By Sivakumar Soundararajan

If you’re not using video to market your brand’s products or services, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Generic content can build rapport with search engines while producing something of great worth for digital audiences, but video is clearly the more favorable option. Video has become an essential part of marketing strategies. Not investing in video marketing strategy may endanger a business’s future.

Why? The reasoning is straightforward: Video is easier to understand, it’s more entertaining and it allows more advertorial creativity — as far as production is concerned, at least.

Its downside? You’ve finally mastered the basic principles of SEO and now you have to tackle a whole new beast! Relax. There’s little difference between tactics for SEO for written content and video SEO.

Instead of bemoaning the fact that there’s more to take in, simply make a few minor adjustments to your current SEO approach by placing more emphasis on the creation, optimization and promotion of video content. While somewhat difficult initially, the rewards will far outweigh the initial sacrifices.

What SEO-Driven Video Can Accomplish

In order to fully commit to video SEO, it’s first important to understand what to expect. SEO-driven video can help with three major marketing needs: building links, generating social shares and increasing conversions.

Building links and generating social shares. Though link building and social media may seem two separate goals for video SEO, the activities work so well together that it can often be hard to distinguish them.

As a video’s social shares begin to escalate, so too does the number of its backlinks. But this isn’t just a matter of shooting a short video and tweeting about it. Nope, instead it starts with the creation of a great video.

Sure, this is easier said than done, but it is essential for video SEO to reach its potential. A top-tier video is the foundation of a video SEO campaign. With so much noise online, much of it from videos, yours must be distinctive. Anything less than your absolute best won’t succeed.

Think about it. People don’t share just anything. Because the users’ name is attached to what they share, if the video is not of the highest quality, people will simply look elsewhere for great content. When creating your video, think about your brand, the message you want to present and the kinds of people you want linking to it.

Image credit: Twitter

There are a few different ways to make certain that your video generates plenty of social shares and build authoritative backlinks. Whether through humor, education, amazement, shock value or even a bit of strategic annoyance, offer something that motivates your audience to start doing the bulk of your video marketing for you.

When these production points are implemented, an emotional connection is built with a viewer. You won’t have to force audiences to like, share or pin your video, they’ll actually want to do it for themselves.

Even better, journalists and bloggers from both inside and outside of your brand’s niche may write about something related to your video. Naturally, they’ll link back to your video. The exponential power of video is truly amazing.

Have you ever heard of Dollar Shave Club? The brand’s internet video — and the links and social shares that it created — took the brand from obscurity to worldwide popularity in a matter of days.

Within hours after being posted, the video was featured on top-tier sites like Mashable, TechCrunch, Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Next Web and other prominent sites. Naturally, with so many different outlets featuring the video, a hefty spike in social shares occurred.

Image credit: Mashable

Obviously, this was great for brand exposure, but what really worked wonders for Dollar Shave Club were the backlinks that each publication provided the company. Within hours of being released online, the video had generated nearly 18,000 backlinks.

A year later, there were upwards of 90,000 backlinks. In terms of SEO, one single video led to an incredible amount of driven traffic to DollarShaveClub.com. And there you have it – yet another backlink for the groundbreaking company.

Increasing Conversions

While there are plenty of opposing viewpoints, the fact is that SEO is meant to increase online sales and ROI, the ultimate measurement of success. Why would anyone pay for SEO if it didn’t bring in more money? There’d be no reason to.

It’s easy to see that SEO is a two-step process. First, a company needs to attract visitors to their site. Then on-site optimization converts visitors into regularly paying customers. Awesome video content is one of the best ways to accomplish this.

The Best Types of Video for On-Site SEO

When visitors first access your site, you’ve got little more than a few seconds to impress them before they leave. Sound SEO strategies got them there, but now it’s time to actually make something of it. If your site is filled with little more than text, your conversion rates are likely to suffer.

Realizing that, digital marketers and web developers place videos on landing pages to hook passers-by. After all, this is the purpose of a landing page.

Speaking more of the importance of landing page videos, Gregory Kennedy of TapSense.com says, “Accordingly, I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you that embedding a video on your website will not only increase the length of time that visitors stick around, but also the number of conversions to paying customers, which, ultimately, is what SEO is all about.”

Kennedy’s stance isn’t a secret. More brands are using videos on landing pages to engage potential clients, build email lists, point to other Web pages or even make an immediate sale through specific calls to action. Not just any video will do. A select few videos are most effective for helping transform a brand into a powerhouse of SEO and generating revenue.

