Using Videos to Boost Your SEO
Broadening your SEO horizons is not only a good idea – it’s essential. I’ve always said – if you stand still, so will your traffic. And one of the best places to start is with video, which has become hugely important not just for businesses looking to optimise their site’s search rankings, but to the online community at large.
Cisco analysts predict that video will account for four fifths of all internet traffic within the next half decade. In fact it is already responsible for hogging two thirds of network bandwidth, which in turn has resulted in major changes in how digital marketing money is spent.
Videos Help SEO
From an SEO perspective, videos boost rankings, primarily because of the value they add as a form of on-site content.
Embedding a video will allow Google and other search engines to positively assess the quality and relevance of your page because it will trigger the media-rich signals now employed in determining rank.
With your users dedicating more of their time to searching for and viewing videos, it is likely that such signals will be given even more influence over your search rank in the future, so capitalising on video integration today will lead to benefits further down the line.
Video Hosting
When you decided to embed a video on your site, your first instinct may be to host the content independently. Think again. Most businesses are far better off relying upon the king of video, YouTube.
Owned by Google and a powerful search engine in its own right, YouTube not only provides an easy hosting platform for any video you intend to integrate with your site, but it also enables this content to be accessible independently, delivering much needed exposure which SMBs can harness without incremental costs. The resilience of YouTube’s infrastructure also means that load speeds and uptime should be optimal, ensuring that your videos help SEO and enhance your user experience.
Linking Benefits
When you create a YouTube channel and upload videos, you can also insert links back to your own site within the profile and clip description. This will not only help to fuel traffic, but should also strengthen your brand while indicating to search engines that your business is generating relevant, shareable content which is getting people excited.
This also applies to social media engagement, since videos and multimedia content of all kinds can increase the shares and clicks your company’s pages receive, which in turn will be factored into the search rank you achieve.
Of course the process of creating a video which generates any interest in the first place is a challenge which many businesses fail to conquer. And there are other issues to consider before you embrace video integration as a form of SEO, including optimising page load times when multimedia content is embedded. But with the right strategy, videos boost rankings and can be a seriously powerful tool for webmasters.