Posted on May 18, 2015

Video, SEO, And YouTube

Video, SEO, And YouTube

Are you considering video in your online marketing efforts? You should have clear objectives in mind before diving in, and a strategy to achieve it. This article deals the objectives to help you decide why you should do video, and what you can potentially achieve.

Video can improve your SEO, and you can make money from video directly. Luckily the technical and financial barriers to doing video are minimal. Now you can record a video on the phone in your pocket, edit it and upload it to YouTube so that it is available across the globe. And you can do it in less than 10 minutes.

Of course a lot of the videos produced and uploaded like this usually contain content that ranges from the boring to the weird. You will want much more consistency and higher quality in your videos. But the first thing is to determine your objective for doing video.

Here are a few reasons to consider video:

Video Improves SEO

Video can improve your SEO which means it can feed into your overall marketing strategy, and help to improve your general results. It does this in a number of ways:

  1. Videos show up in search results and are often given a higher placing than a page of text covering similar content. This is because Google and other search engines like to show a variety of results when a user conducts a search. Lots of websites do text and images, so video is a way for you to stand out.
  2. Videos typically have a higher click through rate. This applies whether the video is shown in search results, on social media, or anywhere else. People click on videos.
  3. The bounce rate on videos is better than on pages of text. People skim read pages of text and make decisions quickly as to whether they are going to stay on a page or not. When you have videos though, visitors stay longer, and the search engines like that.
  4. Videos can help you get backlinks. This is because people are more likely to link to a page that contains a good quality, useful, helpful or entertaining video than they would a page of text.

In summary, video helps your SEO efforts because it:

  • Increases your visibility in search
  • Has a higher click through rate
  • The bounce rate is lower
  • Getting backlinks is easier

Video Has Good Monetization

You can also make money directly from the videos that you produce. The quickest and easiest way of doing this is on YouTube through the YouTube Partner Program. It works a bit like Adsense in that Google serves ads to the people who view your videos.

It is also like Adsense in the sense that you need lots of traffic in order to make a decent income. But if you can get the traffic, you can make some money. Google says that thousands of channels are making revenues worth six figures a year.

Here are a few other methods of making money:

  • Get your own advertisers – you can sign up your own sponsors or partners. This takes a bit of work but you set the price and keep all the revenue.
  • Promote your products – you can use your videos to sell directly to your audience
  • Build lists or website sign ups – producing good content will encourage users to sign up for regular updates. Or you can reserve the best content for paid subscribers.
  • Affiliate marketing – get paid for promoting other websites or products

Creating videos for your website, brand or business does have benefits, once you decide on the right strategy.

Are you ready to get behind (and in front!) of the camera?

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