When you search for any “how-to” content on Google, what do you see? Apart from an exhaustive list of webpages that have the answers to your question, you can see a carousel of instructional videos. It’s a recent update in the Google search algorithm that the search engine giant is finally considering ranking signals that come from video content.
Did you know?
Digital marketing guru, Neil Patel spends close to $16,300 per month on video AND audio content. According to his calculations, he spends around $2,144 on podcasts, making close to 30 episodes every month.
You might be wondering why an expert of Video marketing and SEO would spend thousands on content formats that don’t rank on Google or influence the website ranks directly. We believe that like many marketing gurus, he was preparing for the day when Google finally began ranking videos and podcasts in 2019.
How Can Video Content Influence Your Google Rankings in the Future?
There are critical arguments and pieces of stats that show why every marketing team should invest in video and audio content. Nonetheless, producing new, the written content is cheaper and faster. So, why should you leverage video and audio in the upcoming year?
How Video Content Can Boost Your Rankings
Keywords in the video title can act as Google ranking signals
While Google search engine crawlers might not be able to crawl the video, they are still able to read the title, description and tags on the video. So, it is a must to pick informative, relevant, and keyword-focused titles for contributing to your ranking signals.
Apart from making your videos visible on Google, you will also gain viewers on dedicated video search engines like YouTube. Currently, YouTube has billions of users looking for niche content using department/field-specific keywords.
Choosing a clever title for your video, adding a transcript for the video, and building a meta-description containing more keyword variants will increase your brand’s visibility on the web.
Video content can reduce bounce rate and improve dwell time
Typically, a website should not experience a bounce rate of more than 40%. Any bounce rate below 26% is excellent. However, if you are currently experiencing a bounce rate of more than 40%, you need to think about including video content within your marketing strategy.
Research shows that video content can boost purchase intent by more than 97%. Meanwhile, you can increase your brand association by 139%.
It’s a clear indication that even though Google does not actively reward websites hosting video and audio content, the sites can still enjoy higher than average engagement, lower bounce rates and increased dwell time. These are all positive ranking signals that Google considers for ranking a website.
Video posts will help you in acquiring social media popularity
The consumption of video content has risen by more than 100% per year since 2017. People do not have the time to read. However, they don’t mind watching a short informative video in between work.
Low-budget videos that channel a brand’s true personality are extremely popular among all social media users. In fact, certain types of videos drive more viewers than others. For example:
- Teaser videos for the launch of a new product or service
- Troubleshooting or FAQ videos
- Video journals or videos of popular podcasts
- Customer reviews and testimonials
- A behind-the-scenes glimpse of the brand office/facilities
These are all budget-friendly ideas that promulgate the brand name as long as you post dedicated descriptions of the videos. Moreover, don’t forget that viewers rarely switch on the volume for videos on Facebook. Consider the viewer habits and persona for creating a bespoke experience that prompts them to stay a little while longer and eventually convert.
Will Podcasts Help Strengthen Google Ranking Signals in 2020?
Audio content or podcasts work just as well as video content, if not better to improve Google rankings. Just like with your video file, you can post descriptions of your podcast and include a transcript for your podcast.
Here’s how you can improve Google ranking signals using podcasts:
Leverage your podcast to gain better traffic and visibility
Google might soon be able to “read” audio files in 2019, but, you can always post daily or weekly podcasts complete with information on the guest sites and networks that have hosted the podcast already. In your podcast, you can cover the basics of concepts you have discussed in your video tutorials and blogs.
Use your podcasts as tools to round off the visitors’ experience on your website. Do not forget to create supportive content like textual recapitulation, notes on specific timestamps, a transcript for the podcast, checklists for your visitors, artwork for the episodes, and key takeaways.
You can turn audio into a video for YouTube
YouTube is a specialized search engine that only searches through video content. 1.9 billion users log in monthly to search for videos by their names, descriptions, and publishers (2019).
Now, it’s no secret that people find video content more stimulating than audio content. By 2022, video content will contribute to more than 82% of the entire web traffic.
Therefore, if you were already thinking about converting a few of your older podcasts to video for YouTube and your site, this is the right time to do it!
You can use video generator applications that can add an accompanying video to your audio. This video can be slides, graphs, infographics, and images. Or, it can be the actual video of the participants of the podcast.
Use your podcasts to build links
When you’re releasing podcasts, there’s a good chance that a non-competitive brand from your field will try to collaborate with you. You can quickly become a guest speaker on a high authority website. Apart from acting as a guest speaker, you can share your podcast on high-authority niche blogging platforms.
These are both effective ways to build a robust link profile. Links are among the top three ranking signals for Google. Therefore, if you have a podcast guest in the future, don’t pass on the opportunity to get a link back to your website.
While counting the number of views you are getting from search engines due to your video content, you need to consider other platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn as well.
Include Social Media in Your Strategy
Social media platforms have assumed an integral role in the propagation of video and audio content. Although Google does not clarify its stand on social media links, it is evident that social media posting has a positive impact on rankings. So, when you are posting your next video and/or audio content, do not forget to optimize them for all social media platforms your brand uses.
This guest post was written by Vishal Vivek, an eminent Indian serial entrepreneur. Despite having to shoulder huge family responsibilities at a tender age, lack of proper training, and a dearth of resources and funding, he started SEO Corporation and scaled it up to a well-known SEO Company with sheer will power and integrity of character. In the uncertain world of search engine optimization, he is one of the few experts who gives guarantees and honors them.
