If you’ve been focusing on text-based content to improve your SEO ranking, you might want to start looking into video as well. According to Statista, in 2018, 85% of all internet users in the U.S. watched online video content monthly. As well, it’s not just B2C companies embracing video. According to a VidYard study, close to 70% of B2B marketers are using video and increasing their video budgets, while 82% reported success with video marketing.
Here’s how you can increase rankings with online video.
Video & Google
Ninety-three percent of all online activity starts with the search and ends with 54% of consumers wanting to see more video. Because of this change in behavior, 87% of marketers are using video.
Knowing and following these trends, Google includes video on SERPs for informational and educational queries. That would include the good old “How to” and “What is” style headings. The video is ready to click; hence, it will always appear at the top of the rankings for this type of query.
This ties in with user intent. If you can offer videos for organic rankings that answer specific questions based on your industries keywords, you can find yourself appearing in blended search results.
Longer Dwell Times
An SEO element many less-savvy marketers know about is longer dwell times. The longer someone stays on your site, the more useful it will appear to search engines.
What better way to get someone to stay, then to show them SEO video? Video is more engaging than images and text. People actually spend 2.6 times more time on pages with video than they do on those without.
When it comes to SEO, video is a gift horse you don’t want to ignore. Video keeps people dwelling longer, which gets your ranking higher. In fact, 80% of marketers say video increased dwell time.
And, naturally, if people spend a lot of time watching videos, there’s a higher possibility they will dig deeper to find out what else is available on your website. This will increase page views, adding even longer dwell times.
Lower Bounce Rates
It stands to reason that if people stay longer, your bounce rate will become lower as well. This is another factor that improves SEO. If your visitors suffer from instant boredom when they land on your site, they bounce, just like a guest at a bad party.
This is always a problem; Google views this behavior as “pogo-sticking“—the act of a user clicking on your page and then directly back to their search results. This shows Google your page was not worth it. The more this happens, the lower you’ll drop in the rankings.
Video is an anti-bounce serum because people will have to click the video and start watching, which takes a bit more time than scanning text. Keep video above the fold and watch the magic happen. And, more importantly, the bounce rate for video blogs is 34% lower than other pages on a website.
Click-Through Rate Improvements
According to the VidYard study, about 70% of marketers have seen conversion rates improve for video content compared to other formats they have used online.
Convince and Convert have found this to be an important factor when it comes to rankings. Their research has shown that higher click-through rates can continue to move your site up the rankings.
Better Backlink Profile
Producing high-quality, engaging, informative, or even entertaining video gets people to share and link to your site. Ninety-two percent of mobile video viewers share videos. One form of sharing is backlinking, and backlinking increases rankings.
In fact, when Dollar Shave Club produced their highly comical, tongue-in-cheek video ads, they received nearly 22 million views and a staggering 9,520 backlinks from 1,760 different domains. That’s some serious backlinks.
According to Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting, the more links you have on your page, the higher you will rise in the rankings. That is because organic links show that other knowledgeable sites and sources trust you.
Further Incentive
If you’re still not convinced video is where it’s at, here are a few more compelling stats from Wyzowl:
- 94% of marketers cite video for increasing user understanding
- 84% say video helped increase website traffic
- 81% found video helped generate leads
You don’t have to be a video superstar to use video for SEO. Contact Outreach Digital Marketing to learn more about how video can help your online marketing.