Search engine optimization or SEO is a word that one gets to hear a lot in the marketing space. But what is SEO, and is there a one-size-fits-all for optimizing a website for search engines? Well, the short answer to that is No! A seasoned SEO professional will tell you how different content types require different optimization approaches to be successful.
One of the most popular content types today’s video, with over 82 percent of online traffic coming from video consumption. This means that brands need to move past just using videos on their website to ask how they could optimize them for better rankings and results. In this blog, we provide you with the ultimate guide on optimizing your website videos for search engines. Following these steps will help you engage your users consistently and help you stay ahead of the competition.
Have Clear Goals
No two businesses are identical, so it is obvious that your business and SEO goals are different from that of any other business. Before starting your video optimization journey, you need to define why you are using video, why you want to optimize it, what goals you wish to achieve, the challenges you have, etc.
Having a clear picture of these aspects will make it easy for you to go ahead with the optimization process. Are there any common goals that marketing professionals try to achieve using video? The answer is yes. Some of the common video marketing goals are
- Increasing quality backlinks
- Promoting reach on social media
- Increasing user engagement
- Promoting product/brand awareness
The Need To Make an Impact
The average attention span of a human was around 12 seconds at the start of the Millenium. However, this has come down to eight seconds over the decades, which is less than that of a goldfish. This means that marketers have little to no time to grab the attention and retain their audience’s interest.
Marketers need to move away from relying entirely on long-format content. Instead, they should explore ways to repurpose their video content using a video maker online. And when making the switch, it is important to optimize the content for various platforms to increase the reach and ranking. Here’s how you can do that.
Focus On Conversions
The primary goal of every business is to increase sales and generate revenue. The same should be the ultimate focus for your videos too. So, rather than just focusing on increasing your reach and engagement, your end goal should be to generate business and increase conversions. You can do this by having a powerful call to action in all of your videos.
As videos could be over a few seconds, you can have a series of call-to-action messages to drive traffic to your website, encourage users to engage with your brand, and ultimately buy your product or service.
As the user spends a few seconds or minutes watching the video, clicking through the links, and engaging with the call-to-action message, your website’s traffic increases, and the bounce rate is relatively low. This means your website’s ranking increases while also opening up avenues for increased business.
Importance of Video Placement
Your website visitors have very little time to spare. This means you need to grab their attention, explain your product, engage them with your brand, and encourage them to take action, all in a few seconds. Brands embraced single-page websites to achieve this goal. However, that alone is not enough.
With over 54.4 percent of the internet traffic coming from mobile phones, brands need to ensure that people get their messaging without scrolling a lot. Using videos on the website’s landing page is one great way to attract attention and engage the users seamlessly.
Explore Different Video Types
Most people think of videos promoting their brands directly when it comes to video marketing. However, that’s not the only video type you could use. Here are a few video types you could experiment with based on the platform on which you are sharing the video.
Product Video
You could use a few snippets of your product, add a few slides about the advantages, USPs, etc., and post it on numerous video-sharing platforms. This gives your users a great insight into your product and services. As the viewers get a real-time view of the product’s appearance, they would be willing to try it themselves.
How-to Videos and Testimonials
Yet another compelling video format is a how-to video. You could either create this on your own or encourage existing users to share the videos of them using the product and a quick review. Like Apple’s #shotoniphone helped the organization create user-generated content and promote their brand, your product would also benefit from user-generated content.
Besides that, your users are more likely to believe the feedback of a fellow consumer over your branding communication. So, it’s a win-win for you as a marketing professional.
Interviews
You could add interviews of your product developers, marketers, and other key people involved in creating the product to your website. Doing so will increase the variety of content on your website and give the users a better understanding of your company culture, brand, values, and product. You could also do a live question and answer session on your social media channels and share these videos on all platforms.
Add Video Snippets
Once you have created videos of different formats and uploaded them to different platforms, you need to add video snippets. A video snippet is a small explanation or text that comes along with the video on the search engine results. It gives the user a quick review of the video, even without clicking on it. Adding the right snippet with your targeted keywords will optimize your videos for search engines and improve your search engine ranking.
Conclusion
Videos are the most popular content type on the internet today. With platforms like Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, etc., embracing short video formats and reels, brands need to experiment with them all. And with the right optimization efforts, your brand videos would rank well on search engines and help you reach your target audience seamlessly.
We hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or concerns about optimizing your videos for search engines, do mention them in the comments section, and we will get back to you.
