickly. Google tracks the length of time visitors spend on each of your web pages and long “dwell” times are given weight in Google’s website rankings. So if you embed interesting videos in your web pages and your site visitors spend time watching them, your search engine rankings are likely to improve.
- Videos attract links! Videos placed in your website, hosted on YouTube, or posted to your business Facebook Wall will attract links. Interesting videos are passed on to potential customers — all you have to do is create good videos and post them in places where they can be easily linked.
- Videos can also provide good text content for your website. That video testimonial above from my Webster, TX, client can be transcribed and used a text recommendation on my client’s website. More keyword-rich text on your website will go far toward improving your site’s position in search engine results.
- Google places YouTube videos near the top of the search results page, so if you have keyword-optimized videos, hosted on YouTube, your videos may do much better that your website in search results. There is much less competition for video results so a single video may provide the high-ranking link back to your website. Here’s an example of a video result in a search for Wharton Juneteenth Festival.
YouTube Video Results Placed High in Search Results |
With more video cameras in use than ever before, YouTube adds 48 more hours of video to its website every minute. It’s time to jump aboard and experiment with using video to market your products or services by improving your search engine results.
If you have questions about small business search engine optimization, please contact me. Please help spread the word about small business SEO by clicking the social media buttons below.
Related articles
- Great Content is the Foundation of SEO – Search Engine Optimization – Wharton TX (houstontexasseo.com)
- Don’t Focus on Google Rankings! (houstontexasseo.com)
- YouTube as a search engine (marketing.yell.com)
- Video Optimization Checklist for Online Branding and Traffic (bruceclay.com)