To many business owners, SEO has been viewed as a blackbox - they are told they need it to win online traffic, but the whys and hows are vague. Often intentionally vague.
There is so much nonsense associated with the category of SEO because the search engines don't want it to be gamed by bad actors, and so many SEO specialists want the category to remain as opaque as possible to build their own businesses.
It leads to companies in desperate need of a valid SEO strategy falling back on the same janky approaches; "Isn't SEO just backlinks?" "Can't we just make shell sites ourselves, populate them with any old stuff and point those links toward our homepage?".
The recent Google algorithm leaks have revealed and confirmed much for video content's positive role in an SEO presence.
video plays a critical role in 4 of the major Page Rank metrics:
Topic Sensitive Page Rank
Social Page Rank
Domain Authority Page Rank
Geo Specific Page Rank
"So we should have video!" say all the aspiring online marketers. Well, here's the rub - sImply 'having video' is not going to cut the mustard. Your video needs to be planned to give something valuable to your audience, be refreshed often, and be discoverable over a long period (too bad, Meta, Tik Tok, Linkedin who all demote content after a day).
Businesses who blow $7k on one video for the year will most likely see the investment as a waste after 2 months as most will struggle to see any impact on SEO.
Regular, on-brand video content plays a unique role in an effective SEO strategy for a few important reasons:
1.
Google’s Algorithm Prioritises Multimedia: Google recognises that users actively engage with video content. 96% of online consumers watch explainer videos to learn about products or services. As a result, Google prominently features video content in search results.
2.
Wider Marketing Reach: Beyond benefiting your website SEO, video content expands your overall digital marketing presence. When you share videos on YouTube , search engines take note of their popularity and boost both the content and associated sites.
3.
Link Building Opportunities: Backlinks significantly impact search engine rankings. Videos are a particularly effective media for positive backlinks, especially as top-of-funnel content. High-ranking websites can point to your video content, supercharging your search engine ranking.
4.
When you have a library of video content on Youtube that has organic appeal, your investment in marketing keeps paying dividends for years. This is a stark contrast with ads and paid promos which create short spikes in target interest.
Video SEO not only captures organic traffic but also enhances brand visibility, builds trust, encourages social engagement, and generates leads — with an effectiveness that reaches well beyond traditional semantic SEO tactics & strategies, or paid ads and promoted content.
IMAGE Bing co-pilot.
Solid insights can be transformed into organic performance
Yes the Steampunk SEO image above is slop, but it's also kind of brilliant in that it makes you pause and laugh. A $650 Getty image would not have caught anyone's attention. The same is true of video - it has to speak to your audience and a bigger budget means little if there's no connection.
Often the approach that represents a product or service most effectively is not expensive to produce. It only requires thorough planning before creating a library of videos.
And, no offence to my friends who work in paid media, but anyone can promote a video and get 10,000 views. Where you really get results is when you promote a video that works organically.
If done well, video increases a viewer's intent to purchase by 65%. Bog standard video 'content' has no such effect. It is usually foisted upon companies by their agencies, or interns for vanity metrics and easy scalability.
Every now and then you'll get a break through, stand-alone video that costs little and raises the SEO profile of a company immensely.
The video below was planned with remote pre-production and post-production by Social Brain, so that the client could run the video shoot themselves. It has been generating 3000 views per month for the last 2 years. It wins SEO ranking for Omafiets' business (and for Brompton who recommended Social Brain produce), and it cost less than $1000 to make. It is a success because viewers watch 76% of the video on average or, in other words, because the target viewers are getting something attention worthy from it. So Youtube suggests the video more often. This is how organic traffic really takes off.
It was possible because of an intimate understanding of what folding bicycle audiences appreciate; honest, relatable, humble, production values.
For most small companies in a competitive industry - B2B especially - a video content plan that wins 500 views per month for a library of videos is a huge SEO and conversion win.
This can (and does for some clients) amount to enough to land on the top page of search results without paid ads. Oblivious competititors are left bidding up obvious adwords and depleting marketing budgets.
Video approaches have to be tailored to industry insights and iterated as factors change, but the organic video SEO route will almost always produce top results and at a fraction of adwords and boosting costs.
There should not be any mysticism in a healthy SEO strategy - all of the content that forms an SEO ecosystem should build on business insights and be relevant to your target's interests. No husks or Potemkin sites.
If you want your company to see actual ROI from an SEO content strategy, you should be planning an ongoing, scalable video approach with organic traffic as your guiding metric.
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