Guide to Improve Your SEO Efforts With Video Content

 Videos indeed engage users for a long time on a webpage, attract traffic and eventually boost the SEO ranking of a website. But this only happens when they are SEO optimized.

SEO-optimized content, be it a video or a blog post, boosts user experience and even the rankings of a site on the search engine result pages.

According to statistics, users spend around 88% more time on web pages containing videos. Webpages featuring even one video have 45% better chances of ranking higher on the search engine result pages. Videos also perform better when it comes to CTAs. More than 95% viewers recall to respond to video CTAs than the textual ones. 

The easy accessibility, content coherence and comprehensibility, make videos a  traffic magnet, improving ranking, and boosting user experience. As per studies, 85% of marketers use videos to boost SEO. 

In this article, we will discuss some best practices that can help enhance the quality of your SEO  through relevant video content.

Boost Your SEO Efforts By Choosing An Engaging Video Thumbnail

A video thumbnail is the first thing that attracts the viewers’ attention. It influences the viewers’ decisions on whether they would like to watch your video or not. Hence, making the video thumbnail compelling and relevant is the key step.

Always go for thumbnails you think your audiences will like. Custom thumbnails are always good to go as they increase a video play rate by around 30%. Make sure your thumbnail catches the essence of your entire video.

Take inspiration from the Whiteboard videos that Moz, the SEO software solution provider, releases every Friday. The thumbnail selection in Moz’s videos stands as the perfect example of all the elements that should be there in an ideal thumbnail.

The thumbnail features text that offers a clear idea of the topic of the video and even comes with a human element. Additionally, the thumbnail is engaging, intriguing, and of high quality.

Going by Moz’s example, always make sure to choose thumbnails relevant to the keywords you are targeting or the search terms that the users have a high chance of using.

For example, if your video is on getting ready for a party, choose a thumbnail showing a person getting ready in front of a mirror. Going for any other picture, like a person just sitting in a room or using a makeup brush, will not have the same impact on the searchers.

Video Optimization Is The Key

Optimizing your video is very important. Of course, the content in your video is crucial in itself, but there are other elements that you must also pay attention to.

While thumbnails make one of these important elements, the other two crucial elements that will make your videos more searchable are the title and the description.

The description and title of your video ensure that your video is clearly understood and recognized by the search engines. Make sure the title is attractive and relevant to the video content. Also, add the main keyword in the video title without compromising on quality.

Speaking of descriptions, make sure to include long descriptions in your video. Adding a paragraph or two that offers a complete overview of your video will be great. You must ensure that your description convinces the videos that your video is relevant and also worth their time.

The description should also include the main keyword.

If you are embedding videos on your Website then I recommend you to use the Video schema that helps your videos rank in Google search. It helps Search engine shows videos in rich results. You can use any Online video Schema Generator for that.

Use Videos For Enhancing User Experience

Blog posts are instrumental in telling people everything you want to share, but videos will show them how a thing is done, which is more effective. Videos are great at enhancing the user experience for most visitors to your site.

Adding video transcripts on your website pages can help the users understand your content without disturbing the others. Additionally, they do not have to jump front and back to the video section that interests them.

Laid our video transcripts help users scroll to relevant sections to consume the video content they want.

Stock videos, including transcripts and those made using the best free editing software are great at providing added SEO advantages. The prospective buyers on your site will stay there for a longer time to get a clear understanding of the matter.

And longer dwell time is a positive signal to Google and the other search engines, which will further help your site rank higher on the result pages.

Use Videos For Earning More Backlinks

For search engine optimization, link building is crucial. Google and the other search engines use backlinks as a crucial ranking factor for sites.

If you want top-quality backlinks, make sure to use video content. That’s because most individuals have a 99% tendency to share the videos they love.

Ensure that the videos you are hosting on your site show their embed code. This way, you will have others displaying your video on their respective web pages while providing a backlink to the source of the video.

Since it is not easy to create top-quality videos, bloggers will embed your video on their site, which will help you earn quality backlinks. This way, your brand will get wider exposure among the audiences.

If you have many social media followers and subscribers, use them to your advantage by incorporating videos in the social media marketing plan and emails.

Take the example of Looka Logo Maker, which includes a quiz in its video, allowing prospects to answer just a few questions and provide their preferences before being presented with their website design.

Since the entire thing is easy to use, helpful, and personalized, the logo-making company earns backlinks from creating websites, businesses, and graphic design teams.

Conclusion

To conclude, regardless of how you are using videos to boost your SEO, make sure that the content you are providing is quality-based. 

Making high-quality videos is crucial for the growth of your organic search presence. If the audiences watch just a few seconds of your video and then scroll away, it shows that your content is not resonating, and your search engine rankings might be affected. 

Video SEO for beginners should be about earning quality backlinks by optimizing video content and availing of video content hosting services. Focus on offering value to the target audience by planning your video. This will get you on the first page of the search results, which will further help you gain more traffic.