Video Marketing for SEO: 3 Steps to Improve Search Traffic with Video

Over the last year, we’ve seen an explosion of video marketing as organizations embraced the medium to connect with their audiences. As we continue to explore and refine our own video strategies, it’s important to understand how to optimize video marketing for SEO.

“Since 2016, the time spent watching videos has increased 249%, from 3.5 billion minutes to 12.2 billion minutes in 2020,” according to a study by Wistia. Even as the country begins to open up, consumption remains higher than in previous years.

Search engines like Google are recognizing that people are engaging and even craving video; they see how video increases click-through rate and time on page, and as a result, they rank pages with videos higher.

We sat down with video strategist Phil Nottingham to learn his 3-step process for using video marketing for SEO.

Step 1: Use Video Throughout Your Website

The first step for using video marketing for SEO is to use video throughout your website. Some key videos that Phil suggests include:

• About Us Video: A 2-3 minute video that explains the your culture and product, typically filmed with employees or leaders in the company.
• Product Video: Product videos are quick 60-90 second clips that explain a feature or product varient. The goal is to demonstrate a core value proposition.
• Support Video: A 1-5 minute video that covers customer FAQs.
• Unbranded How-to Videos Look at un-branded keywords on YouTube and create informational videos for these keywords.
• Vlogs: Vlogs are not only for aspiring YouTubers; if they fit within your blog strategy, vlogs can be engaging for your audience.
• Long-form Creative Content: Think documentaries, interviews, or other types of highly focused content that ranges from 20-60 minutes.

Don’t be afraid to get creative with your video marketing strategy. Think about how videos can enhance your brand and user experience.

Step 2: Implement Video SEO

Video SEO means optimizing your channel, playlist, metadata, description, and videos themselves for search. Like with any other kind of content, video SEO is measured by your website or channel’s perceived authority and relevance. Since a search engine bot can’t crawl a video, you’ll need to insert the appropriate metadata for bots to crawl.

The best way to insert video metadata into your website is through a JSON-LD markup to the header of the page – this won’t affect your site speed or processing. If you are unable to use JSON-LD, you can also submit a video sitemap to your Google Search Consolo or robots.txt file.

In you metadata, you’ll want to include:

• A descriptive title
• A description of the video
• The duration of the video
• Important keywords
• Add closed captions
• Upload date

Lastly, you’ll want to optimize your thumbnail. A good thumbnail includes high-contrast colors, boldness, a human face (if possible), a logo, and large stylized text. Ideally, you want your thumbnail to be 116 x 24 pixels.

 👉 3Player Tip: If you are a 3Play user, you can use the 3Play Plugin to generate a JSON-LD to paste in the HTML of your website, alongside your video.  

 

Step 3: Build an Audience with Owned Media

The last step of video marketing for SEO is to build your own audience. While social media platforms allow us to build an audience quickly, it’s more important to have a strategy to use your own videos and content to build your own list. Think Netflix.

Social media platforms are notorious for changing their algorithms, and you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your followers are solely on Facebook or YouTube. The key is to act like a media company and build your own distribution channel which your own audience data.

You can use forms to capture emails and build a list of registrants who actually care about your content and want to receive notifications about your products. Depending on your business, you can use hosting platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia to create your channel.

Lastly, you’ll want to track how well your videos are performing by using tools like Google Search Console or YouTube Analytics.

Ready, Set, Record!

It’s no secret that our consumption of video isn’t slowing down. If you are looking to invest in video, the tips in this blog will help make sure that your efforts build you an audience that cares about what you have to say.

For a more in-depth look at video marketing for SEO, watch the webinar with Phil Nottingham below.