Video can deliver a killer punch to your marketing effort by knocking out your rivals with a big marketing spend and putting your business ahead on the first page of a Google search for your keywords.
The good news is video can generate traffic quicker and cheaper than pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – and link straight to a landing page on your web site. Not many people realise that by harnessing the power of video you increase the likelihood of appearing on Google’s first results page by a factor 50, according to Forrester Research.
With more than 48 hours of new video content being uploaded to YouTube every minute of every day, you’ll need to implement separate video search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics. But with less competition for keywords that might cost a fortune in PPC, the traffic returns from video give a much higher return on investment.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the internet, and the best way to succeed with video is to understand your target audience, their needs, wants and even language.
Video Search Guide
- To help you succeed in delivering traffic to your website using video, just follow this simple guide.
- Activate Video SEO and optimise your content.
- The video promoting your business should be relevant and informative as well as having ‘rich’ content – don’t bother wasting your time producing videos that have little to do with your brand or service.
- The easiest videos to produce are usually the most popular, especially those which demonstrate a step-by-step process or review a product or service.
- Do not forget that your video should be fun and memorable, have a short running time and leave the viewer wanting more.
- Keep the video short and to the point – the average viewing time for a YouTube video is around 90 seconds. If your video is runs for five minutes, you should consider packaging into smaller segments and then linking them together on the site.
- Don’t forget that this is a marvellous opportunity to promote your company branding and you should begin each video with your logo and try to use it again within the video itself.
- Write a short, catchy title and do not forget to include keywords in the video description.
- Provide a video transcript which search engines will also index.
- YouTube and Vimeo bring a great opportunity to put in links back to your website but remember those links must point to relevant content to be effective.
Other SEO tactics to help generate traffic include submitting a video sitemap to Google which will enable search engine spiders to find and index the properly. Coupled with SEO to maximise search engine visibility, video offers a quick fix to an audience that is time-poor and desperate for information but unlikely ever to read your crafted web content without the spur of a movie.
A video will say more about your company in a few seconds than pages of written content on your web site.
