If content is king, then video is the heir to the throne. The only issue that many businesses have when it comes to video is not understanding their own goals. You can make a low budget video, but without the right direction, marketing, and SEO strategy it will be nothing more than a waste of time and resources.
Done right, your video could fetch you thousands of quality backlinks and international exposure. You could go viral, and so long as that viral video was of your own making, it could launch your business’ success.
Done poorly, your video will do nothing more than clog up your website and cost you money (and possibly even your rankings).
The Power of Video for SEO and Link Building
A great video can bring in a lot of backlinks and organic traffic, but it must compliment your overall strategy, and it must be invested in properly. Creating video for the sake of video will not get you anywhere. It won’t get you shared, it won’t increase conversions, and it won’t benefit your SE ranking.
Videos can be very effective for brands. 52% of consumers feel more confident in a product after watching a product video, and service-based businesses can become an industry leader by creating tutorial videos that provide a lot of helpful information.
How to Optimize Your Video for SEO
To help your video succeed you need to both optimize it for SEO and use SEO to market it. Start first by following these steps to optimize your video for SEO:
Rich Video Snippets
Google does this automatically, and it can help entice users to your listing. To offer a rich snippet on your Google result, you are going to need to self-host your video. Self-hosting offers many SEO-related benefits, however, so it is a worthwhile strategy.
Once you have self-hosted your video, you will need to create an XML sitemap to Google’s Webmaster Tools.
Create a Video Transcript
Video transcripts are great for so many reasons. One, because users do not like it when a video’s audio plays without permission. Two, because it makes the video more accessible to everyone. Three, because it acts as page copy that can be indexed by Google. Create a transcript of your video, make sure it is free of mistakes and is easy to turn off or on.
Choose an Engaging Thumbnail
Custom thumbnails receive a 30% play rate than those that use whatever thumbnail was automatically generated.
Market Your Video With a Full Digital Marketing Plan
You cannot rely solely on your video to bring in backlinks and conversions. You need to market your video in order to achieve the highest return on investment.
PR and Outreach
If you create a fun marketing video that has the potential to go viral, then create a PR and outreach strategy to get said video onto top sites in your niche. If you have created a ground-breaking video, send it to news sites. If you have created an informative tutorial, then contact websites with high-ranking guides that cover similar content to see if they would want to embed your video.
SEO
Videos are great for your SEO strategy, but that doesn’t mean they can do it all on their own. Investing in a back-linking strategy that is aimed to target a high profile video on your site can help get the ball rolling. Think local to where you are located so that you can build a strong local SEO campaign. For instance, for those companies based in the NYC area, you will want to contact a top link building NYC professional who can create a custom strategy for your video, for instance. By doing so, you can benefit from specialist knowledge. Research the best link building professionals in your area to kick start your campaign.
Videos are best when they offer true value, and the better the video is the more expensive it would have been. Invest in properly marketing it and boosting its visibility.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is one of the best ways you can get your video out there. You will want to post it onto your page and then pay for advertising when your users are most active, and encourage them to share it on their story to expand visibility.
Conclusion
Video marketing can boost your SEO strategy, help launch your business, or simply offer exceptional value to your customers so that they return again and again. Investing in your videos is the best way to do this, but you cannot expect the video to do all of the hard work for you. Optimize it for search engines and then commit to a digital marketing strategy to make it go viral.