Nate Elliott is a principal analyst and vice president serving Interactive Marketing Professionals, and one of his jobs is to help companies develop marketing strategies. Hes an expert when it comes to helping websites rank higher in the search engines. He posted a blog that shook the beliefs of those who kept using the same tired SEO techniques.
Elliott claimed that website using a combination of different media, including embedded video, ranked higher than those with just plain text. He proved it by running a comprehensive test that compared various searches.
The results from his test were staggering: a site that featured video was 50x more likely to rank on the first page of Google.
The Easy Route: Leverage YouTube
Uploading a video to YouTube and embedding it on your site is one of the easiest ways leverage video.
If you don't have a video to upload, try simply embedding one that's relevant to your business and industry. Most videos on YouTube allow for embedding, and just because its not yours doesn't necessarily mean you cant use it.
Be sure to choose a video that compliments your business and brand, while not distracting or taking away from what you're trying to accomplish with your visitor.
Implement An Affordable, Web-Based Video Solution
Many businesses shy away from creating video because they feel its too expensive or too difficult. In reality, its quite simple and with so many new web-based video tools on the market, can be extremely cost effective.
For example, its easier than ever to ask customers for video testimonials or product review videos. Some larger brands are even going as far as promoting social video contests to create more buzz, increase fan base and boost consumer loyalty.
The Power of Video
Not only will video help to captivate your audience and improve your websites stickiness, but, as proven by Elliott, it will drastically help your Google rankings. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, its easier than ever to get started.
What about you? Have you implemented video recently and if so, have you seen any positive (or negative) results?
If you liked this post you might enjoy SEO 101: How to Optimize On-Site Videos
For SEO purposes I’ve always preferred to self host a video, but YouTube definitely goes a great job in ranking on the SERPs.
Quite insightful, thanks! I would almost always recommend uploading your own videos, as it allows you to put links in the description, enabling you to get traffic from Youtube.
Nice article Sean. I can add that it’s preferable to have a video embedded within the CMS rather than embedding a Youtube video. Optimising it properly, with a video sitemap or microformats, it could bring the video in the SERPs linked directly to the page where the video is hosted.
I am a big believer in leveraging Youtube for better rankings and more traffic. I host a couple of blogs on WordPress, and WordPress (as good a CMS platform it is) really makes it hard for you to embed videos! Its pretty hard to embed Youtube videos, but if you want to embed clips from sources like Dailymotion or Metacafe, forget about it! Especially without the help of plugins. Thank you for this informative post.
Jared is right – you’ll get better SEO results when it’s hosted on your site.
Tip 1: Check with your hosting company re: bandwidth (especially if you have multiple videos)
Tip 2: By creating a XML video sitemap (different than your regular sitemap) this really maximizes your SEO.
Tip 3: If you’re hosting it – still upload it to YouTube. If you’re going to imbed it on your site – use VIMEO. It displays significantly better and loads faster which is why I used Vimeo for my 5 videos.
In fact I created a video “7 reasons why you should showcase your business with a video”.