How videos impact your SEO rankings
Videos not only grab attention and showcase your company’s offerings and profile but also boost your search engine optimization and website rankings. The key question is: how videos impact SEO exactly. We’ll explain how in this post.
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Videos deliver large amounts of information in a short format. This boosts user engagement and retention.
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Videos improve user experience by combining visuals, sounds, and movement. This makes content more digestible, especially for mobile users.
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Search engines like Google prioritize videos in search results, using algorithms like Hummingbird to better understand user intent and highlight relevant video content.
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Videos increase your visibility on SERPs and attract clicks because they appear prominently in video carousels.
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Video content resonates emotionally with viewers, making it more memorable and persuasive. This drives conversions and brand awareness.
Why video content is so popular
Videos are short and sweet
Videos have become the go-to content format due to their effectiveness in delivering tons of information quickly and concisely. Users are more likely to watch a video than read text. They even have higher engagement rates.
For example, videos shorter than 1 minute have an engagement rate of 50%. But as the video length grows, the engagement rate decreases, with a 60-minute video having an engagement rate of 17%.
So even though creating videos is an effective and attention-grabbing way to convey information, it must be approached wisely.
Videos are great for storytelling
In addition to being packed with information, videos tell stories, which is why they tend to stick in people’s minds longer than cold, hard facts. Moreover, Wyzowl’s report on video marketing shows that 82% of 967 unique respondents admit that watching a video persuaded them to buy a service or product.
Videos improve user experience
Videos focus on user experience. They communicate everything people like by seamlessly blending visuals, sounds, and movement.
Plus, videos are easy to watch on mobile phones. More than 70% of respondents in the U.S. used their smartphones to watch videos.
Videos have become more accessible through AI
AI-powered tools like automated video editors, script generators, and voiceover software make it possible for marketers and creators to quickly and efficiently produce high-quality videos.
In addition, Google’s AI Overviews often link to video content, particularly YouTube. This preference for video in AI-generated responses highlights Google’s commitment to presenting information in diverse formats.
Google is also experimenting with a more interactive video search experience, allowing users to ask questions with videos, and then use its AI capabilities to summarize video content dynamically.
This means videos likely won’t stop being popular any time soon.
How videos can help boost SERP rankings and strengthen your SEO strategy
Simply adding a video to your webpage won’t boost your rankings. That’d be too easy. The impact of videos on search rankings calls for a more nuanced approach.
Let’s look at how video content impacts SERP rankings.
1. Longer dwell time & lower bounce rate
When a new visitor lands on your website, you don’t have much time to capture their attention and convince them to stay. This is where videos make a major impact.
The engaging nature of video content, as opposed to images and text, tends to hold people’s attention longer. People spend 1.4x more time on pages with video content than on pages without videos.
From the standpoint of SEO, this is a big deal. The longer a visitor’s session or “dwell time”, the higher your chances of getting search engines like Google to see the value of your video and the trustworthiness of the webpage it’s hosted on. This can contribute to a higher page ranking.
If people spend a lot of time on your content, they are more likely to explore your website and see what your other pages offer. This not only increases pageviews but also lowers your bounce rate.
High bounce rates are a common challenge for websites. With so many choices online, distracted users leave pages within seconds if they don’t instantly find what they’re looking for. Videos serve as anti-bounce tools because, unlike written text, they require that you watch at least part of it to learn more about the topic, company, product, etc.
The Yacht Company offers a great example of a background video. You can almost get lost exploring the beautiful scenery and landscapes portrayed in their videos. It’s also worth mentioning that the video content on their site extends beyond their homepage, so there’s plenty for visitors to check out.
If you’re facing challenges with low rankings and struggling to engage visitors, resulting in low dwell time and a high bounce rate, featuring an above-the-fold video on your webpage can do the trick.
2. Increased click-through rate
When people search for information on Google, they tend to click on results with videos. By indicating to search engines and users that your webpage contains a video directly on the SERPs, you can increase the click-through rate and drive more traffic to your site.
Google occasionally updates its SERPs to provide users with more info about websites and their content. This information is presented through rich results, also known as rich snippets. Rich snippets help people understand what they will find on a page before clicking on it.
You can check whether your page with a video has rich snippets by using SE Ranking’s Rank Tracker. Once you add your project to the platform, open the Rankings tab and go to the keyword table. If your page with a video appears in video results, you’ll see that the video icon has turned blue.
In addition to providing Google with textual information about the video, it’s important to have a visually appealing thumbnail for your video. Thumbnails are key to improving click-through rates on SERPs because people are naturally drawn to beautiful, captivating images.
3. Improved backlink profile
People love sharing amazing content, so if your video strikes a chord with viewers, they are more likely to link to it, which is another vital ranking factor. If you have a high-quality, unique video circulating the web, it will naturally get backlinks to the page it’s hosted on.
Uploading your video to a third-party platform like YouTube helps you earn backlinks and qualified referral traffic by adding a link to your website in your channel information or video description.
Similarly, you still benefit from backlinks and outreach if you host the video on your website. If the video is top-notch, people will link to it no matter where it’s hosted and share it on social media.
