If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth ten times that. Modern audiences are intensely visual. It’s not surprising, then, that the streaming video market has grown positively titanic over the past few years. Per research aggregator Statista, digital advertising revenue is expected to top $11 billion by next year.
On the video streaming front, meanwhile, marketing agency Allied Market Research reports that the video streaming market will reach $149.3 billion by 2026. With the massive shift towards digital and the upturn in streaming due to the coronavirus — news publication Variety reports a significant increase in video streaming subscriptions — the prominence of video will only increase. From a marketing perspective, this means that there’s a great deal of value in video, provided you can leverage it effectively.
This isn’t exactly secret knowledge, mind you. Video is memorable, easy to engage with, and easy to digest. It’s highly shareable, too, with a great deal of potential for bringing new traffic and generating brand awareness.
What you may not know is that video has a more direct connection with search engine optimization. Effective use of video has the potential to shoot your page up in the rankings. There are a few reasons for this.
- Increased website traffic. Just as Google’s image search can display properly-optimized photos on your website, Google video search provides another means by which users can come across your brand. Just make sure you follow Google’s video best practices.
- Ensure there’s a high-quality thumbnail image.
- The video must be publicly available in order to be searched.
- The video’s content must specifically apply to the host page.
- Don’t hide your video with a complicated script.
- Use structured data markup or a video sitemap to describe your video.
- Make sure your site is verified in the Google Search Console.
- Host the video in a supported format.
- Better engagement. Although we don’t know the exact weight, we do know that Google keeps a close eye on how long each visitor spends on your site. A video that’s engaging enough to keep people watching for a while will keep people on the page longer. And that, in turn, will improve your rankings.
- More backlinks. As we’ve already said, video tends to be shared with great frequency. Where embedded video is concerned, that means more backlinks to your website. Not only does that increase your traffic, but it’s also likely to improve your placement.
- Enhanced conversions. We saved the best for last. As mentioned, video can be an incredibly compelling marketing tool. Provided you’ve tailored your video content effectively and created it with a clear goal in mind, it can go a long way towards your conversion goals.
Used right, embedded video can be one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. It can increase both traffic and engagement, generate shares on social, and drive conversions to your site. It’s not a format that will work for every brand, nor every topic.
But for the topics that it does fit, it fits like a glove.