How Does Video Content Impact SEO?

You’ve undoubtedly heard of the term Search Engine Optimization – or SEO, for short. If you’re familiar with this channel of digital marketing, you may immediately think of improving site speed, creating blog posts, or perhaps cleaning up 404 errors and other experiences for the user. But did you know that implementing video content on your site has a huge impact on your SEO strategy?

Before we dive into how video can positively affect your SEO rankings, let’s first get a clear understanding of SEO and what makes it so valuable to your website and overall company.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s visibility within search engines via organic, or unpaid, search results. It’s often considered the long-term aspect of your digital marketing strategy, because unlike PPC or social media efforts, where you generally see short-term and more immediate results, it can take several months before you really start to see the benefits of your SEO strategy. This is because you’re striving to organically improve your rankings in a search engine, rather than paying to have your listing at the top of a SERP through an advertisement. Therefore, these rankings are more long-lasting and advantageous because they are earned placements.

If you’re familiar with SEO and how beneficial it is to your overall marketing efforts, then you may have already been taking steps to improve your website from an SEO standpoint. Perhaps you’ve been creating blog posts or new pages that target valuable keywords related to your brand, products or services. Maybe you’ve sought the expertise of an SEO team or specialist to help Google crawl and index your site, and to ensure there aren’t any mobile usability issues, 404 error or other technical problems that might cause Google to penalize your website.

But have you also been implementing video content into your pages? Is it worthwhile to do so?

The answer is a resounding yes – and we’ll tell you why.

What does video do for user engagement?

A study by Forbes shows that, on average, internet users spend 88% more time on a website with video than they do on a website without video. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video must be worth…well, a lot more.

But it’s not just the amount of time users spend on your website that you should be concerned with – it’s the quality of that engagement. And video has been shown to improve key measures of engagement, such as brand awareness, purchase intent and overall ROI.

A HubSpot study showed that 54% of consumers want to see more videos from brands and businesses they support. And another study found that four times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it.

What all of this boils down to is that video content is not only preferred by users, but it also results in better engagement with your brand. And engaged users are valuable to your business – they’re more likely to become customers, and they’re also more likely to share your content with their own networks, which can help expand your reach.

How can video help your rankings?

Google rolls out hundreds of algorithm updates each year, a few of which being core updates that greatly affect your site rankings. Within these algorithm changes, Google has been prioritizing video content, and since 93% of all online experiences start within a search engine, it would stand to reason that you should give search engines what they want to see for their users.

See Related Post: Does Video Content Matter?

Since video has become so important to users, Google has a section in every SERP specifically geared towards showing users videos related to their search. This means that you can rank in both the regular listing with your written content, as well as the video section with your video content.

Check out this example! If a user searches “remove video production,” Sorrentino Media is under Videos:

Having this video content on our remote production page is how we were able to get that ranking. Because after all, if the video content doesn’t exist, how can you rank for video on Google?

When your video content ranks in a Google results pages for queries related to your content, you will not only see an uptick in organic traffic to your site, but you’ll undoubtedly see increases in user conversions and new customers as a result.

How does video impact SEO?

Now that we know how important user engagement is to your brand, let’s talk about how video content can help improve your SEO and, as a result, your website’s ranking.

First and foremost, when you add video to your site pages, you are increasing the amount of time users spend on those pages. And as we mentioned before, engagement is key to success online. The more engaged users are with your content, the better.

In addition, video content can also help improve your click-through rate, or the number of times users click on your listing in a search engine results page. A good CTR is important because it signals to Google that your site is relevant and useful to searchers. The higher your CTR, the more likely you are to rank higher in search results.

And finally, video content can also help you earn more backlinks, which are links from other websites back to your own. Backlinks are important because they signal to Google that your site is trusted and relevant. The more backlinks you have, the better your chances of ranking highly in search results.

Video content is a powerful tool that can help improve your website’s ranking in search results. By increasing user engagement, click-through rates and backlinks, video can help you earn better visibility and reach more users.

Contact us for quality video content for your website

If your site is in need of video content, reach out to Sorrentino Media. We are a national, digital-first video production company headquartered in New York City. We specialize in short-form digital content, and as a boutique production firm, we give unequivocal service and attention to our clients that large firms cannot match.