Time and time again we’ve stressed the importance of consistently churning out fresh, relevant, and creative content. While I’m a big believer in writing blog posts, I have to admit I’m more of a visual learner. While visually-appealing content in the form of infographics has been picking up steam, videos on the other hand, hasn’t seen quite the same amount of usage. Why is that the case? The importance of video in SEO seems pretty convincing to me with the emergence of applications such as Vine, Instagram, and even Snapchat, it only makes sense for marketers to hop on this trend of bite-sized videos.
Perks of Videos
Google undoubtedly holds the number 1 spot on our minds when it comes to search engines. The race for second however, doesn’t seem have a clear winner. Bing? Yahoo? Ask.com? While all are well educated guesses, the second most popular search engine is none other than YouTube. If that isn’t enough reason already, here are some YouTube statistics:
- More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
- Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTubethat’s almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year
- YouTube is localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages
- Millions of subscriptions happen each day, and the number of people subscribing has more than doubled since last year
- For SEO purposes, YouTube is owned by Google. Naturally then, YouTube videos will be ranked and shown on Google search results
Since this post is not a “Why you should be on YouTube” specifically, I’ll give you some arguments as to why you should be producing some awesome videos in general:
- The reality is, in today’s society, not everyone enjoys a good read. With short video clips, you’re exposing yourself to a whole new slew of receptive audiences.
- We’ve become large in part a mobile society, always on the move. Videos can be watched on a variety of platforms: smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc.
- Videos are easy and often shared on other social media sites.
- Videos “humanize” your company. It shows your potential customers there are actual people behind the brand.
- The barriers to entry are relatively low to creating a great video. Now I’m not negating the fact that having proper equipment and HD videos would probably be an advantage but you’d be surprised at how far a home-made smartphone-created video can go! Here’s a shameless plug: we’re currently looking for the next batch of interns for Powered by Search. Taking our own advice to heart, we created a short, simple video on a laptop. I may be a little bias, but in my humble opinion, I think it turned out well. What do you think?
Types of Videos
Corporate Culture: Videos that highlight your business’ corporate culture help make you seem more personable and down to earth. It gives potential clients or employees a peek into the type of people they would be working with, the company’s values, and overall, the office life.
Product Demonstrations: If you are a retailer that sells physical products, it may be a good idea to venture out of the typical product photo and into a video demonstration instead. A great site that is taking full advantage of video for their products is online retailer, Asos. An avid fan of online shopping, I found that the videos were helpful because it helped me clearly visualize how the clothing would look on an actual moving person, rather than the stationed mannequin.
Tutorials/How-to’s: On the flip side, if you are a business that provides a service that is not as physically tangible as a product, perhaps making tutorial videos or how-to’s would be a worthwhile cause. In our industry of SEO, there’s a lot of knowledge that the everyday consumer may not know about. Moz does a great job in educating its audiences by having weekly tutorial videos, “Whiteboard Fridays”.
Testimonials: If you’re a great company, you probably have some pretty loyal and satisfied customers. Why not share those happy experiences with others? Not only are testimonials a fantastic way of letting others know about your great work, they also help build your reputation and credibility. People love hearing about other “real people’s” experiences they carry more weight than what a company has to say about itself.
Key Takeaways
The trend of online videos doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. As such, it would be wise for SEOs to take hold of this huge opportunity. Making videos doesn’t always have to be expensive sometimes it’s the homey videos that take the cake. Although if you are a company that has budgeted for other creative content such as infographics, I’m sure you can also afford to produce a video as well. At the end of the day, remember that sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zones and do what makes most sense for your company. If the general trend is moving towards producing videos, you’d better hop on that train as well.
Author: Carrie Yan
Courtesy: www.poweredbysearch.com