1) Product Videos

Largely used by retailers, product videos are one of the best ways to increase on-site conversions. It’s easy to see why product videos are a potent tool.

According to Invodo, 52 percent of consumers claim that watching product videos makes them feel more confident about the purchase they’re considering. Product videos offer the friendly nudge they need to pull the proverbial trigger.

Image credit: Econsultancy

When buyers feel more comfortable, they’re more likely to buy. A recent study by Econsultancy confirmed this.

The study conducted research on Zappos.com and found that sales increased by anywhere between 6 and 30 percent when product videos were present alongside a basic description.

2) Explainer and Introductory Videos

For websites that sell services, explainer or introductory videos are most appropriate. There is no exact formula on how to present explainer or introductory videos. However, as a general guideline, the more an explainer or introductory video focuses on a service’s long-term benefits for consumers, the more effective it will be in promoting future brand engagement. View this Dropbox video to see how things should work.

Image credit: YouTube

With the help of the video explanation of its services, Dropbox increased its conversion rate by over 10 percent. Dropbox’s homepage receives nearly 750,000 monthly visitors, and the company generated substantial ROI. All of this because of a well-crafted service explainer video.

3) Rich Snippet Videos

Ever heard of a rich snippet video? If you haven’t, there’s no need to be embarrassed—many people haven’t. A rich snippet video is basically Google’s way of giving your video an advantage when it produces a page of results. This should look somewhat familiar to you:

Image credit: Google

What a video shows a viewer isn’t the only thing that’s important; it’s also key that a video show something worthy of a click before it’s played.

These video snippets, which are part of Google’s search results, need to include short, but accurate video descriptions and a thumbnail that summarizes the video’s message. A detailed text description that includes key words that individuals use to search on the video’s topic is crucial to gaining high search engine rankings. To learn more about rich snippets for videos, read Google’s guidelines.

Clearly, video is supremely important for both SEO specialists and digital marketers. Optimizing videos for SEO isn’t as hard as you might think. Many of the same tactics to optimize text also work for videos.

You’ll also want your videos to rank well on YouTube, the Internet’s second largest search engine.

What Google & YouTube Want to See

It’s a good idea to understand what YouTube’s algorithm takes into consideration. You should focus on:

• The number of times a video is viewed
• The number of times a video appears in viewers’ playlist history
• The number of positive rankings and comments a video has
• The number of times a video has been embedded on other websites
• The number of subscribers a video’s creator has
• The frequency with which a video is added to a user’s playlist
• The amount of time a viewer spends watching a video

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of YouTube SEO.

 1) Keywords

As with traditional content, use keywords strategically to tell a search engine’s bots what your video is about. Though keywords should be used as naturally as possible, don’t be afraid to use them in video titles, descriptions and tags.

While the choosing of keywords is an entirely different topic, in order to make certain that your keywords rank well for both YouTube and Google, conduct a simple search on both search engines to see what types of videos they show. If the results mesh well with your video, you’re on the right track.

2) Creative Titles

A great video deserves to have a great title. Not only does this help earn more clicks and views, but when keywords are used in titles, search engine bots notice. Use keywords in titles as naturally as possible.

Also, it’s better to use keywords as close to the beginning of a title as possible. So instead of titling your video something like, “5 Steps for Learning to Fly a Kite,” title it “Learn to Fly a Kite in 5 Steps.”

3) Proper Video Descriptions

Keywords play an important role in video descriptions. If you’re not a writer, this part of video publication can be rather tedious. However, it’s essential since YouTube’s bots cannot watch your video. It only examines the written title and description.

Image credit: Search Engine Watch

In addition to being as detailed as possible and including keywords in video descriptions, consider including the entirety of your video’s transcript in the description, especially if the featured topic of your video is somewhat complex. The longer your description, the better. Though seemingly complex, the process by which this is done isn’t too difficult or time consuming.

4) Relevant Tags

While the debate about whether tags improve SEO for basic blog content will likely continue, tags most certainly matter in video. Don’t limit yourself to single-word tags, either.

Think outside the box and target your video’s unique set of keywords and phrases. To properly tag your YouTube videos, think about what an individual might search for to get answers from your video.

A Few Parting Thoughts

Lastly, consider link building, site syndication and constant social sharing to further bolster your video’s SEO efforts.

Video SEO is by no means easy. However, considering how incredibly effective it is, your hard work will be far outweighed by the positive results you and your marketing team will receive. 

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