Saturday, March 22, 2014

Using Video To ‘Skyrocket’ Your Traffic From Google

Using Video To ‘Skyrocket' Your Traffic From Google image digital marketing1

For most businesses, increasing search traffic from Google and converting these visitors is a high priority. This makes sense when you consider that the first port of call for people looking for a product or service is often Google.


I recently wrote about how video is a fantastic tool to convert visitors, but what I didn’t touch on was how it is also a powerful tool to increase search traffic from Google.


Indeed, video was recently listed as one of the most effective ways to increase traffic from Google by Moz, a leading authority on search engine optimisation (SEO) and inbound marketing.


SEO can be a daunting task for many organisations, especially if they lack in-house expertise, but with video, you have a tool that will make an immediate and long lasting impact on your search traffic from Google.


Why Video Can ‘Skyrocket’ Your Website’s Search Traffic From Google:


1. VIDEO RICH SNIPPETS


Using Video To ‘Skyrocket' Your Traffic From Google image Google search result


Ever seen a video thumbnail in a Google search result like the one above? Well, that’s called a video rich snippet and studies have shown that searchers’ eyes go straight to them. It’s no wonder then that a study by aimClear found that Google results with video snippets have a 41% higher click through rate than plain text results.


The takeaway from this is that your website can very easily get more traffic from Google than websites ranked above you, if you have a video rich snippet and they don’t.


So for example, if your website was third on Google for a keyword related to your industry, you can receive more visitors from this search result than the websites ranked first and second.


TOP TIP – It’s important to note that you will not get a video snippet for your website by embedding YouTube videos. To get your video rich snippet into Google results for your website you will need to submit a video sitemap to Google and add Schema.org markup to your website. The easiest way to do this is to use professional video hosting, like Vzaar or Wistia.


2. STOPS VISITORS POGOSTICKING


Pogosticking is where a person clicks through to a website and clicks their back button to look for another result on a search engine.


If a sizeable proportion of your website visitors do this, then you’ve got a big problem. Google measures this as it makes up part of their search algorithm, meaning your website will fall down search results if visitors do pogostick.


Most people who pogostick do so because the page they came to from Google didn’t immediately satisfy what they were looking for. Visitors have short attention spans, around 8 seconds, and will look elsewhere if they don’t think in the first 8 seconds that they will get the information they are looking for quickly and easily.


The best way to deliver this is through video. Research shows that video will make website visitors stay two minutes longer on average. Video allows much more to be communicated in a shorter space of time and is far easier to consume than text.


TOP TIP – Use Google analytics to analyse important landing pages, such as your homepage and product pages, to see if any have high bounce rates. If they do, you should consider using video on this page, communicating messages that will satisfy the search intent of visitors.


For more information on pogosticking’s impact on Google’s search results, check out this video.


3. SHAREABLE & LINKWORTHY


Links to your website from other websites have always been an important part of Google’s search algorithm. Until a few years ago, it was quite easy to get these links through link directories, blog comments and purchased links. However, recent changes to Google’s search algorithm now punish these sort of low quality links.


Nowadays, links from high quality websites to your own website is what will help improve your Google search rankings. The bad news is, links from high authority sites are much harder to get, often requiring quality and engaging content that is ‘shareable’ and ‘linkworthy’.


The good news is, video, when used correctly, helps provide this high quality content, gains links organically, and according to research on MOZ, will on average attract 3 times more links than a plain text post.


TOP TIP – If your objective for your video is to be a link building tool, spend time to ensure the video topic and content will be seen as ‘shareable’. The best ones are often topical and elicit an emotional response from the viewer, making them compelled to share.


(If you want to learn more about the power of online video, check out our video and article on video stats – http://threemotion.co.uk/online-video-stats-2014/)


Source: B2C_Business



Using Video To ‘Skyrocket’ Your Traffic From Google

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