We already know video is a great inbound marketing tool for capturing interest and educating viewers. (And how shoppers are nearly 2 times more likely to make a purchase after viewing product videos than those who don’t!) But what many people haven’t realized is just how beneficial video is to boosting search rankings, which can lead to even more conversions — if you optimize your content that is.
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in number of search queries. YouTube is also owned by Google. If you’re not already hosting your videos on Youtube, it’s a good idea to put that at the top of your to-do list. Then, if you follow a few easy steps from the points below you will be on your way to maximizing video!
Drive traffic and prove relevancy
A higher volume of traffic sends a message to Google that your website content is relevant to users. You can make the most of Youtube by driving traffic back to your site by providing URL’s in the video descriptions. Be sure to give people a compelling reason that will make your audience want to click through, such as an offer, more free resources or even a discount code. (Creating buyer personas can help with that.) In addition, you can Include a transcript of the audio portion of your video to help improve its findability and add more support for relevance to search requests.
Backlinks and keywords
Including URLs in your channel information along with your video descriptions on YouTube or is a great way to earn qualified referral traffic, also known as backlinks. Plus, if you publish video content that is easily shared, that’s a compelling reason for other websites and bloggers to link back to your channel and website. This will help you with outreach and link-building strategy as a whole.
Provide more information to search engines to help identify your videos as relevant to search results by including keywords used for text SEO in fields used to describe your video (in titles, file names, descriptions and tags) to demonstrate that the relevance of your video to search results is clear to search engines.
Show Google that your content is valuable.
Google doesn’t just take text into account when it assesses the relevancy of your web page to a specific keyword. It also checks what other media you have to offer on similar topics. A variety of text, graphics and video tells Google that your content is diverse and valuable. There’s also a strong correlation between a high volume of YouTube views and higher positions in the SERPs. These numbers don’t directly impact search rankings but it is clear they have an impact.
Have questions? We’re here to help, just ask On-Target! or check-out our Youtube channel where we share free educational videos about Inbound Marketing tactics.