And even if your videos don’t directly drive more people to your website, you can boost brand awareness and search visibility by including your logo in them. This will increase your brand authority for search engines.
Use SE Ranking’s Backlink Checker to see which websites link back to your video pages.
Simply paste the URL into the tool, select ‘URL’ as the domain type, and click the Search button.
The tool will collect all the backlinks and referring domains pointing to the page with your video. You can then see any active/new/lost backlinks as well as their:
- Domain trust score
- Page trust score
- Total referring domains
- Total backlinks
- Anchor text
- Toxic backlinks
- Broken backlinks
- And much more
Go to the Referring Domains tab to look more closely at the website linking to your videos. It will display a list of referring domains, including their names, domain trust, number of backlinks, and first-seen date.
If you click on the number indicating how many backlinks were sent by a domain to your website, you’ll also see where they come from, their Domain and Page Trust scores, anchor text, and more.
4. Better optimized Google Business Profile listings
Google likes brands that take full advantage of Google Business Profile listings. It even rewards them with a spot in the Local Pack.
Local business listings that include images, posts, and messages are already known to rank higher. Imagine the impact adding a video would have on getting your GBP listing ranked in the Local Pack.
Leverage this opportunity by creating an appealing video that describes your business and demonstrates your service/product in under 30 seconds. Adding this video to your GBP page gives you an edge over competitors who didn’t use this opportunity. Be sure to verify your GBP profile if you haven’t already.
Including visual information in your GBP listing helps people “get to know” your business. It is believed that the more recent your photos or videos are, the higher the likelihood of getting clicks to your website. Visual content also helps to engage users who see your listing, and Google keeps track of its interactions.
Polishing your GBP is an essential aspect of any local marketing strategy. A well-optimized GBP improves a business’s visibility, attracts potential customers, and increases your chances of converting them into loyal customers.
Beyond videos, your GBP should also include accurate and up-to-date information about the business, including its name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, customer reviews, etc. Providing incorrect information in your GBP will render your video useless.
Check your GBP optimization and track its performance with SE Ranking’s new Local Marketing tool. It informs you about any GBP issues and lets you:
- Manage GBP and other listings data.
- Manage and respond to reviews.
- See how users interact with your GBP.
- Get insights into keywords used in reviews.
- Analyze your listings across different platforms.
- And much more.
How to get your videos indexed
To get your videos indexed by search engines, provide metadata that helps bots understand the content and context of your videos. For each video, be sure to specify its:
- Title
- Description
- Length
- Upload date
- Video file location/embeddable player
- Thumbnail image
Use an XML sitemap to provide metadata and submit it to search engines to ensure your videos are crawled and indexed. You can send your video sitemap through Google Search Console or include a sitemap link in your robots.txt file. You can also add video metadata to the page hosting the video using Schema.org markup.
Read our full guide on video SEO to make your videos shine in search.
Where to host a video: on your website or YouTube?
While Google does own YouTube, uploading your videos to YouTube alone doesn’t guarantee better search engine rankings for your website. As with Google web hosting or other Google products, hosting videos on YouTube doesn’t give you any ranking advantage on Google.
Anything you upload on YouTube is automatically indexed by the YouTube algorithm and not the Google bot. Embedding a YouTube video on your website doesn’t directly impact its rankings, but how well it’s optimized does.
Consider the following when deciding whether to host a video on your website or YouTube:
- Hosting on your website gives you complete control over the content and branding. You can customize the video player, add your branding, and control the user experience. With YouTube, your video is hosted on a third-party platform, giving you less control over the user experience and branding, and you must comply with their policies.
- YouTube is the second-largest search engine after Google and has a massive user base. Hosting your video on YouTube can reach a broader audience and increase visibility. Hosting videos on your website may limit the potential reach.
- Hosting on YouTube can help improve your website’s SEO by increasing traffic and backlinks. YouTube videos often rank high in search engine results.
- Hosting a video on your website can be more expensive due to the additional server resources and bandwidth required.
Both options have pros and cons, so consider your goals and needs. You can also host videos on both YouTube and your site to maximize the reach and impact of your video marketing strategy and SEO efforts.
How does adding transcripts to videos affect SEO?
Video transcripts are text-based versions of the video’s spoken content. Here are several SEO benefits to adding them to your videos:
- Transcripts make your videos more accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Transcripts improve the user experience by allowing users to scan content and access information.
- Transcripts help search engines understand your video content better and improve your search engine rankings. Since search engines can’t watch videos, they rely on text-based content like transcripts and captions. Adding relevant keywords also makes your video more relevant to search queries.
Adding transcripts isn’t mandatory, but they can improve the visibility of your videos.
Wrapping up
The immersive nature of videos ensures their popularity will keep growing. People prefer to watch videos. They engage with videos more often and tend to remember them— two key engagement metrics every marketer wants to see success in.
But the value of videos goes beyond their marketing potential, with key SEO advantages. Videos have repeatedly proven their ability to boost brand visibility online, generate more traffic, and improve website rankings.
Now that you know why videos are worth including in your strategy, the next step is to improve their SERP visibility. Learn how by reading our guide on combining video marketing and SEO, and watching our webinar on video SEO.
