How Video Supercharges Your Website SEO

What’s one thing every business with a website wants?

Say it with me: “They want to be on the first page of Google.”

Well what if I told you that over half of the videos we’ve published this year are appearing on the first page of Google Search Results? Seriously, by leveraging video (like the one below), we’ve seen our content fly up the ranks. In this post, we’ll unpack how we did it and explain why today’s SEO strategies need to include video.

Video Is a Part of a Holistic SEO Strategy

Let’s be totally clear – you need an airtight SEO strategy to plant your flag at the top of Google Search Results. That’s keyword research and optimization and all the other tactics you’re used to, but now more than ever, you need video to help you reach the mountain top.

Why? Because according to BrightEdge Research, 26% of search results are showing video thumbnails. Whether it's a video on YouTube or one embedded in your blog, videos are popping up on Google Results.

And Google’s just getting started, with reps saying they’re looking to show even more videos in search results because video provides users with the fastest way of getting the information they’re looking for. It’s easy to find stats backing this up:

• Embedding a video on a webpage makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of search results.
• Blogs with videos attract 3x more inbound leads.

The problem is these figures have been shared so many times it’s hard to verify the original source. So let’s take a look at our own stats to show you the impact we’ve seen at Superside.

The SEO Results We’ve Seen From Embedding Video

Check this out:

If you search “Types of Ad Design”, which is a pretty general search, our blog—which has a video embedded—shows up first with a video thumbnail. That thumbnail is also being brought into Image Results. Then further down the page you’ll find our video result and all the different chapters for better navigation.

That’s three search results on page one for a single content topic and we didn’t even have to click the video results tab or pay for an ad.

According to wordstream, video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engine results pages and from what we’ve seen, that number checks out.

While these are early returns, when we looked at recent traffic on blogs before and after embedding a video, we found a 300% increase in clicks. We also saw our number of impressions double. As we’ve embedded more and more videos in blogs, we’ve seen an 87% increase in YouTube traffic from Google Search Results, helping us rack up tens of thousands of views without spending a dollar on ads.

Really, it’s not that surprising considering the amount of space Google is carving out for video. It’s no different than when Google saves the first few slots for ads. This is how they get marketers like you and me to go along with their vision of the future—and that vision is video.

In fact, research from CISCO predicts over 80% of all online traffic will be fuelled by video content this year. That means more than ever, teams need to adapt their strategies to the shifting digital landscape. Here’s an easy way to get started.

How to Leverage Video As Part of Your Content Strategy

If you have a blog, use Google Analytics to find your most popular articles. Then run an incognito search for related keywords on Google. If videos show up in the results, it means the ranking of your blog could be boosted by having a video, so you’ll want to take that existing content and turn it into a script.

Often, Google will show videos in search results when a segment of the video answers a question or explains a process. To identify these sections in your video, create chapters or timestamps on YouTube and title them appropriately.

Believe it or not, it also helps to have those sections of your video acknowledged in the video itself, so consider adding graphics that show steps, questions, and other text on screen. This will help the ranking of your video and also just make for a more dynamic watch.

Here’s a bonus tip from our Social Media Manager.

Maybe that sounds like a whole thing and you’re saying, “Of course I’d love to have videos for all my blogs and social channels but my team is drowning as it is.”

That’s why Superside offers video services. We’ll connect you with an expert team of creators, editors, motion designers, and more, to deliver video tailored to your audience and brand goals. From concept to publishing, we’ll get it done so you can experience the benefits of video content yourself.