Benefits of Leveraging Video Content for SEO

The importance of releasing fresh, creative, and relevant content on a regular basis is constantly preached as an SEO best practice. While we do believe in the importance of writing blog posts and understand the significance of extensive inner-page content, many people are simply not going to spend hours and hours reading the inner-page content or hundreds of blogs that you have posted on your website. This is when visual content in the form of video collateral comes into play. While visually appealing content, such as the use of infographics, has been picking up steam, video content has not quite seen the same amount of usage. But why?

The significance of video for SEO seems pretty convincing to us, especially since the growth of video-based social media platforms and applications such as Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, and Tik Tok. With this being said, it only makes sense for digital marketers to jump on the trend of digestible, easy-to-watch video content. Here’s why. 

The Benefits of Video Content

Whenever we have a question, Google has an answer. Google undeniably holds the number one position in our minds when it comes to search engines, but what comes second? Fact is, the second most popular search engine right behind Google is none other than Youtube.

Youtube receives more than 1 billion unique users on a monthly basis and every month, over 6 billion hours of video are watched. And it’s easy to see why. Videos are easily consumable and can be watched on a wide variety of platforms including smartphones, laptops, or tablets. This is an especially important factor to consider as we’ve become a mobile society and are always on the move.

As we mentioned previously, there are those who learn best through visual means, and there are also those who may simply not enjoy reading. With short video clips, you expand your audience to reach a whole new segment of those who are more receptive to the content you are producing.

Video content can also be shared across many social media sites. Youtube makes it easy to share directly to a Facebook or Twitter profile and can also be embedded directly into a website. Furthermore, video content “humanizes” your company in many ways as it shows your potential customers and digital audience that there are actual people behind your brand.

In terms of producing video content for SEO purposes: Youtube is owned by Google. This means that it’s only natural that Youtube videos will be ranked and shown alongside Google search results. This is especially handy if you are looking for “How To” videos, as it is likely that learning how to tie a tie with accompanying visuals is a lot easier than trying to learn solely through descriptive text.

Types of Video Content

Corporate Culture. These videos highlight your business’ corporate culture to help put humans behind your brand. They help provide your potential customers with insight into the type of people they will be working with, their personalities, and can reflect company values.

Product Demonstrations. If you are a retailer who sells physical goods and products, it may be a good idea to start incorporating video content that expands beyond a simple product photo. These videos can show how a product works, looks, and moves on a live figure, which may give them a better understanding of what they can expect.

Explanations/Tutorials. If you are a business that is service-based, it can be a great idea to make explanatory videos or how-tos. In large industries such as digital marketing and SEO, there is a lot of knowledge that the everyday customer may not know. This information can be easily broken down and explained in a video that talks through concepts and ideas in an easily-digestible way.

Testimonials. If you’re a great company with a great reputation, you are more than likely to have many satisfied customers. Why not share their great experiences with others? Testimonials are a great way to inform others about your work and build your online reputation and credibility. The everyday consumer loves hearing about the experiences of people just like them and testimonies often carry more weight than what the company can say for themselves.

Key Takeaways

Whether you like it or not, the emergence of video content is not slowing down any time soon. As such, it would be wise for SEO and digital marketing agencies to take advantage of this huge opportunity. Creating video content doesn’t always have to be costly, especially with the advent of video editing programs and software that can be installed on any computer. The addition of video content will surely be one that provides a multitude of benefits in the long run.

What are your thoughts about video content? Let us know in the comments below!