Why do you even need online videos? What good do they do? Do they boost your search engine rankings, or are they better for attracting regular visitors? Believe it or not, the answer is actually a bone of contention for a lot of Internet marketers.
While some will thump their desk and declare that video (or blogging or Twitter or blah blah blah) has to be done for improving search, others will point their finger to the sky and say it’s better for attracting visitors.
Actually, this is a bull that needs to be grabbed by both horns. You can’t — you shouldn’t — favor one over the other. Video on your website not only improves search results, but video done well improves visitor retention.
MediaForHire‘s online video series is a great example. On the right horn (right horn = right brain = creativity. Get it?!), I just finished watching my second episode (I’m embarrassed to admit it was Episode 8, but still, I watched it), and have become hooked. I plan on catching up on all the episodes, and watching all the new ones as they come out. Because I like MediaForHire’s stuff, I plan on watching anything else 12 Stars comes up with. Not just because it’s entertaining, but because they have earned my loyalty by giving me content I can enjoy or appreciate. And if I ever have a need for video services, you can guess who I’m going to call.
On the left horn, these videos will help MediaForHire on the search engine rankings (left horn = left brain = analytics. Man, I slay me!). I read a recent report on TubeMogul.com, that said nearly 40% of all video streams were referred by Google, followed by Yahoo (5.6%), Bing (2.3%), and Facebook (0.4%). The rest came from direct traffic. And since Google owns YouTube, you can bet they like to promote their videos in their search engine results.
One SEO secret is to get backlinks to your website (links that come from another site to yours). In fact, some SEO specialists believe video backlinks carry more weight than other types, like comments and forum discussions. Posting videos on YouTube and embedding them on your blog or website will help that.
Why is Online Video Even Important?
Several years ago, we couldn’t even watch video online, and producing them required thousands of dollars. Videos were huge, cumbersome, and required high-speed Internet, which only a few businesses and universities had.
Nowadays, thanks to new formats, smaller file sizes, and the low price of high-speed Internet, people can now stream video at home, at work, and even on their mobile phones. According to ReelSEO.com, 80% of all Internet users around the world watch online video.
In my years of blogging, I can rely on blog posts with photos outperforming text-only posts, and posts with videos outperforming both of them, so I include videos in my own posts whenever I can.
For example, before the Indy 500, I had the chance to interview Belgian rookie, Bertrand Baguette. It got a lot of hits, and seemed to get attention from every Baguette fan during the month of May. Even two months later, I’m still seeing a lot of search results for Baguette, and the 57 second video is one of my most viewed.
After seeing a difference video makes in search and in reader retention, it’s something I hope to do a lot more of in the future. Now if only I knew a company who would loan me a Flip HD for a few months. . .
