How to use video marketing to boost SEO

Many B2B companies put a lot of time and effort into their online presence. Whether that is web development, video content or a water tight social media strategy. The real challenge, once all of your ducks are in a row, is figuring out how you can stand out in a very competitive marketplace and actually get people to engage with you, share your content and buy your products or services.

The magic of video

Video content serves all kinds of purposes. It can be a customer service tool, a brand building activity, a PR exercise, as well as many other things. But it comes into its own as a way of boosting your SEO and Google rankings. This ensures your messages, your content, and everything else you’ve spent so much time working on is heard over the noise.

According to popular stats, pages with videos are 53 times more likely to rank highly on Google. And we bet that number keeps on rising as time goes on. That’s because Google favours fresh content that isn’t just text heavy or boring. Google knows people and knows they like all kinds of content—it also knows they have short attention spans and video can reel them in.

If you’re interested in finding out how you can start using video to boost your company’s SEO today, here are our top tips:

1. Remember, people are just like goldfish

As our world moves more and more online, our brains are losing some of their… erm… spunk, with the average attention span now being so short, some goldfish are starting to feel pretty darn good about themselves, for a little while at least. The hurdle this creates, is that Google algorithms tend to embrace sites that make people stick around for longer. So it’s vital that you make it easy for your visitors to spend as much time as possible on your website.

One way of ensuring people watch your video content is thinking about what users see, click and do on your site. A big first step is making sure your video content is ‘above the fold’, meaning visitors to your site don’t have to scroll to find it. Some people will leave before they scroll—sad but true. Another good practice is to make videos that are short and sweet, this kind of content will always get more attention.

2. Transcribe some of your video content—just to be sure

Yes search engines value video content, and they’re getting better at figuring out what’s in your audio content, but they’re still a long way off knowing exactly what’s going on in each and every clip. This means that writing out some—or all—of your audio, and including a transcription somewhere on your site, or in the YouTube description bar, ensures all bases are covered and it knows exactly what your video is about.

3. Spend some time thinking about titles, keywords, and the boring stuff

When you decide to create video content it’s easy to get swept up in the visuals, the script and how creative it’ll look. But you need to remember tried-and-tested SEO methods too, such as keywords, tags—depending on which platform you’re using – and titles that’ll make people click. Overlooking these boring but essential steps could set you back.

What to avoid…

DON’T: Forget to embed video on your site

Plenty of brands put video content on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, then just link through to them. This is a big mistake. Don’t let video hosts monopolise your traffic. There’s no harm in putting videos on these platforms—you need to. But when you’re shouting about your content on paid, owned or earned media channels, always link to where the video is embedded on your site.

DON’T: Overlook good quality content for a quick link

When you find out how well video can affect your company’s SEO it can be really tempting to create content that you consider to be a quick win. But remember, quality content is always going to best serve your business. Publishing a mediocre video will only negatively affect your brand’s reputation or turn off potential new leads and customers.

Chris