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SEO: Video makes a difference

seo-image-final!Last month, we provided you with a series of top tips to help you improve the visibility of your website, by uploading regular, quality content.  To help you make the most of your website, the second part of our ‘demystifying SEO’ blog delves into the world of video and viral marketing.
If executed correctly, video content can be extremely beneficial when trying to improve your organisation’s position online.  The average internet user views 32.2 videos a month and it’s been shown that videos can increase the number of website visits by 55%. It has also been predicted that by 2014, 90% of website traffic will be video. With numbers that significant, what business would argue against the incredible opportunity video can offer your organisation?

In order to use video to boost your online presence, it is important to consider the following points.

1.  Outline your SEO goals, strategy and content:

With SEO and video, it’s important to first establish what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase your social presence? Generate lots of views on YouTube, or perhaps create more tailored traffic to your website? Designing and making the video is the simple part, but companies often fail when it comes to defining goals and putting an online strategy in place. Goals can include:

  • Improving website traffic as a whole or for specific pages
  • Generating social shares and creating a viral campaign
  • Increase sales from your website
  • Building your brand awareness online

In addition to this, you will need to decide what type of video you want to produce. Over 80% of the videos that list in Google’s search results are informational. Pushy sales videos do not tend to rank as well within Google, so it is important that you produce content that appeals to your target market and adds value.  Video content can include.

  • Client testimonials
  • Introducing your organisation and team
  • Product demonstrations
  • Top industry tips
  • Fun viral video about your organisation

2.  Include a title and description within your videos:

Search engines look at the information you have provided about the video and compare it with the context of the page that the video is on. If the page title and the video title match up, there is more of a chance that you will get a higher ranking on Google.  It is also very important to make your video’s title specific; you are much more likely to rank higher when the keyword is not too general.

3.  Take into account the length of your video – less is more

Most people would rather spend two minutes watching an interesting video than spend ten minutes reading an article. Statistics show that people tend to engage with online videos for 2.5 minutes on average, so when making your video, try not to make it too long in order to keep you audience interested.

4.  Duplicate your video across several platforms.

To reap the SEO benefits associated with video, you will need to include your content on several different platforms. There are numerous outlets for you to take advantage of, the most important being YouTube.  Having recently celebrated their 8th birthday, YouTube is now one of the most viewed websites in the world, generating billions of hits. Once you have created a YouTube channel, you can then embed the video on to your website and include it on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to increase the exposure and linking potential.

5.  Create a Video Sitemap

Once you have included the video on your website, you will need to create a Video Sitemap. Currently search engines can’t look at what is in the video, so the Video Sitemap tells the search engine everything it needs to know about the content, for example, the title, description and duration.

6.  Measure the success of your video with Google Analytics:

Like any other marketing activity, you will need to measure your results.  Free tools such as Google Analytics will help you establish if your video content has increased the level of traffic to your website.  You could produce a couple of different videos and compare the results, this will determine the type of content that your audience responds the best to.

Even though video isn’t new to the web, many businesses fail to make the best use of tools that will take their video and SEO results to the next level. If you are going to invest time and money in boosting your SEO, start considering video in your marketing mix.

Not only is video a great way to share your story, it’s also  an effective way to build links back to your site and if you target your audience in an exciting, unique way, maybe your video will even go viral. This is where the major search engine optimisation benefit comes into play.

#MarketingTitbits – Small Biz Saturday, Cow Waterbeds, Stats

SBS-Waterbeds-stats-small1. Small Business Saturday comes to the UK
Small Business Saturday is already a $5.5 billion phenomenon in the United Sates, which began in 2010. Despite this, it has only just made its way over to the UK. It’s UK debut was last Saturday (7thDecember) and it hopes to raise the profile of local UK business, encouraging shoppers to consider local businesses when purchasing.

The idea was launched by American Express who helped to introduce it to the UK. They worked hard with digital marketing alongside local authorities to promote it throughout the UK. James Caan and David Cameron are backing Small Business Saturday and we think it is a great concept! To read more, click here.

2. What you can learn from a cow waterbed company

Dean Throndsen is an American dairy farmer who has dedicated his life to the comfort of cows. Dairy cows lie down for up to 14 hours a day and in the past it has been difficult to find a way to protect them from the weather as well as giving them the ability to lie down, without getting sores on their legs.

Dean then came up with the ingenious idea of cow waterbeds. They are long lasting, practical, comfortable for the cows and hygienic. Now, we’re obviously not suggesting that you start up your own cow waterbed business, although it might not be a bad idea. We found a great article from Entrepreneur about the things that you can learn from DCC Waterbeds, to read more click here.

3. 20 impressive social media statistics

Last week we found a great article from Econsultancy, which highlighted 20 mind blowing social media statistics from 2010 compared to 2013. Did you know in 2010 Twitter had only 75 million users, it now has 883 million. To read the other 19 statistics, click here.