A version of this article was originally published by Modern Marketing Today.
As marketers, we’re well aware of the massive value of SEO. After all, recognizing a few keywords and optimizing a piece of text can do wonders for turning the internet’s spotlight toward your brand. But how many marketers are aware of SEO’s ability to align with video content as well?
Video is a hugely powerful tool, not just on its own but as a catalyst for other forms of marketing. Effectively combining SEO practices with video marketing can usher your content toward the perfect audience more effectively and much faster.
How Can Video Bolster SEO Efforts?
Everything that SEO achieves alone, video can magnify. Take Dollar Shave Club, for example. This young brand took a simple idea — a comic launch video highlighting its founder’s sense of humor while explaining how its subscription service works — and achieved endlessly repeatable, sharable brand awareness. One video led to countless shares and backlinks, which skyrocketed the brand’s SEO ranking.
Considering the power of SEO to enhance all forms of marketing, it’s surprising that video SEO has been underutilized by brands thus far. Video is Google’s favorite form of content. Videos boost many of the metrics Google holds sacred: time spent on site, bounce rate, conversion rate, social shares, and backlinks. It’s why we see organic traffic growing 250 percent when adding video to existing content.
3 Ways to Successfully Combine SEO and Video
Marketers often take a wrong turn in their video strategies by not utilizing all avenues available to them to improve their rankings. If you’re going to use video, why not use it to its full advantage? Here are three ways to do so:
1. Choose Quality Over Quantity.
One mistake marketers make when opting for a video strategy is to choose quantity over quality. High-quality video content will match keyword-rich copy with visually impactful storytelling, helping viewers engage and take action. But your video should also be able to stand alone. The Dollar Shave Club video worked because it was funny, in and of itself. For people to engage with a video and partake in all the behaviors that lead Google to improve a site’s ranking, the content needs to captivate an audience.
2. Optimize Videos for Search.
SEO success doesn’t happen by accident. Just like with copy, you must take the time to optimize your videos for search. That means finding out who your target audience is, and what they’re searching for, and using that research to zero in on a batch of keywords that will pique their interest. Fill the tags and titles of videos with these keywords, pepper them into descriptions, and you’ll make an engaging video work double-time.
3. Focus on Distribution.
Just because video content exists doesn’t mean it’s destined to succeed. Marketers need to focus on crafting a strong distribution strategy once they’ve made their videos. Don’t let the video languish on one channel. Consider leveraging social media, email, and PR to effectively and authentically get video content out in front of audience members.
Video is so powerfully connected to SEO that to not leverage it is to fall behind. Whether your brand uses video to tell your origin story, highlight a product’s features, or just share a laugh with your audience, each video is an opportunity to supercharge your SEO strategy. Now is the time to create a great, stand-alone video optimized for search.
