The race to the top of the search engine results page (SERP) has become more cutthroat than ever before. It can be explained through sufficiently available data on user behavior when they are using search engines, i.e. The majority of users choose from the first organic results on the SERP. It is a testament to the reduced patience and attention span of people.
Therefore, it has become imperative for marketers to design content that is appealing enough to capture user attention. Data shows that with the advancement of technology and proliferation of social media platforms, our general attention span has decreased. In the wake of this, marketers are left with less than 10 seconds to captivate the audience.
Why video?
Visual mediums, specific videos, are a great way of capturing user attention. Human beings have been wired to like stories, and videos are a very effective mode of storytelling. The success of platforms such as YouTube prompted all major social media platforms to make video a vital part of their services.
Unsurprisingly, video has become a crucial element of SEO as well a separate branch of SEO called VSEO has gained prominence over the past few years. VSEO, or Video Search Engine Optimization, is all the rage today and occupies an integral role amidst other optimization techniques.
If you are wondering why VSEO has become such a core part of SEO, you have come to the right place.
In this article, we will outline the major reasons why video SEO is gaining prominence and how video marketing can benefit a business in its overall marketing strategies. We will also briefly take a look at some tips for creating VSEO ready video content for YouTube and Google. Let’s begin.
Google’s focus on User Experience and Role of Videos in Enhancing it
User experience has been an area of special focus for Google and its algorithms over the last few years. The increased spotlight on enhancing the user experience for page rankings on SERPs is indicative of the user-centric approach adopted by Google — case in point introduction of metrics like Core Web Vitals. Video can be a great mode of making the user experience better.
Internet users have shown a tendency to prefer video content over other forms of content such as blogs and text in general. The ability of videos to cover more ground interactively with a storytelling approach has increased the reliance of Internet users on video content.
Users have begun expecting videos as a solution to many of their search queries given the explanatory nature of the format. Be it product videos, educational videos, testimonial videos, introduction videos, or promotional ads, users expect to stumble upon any one of them for most of their needs.
Videos differ from other forms of content, written or visual because they possess the ability to connect to the user within seconds, which adds to user engagement and overall experience.
Video Content is a Google Favorite
Experts are in favor of video content when it comes to boosting user engagement. This has become all the more crucial for SEO because Google prioritizes marketing strategies that seek to improve it.
Google still depends considerably on keywords while deciding the ranking of web pages on the SERP. Google matches the relevance and theme of a video to a search query with the help of the transcript fed as metadata while uploading that video.
After Google, YouTube has become the second most popular search engine, especially when it comes to videos. Although no one can say for sure whether Google favors YouTube content, it’s clear that videos performing well on YouTube in terms of shares, likes, views, and comments reach the SERP concerning user queries. You can learn how to rank youtube videos using Rankwatch.
Videos Increase Long Clicks and Stickiness Factor
There’s something called the stickiness factor of a web page which is nothing but the measure of time spent by users on a website while watching a video. It is a deciding factor in determining the quality of a webpage based on the EAT principle (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).
In general, Google loves long clicks — when users click on a search result and stay on that page for prolonged periods. Long clicks are indicative of the fact that users have found the desired result in their search query. Videos are no doubt one of the best ways to hook people on a web page for a longer time, given the engaging nature of video content over text and images.
For the reasons mentioned above, statistically, videos are known to increase the dwell time of users on a website by as much as six times. The recollection value of videos swings the attention of users in their favor, which in turn equips websites to hold their attention and increase the stickiness factor.
Click Through Rate sees an Upward Trajectory With Video Content
The digital world is overflowing with information overload in the form of innumerable posts on social media feeds, hundreds of new blog posts every minute, and more. Internet users often find it difficult to settle on the best possible answer to their search queries. To solve this problem, video content can be a great alternative.
Videos are known to provide valuable information engagingly and concisely. They can pack more content in shorter time frames, with an added advantage of great recollection value and better click-through rate (CTR).
Increased click-through rate is directly proportional to conversions when users land on the related web pages. In fact, a two-minute video has higher chances of click-through than a 1000 word article.
Video Content helps generate Natural Backlinks
It’s no secret that quality backlinks on a web page are a Google favorite for SERP rankings. Web pages that are ripe with high-quality inbound links are seen as authority pages by the search bots. They are known to drive more traffic than your run-of-the-mill pages. Moreover, web pages with videos get exponentially high inbound links.
Apart from CS-Cart Multi-Vendor software, high-quality content is one of the ways for success on online marketplaces. In particular, video content capitalizes when it comes to generating backlinks.
Therefore, publishing video content provides a great opportunity to not only earn quality backlinks but increase quality traffic as well. The combined effect of these two helps in improving the page authority and eventually the page ranking.
Conclusion
We have gathered sufficient information about why video content has gained prominence for SEO strategies. The importance placed by Google’s algorithm in rewarding improved user experience has highlighted the ability of video content to give value to users.
To sum up, video content is only going to become more decisive going forward. SEO is a fickle industry because of the quantum of regular changes in algorithms, but the video is one of the elements that are primed to remain constant.
About the Author
Vaibhav Kakkar is the Founder and CEO of Digital Web Solutions, a globally trusted agency with a full suite of digital marketing services and development solutions. Vaibhav believes in building systems over services, and has helped scale up agencies from scratch to niche-leaders with million dollar turnovers.
Simtech Development can help in customizing your online store or marketplace on CS-Cart. We develop modification, offer add-ons, provide hosting, and design eCommerce projects. You can rely on our experience.