According to a recent study by Nate Elliot of Forrester Research, videos that are properly submitted are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of the Google search results page than a text Web page. There are far less videos on the Web than text pages and for this reason, SEO firms have begun offering services ranging from video production to the creation of keyword-driven video pages to drive traffic to their client’s Website.
Elliot recommended that companies and SEO firms optimize keywords by including them in titles, tags and file names. Also to increase the video’s page rank it’s a good idea to host it on YouTube and make sure to add fresh content. Use videos for branding rather than trying to present a ton of information. This will help drive traffic to the Website, where they can find all the information about the product or service. The video is meant to get their attention. The video also serves as a way to entertain potential customers, which will make them like you and gain trust in your product or service, which is an important thing, especially when selling a product online.
Although video SEO is becoming increasingly popular, there are still companies out there who are simply ignoring it or submitting the pages on which the videos are found instead of optimizing the actual video. This is a mistake because you will miss out on the benefits of video optimization and what it can do to help drive traffic to your Website. Elliot’s study showed that on average, videos have an 11,000 to 1 chance of appearing on page one, while text pages have a 500,000 to 1 chance. If you don’t optimize the video correctly or at all, your video’s chances of being seen decrease significantly. The problem is, many companies don’t want to do the work. Video production can be expensive and time consuming, and it’s often difficult to make a short video that will get potential customers’ attention and keep it. It’s hard to narrow down information and pick and choose only the most important to include in a video. There is also the problem of a video that takes too long to load. If your video is running slow, odds are the viewer will become impatient and ‘X’ out of it within a few seconds.
Video SEO can be time consuming and difficult but the benefits are worth the effort. If your video is optimized correctly, it is much more likely to be seen by many potential customers simply by chance than your Website. It’s best to enlist the help of a professional SEO firm when trying to optimize a video if you aren’t familiar with the technique. The video can be a powerful tool to drive traffic to your Website and get the company’s name on potential customers’ minds, which is, after all, is the goal of Internet marketing.
