Videos have certainly made a lot of difference in our lives and since they are so effective, they have the power to boost the digital marketing efforts of an organization. But all these things are just obvious, aren’t they?
Human beings are visual beings and there is nothing that can attract us more than something that is visually appealing to our eyes. Taking this fact into consideration, you will be surprised by the number of ways you make use of videos to enhance your marketing strategies.
Videos can build an emotional connection with the viewers. They get stuck in the viewers’ minds and pave the way for brand awareness. They convey the messages that you need to send your target audience for converting them into customers. And last but not least they prove to be very effective for your SEO efforts.
But why should you take someone’s word for it? Instead, consider the below-mentioned ways in which videos can help enhance your SEO and maximize your on-site and off-site marketing strategies.
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It helps build a strong presence on SERPs
Google is an attentive search engine. It is the world’s most popular search engine and continues to grow at a rapid pace simply because it knows exactly what its users are looking for and it provides them with exactly that. Hence, it comes with no surprise that this search engine understood that videos are a great type of content to reach and engage the audience. As a result, you will see that every time you search you will see videos populating the first page of the results.
Producing a video can prove to be very effective in enhancing your presence on the SERP. But you will have to do it right. Simply publishing a video is great for spreading brand awareness but it won’t be enough to rank on the SERP. Almost all the videos that make it to the SERP are YouTube videos. This means that you need to integrate your efforts for SERP presence and YouTube presence. Make a list of the keywords you wish to rank for and then find out which of them list videos on the SERP. Only after these steps, you should move to YouTube to optimize your video for those keywords.
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Use the power of YouTube to your advantage
According to a post from the Search Engine Journal, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine with more than 3 billion searches made monthly. That is more than the total monthly searches on Bing, AOL, and Yahoo! combined.
If you wish your target audience to find you for relevant keywords, optimizing your videos for Google only isn’t going to be of much help. The way your videos appear and how they can be found on YouTube itself needs to be paid attention to. Yet another feature of YouTube is its amazing volume. According to reports, YouTube sees more than 35 hours of video uploads. To stand out among the HUGE collection of videos on YouTube you need to ensure that your videos are not just great but are optimized in a way that can deliver you good results. To make that happen, you need to keep some points in mind, which are as follows:
- The video title should be like the search title and should contain the keyword in it.
- Specifically, mention the relevant keywords while uploading your video.
- Write a meta description as you would write for a page. Describe the video in such a way that your audience will make a search for it and get attracted to it.
- Use video transcripts to build captions. The transcript will also function as a page copy to search engines.
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Use social media to its full potential
Every experienced marketer knows that SEO is much more than just Google and securing a rank on it. A large number of Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter users search for relevant content all the time, which makes the optimization for each post a must.
According to certain studies, there is an indirect yet clear link between SEO focused on Google and your performance on social media. In the past years, organic marketing on social media has become a tough cookie that is the result of never-ending algorithm updates and overcrowding. For example, the posts you make on Facebook reach even less than 7% of your target audience. The only type of content that can get past such hurdles is VIDEOS.
Usually, native videos have a chance of performing better than other types of content on different social media platforms. Facebook itself has clearly stated how much importance it gives to videos through its News Feed algorithm. Just make sure you upload your videos directly on Facebook, since sharing links to YouTube has not worked well with the algorithm of Facebook.
To improve your SEO on social media, not any type of video will work. There are certain guidelines that you need to follow, which are as follows:
- You should come up with content that has the power to grab your target audience’s attention quickly. It should be such that it should be difficult to look away from.
- Create a custom thumbnail that can attract viewers in media where the videos don’t play automatically.
- Create an attractive caption for your video which is short and has hashtags. Prompt the viewers for a view/share/like.
- Ensure your video is authentic. It should look real. Stick to your brand personality to maintain consistency.
- Make sure your video has subtitles that appear in a clear font while playing the video. This is important because according to reports 85% of the users on Facebook play and watch videos on Facebook without sound.
The Conclusion
The above-mentioned points make it very clear how videos can help your business with its SEO efforts. But in case you don’t have an in-house team to handle the entire video production strategy of your firm, you should hire a professional like Nico Digital. It is important because the world of content is taking a shift towards videos and your business should be well prepared and ahead of its competitors.
