At Varn we have had so many questions and queries related to the importance of using video as a marketing tool from our clients, we thought it would be useful to share some of the latest thinking on why video is so vital in 2022 and the powerful role video can play to optimise your SEO efforts.

We have brought in the experts from Bristol-based video agency Life Media UK to explain why video is such a key player in your marketing mix (and not just for SEO either!)…

At Life Media UK, we understand that with a strong video strategy and a high level of execution, video can achieve incredible results. The potential for video to connect you with your ideal client becomes even more powerful when you optimise it with the SEO tactics that Varn will explain to you shortly… but first…

Here’s why video is your best bet when it comes to marketing in 2022.

Fortunately for us and our clients, video shows no sign of slowing down; the average consumer now watches 19 hours of online video per week, with YouTube reaching more viewers than any TV channel on the planet. All of these video-hungry eyeballs gives you, as a business, the perfect opportunity to reach people exactly where their focus is.

While we’d all love to give each of our potential customers a face-to-face sales pitch, it’s not always possible; but video can be the next best thing. Communicating with every single one of your prospective buyers on-demand, answering their questions, delivering compelling social proof and engaging product demos can only be done through the power of a great video.

88% of people would like to see more videos from brands in 2022.  Simply put, you should be marketing with video because that’s exactly how your customers want (and expect) to be marketed to.

How can video marketing drive sales?

The real value of video comes from its ability to drive sales like nothing else. We’ll let Varn explain the SEO value in a second, but in addition to turbo-charging your organic traffic, video can also boost sales from your paid campaigns by as much as 100%!

Once you’ve got users to your site, embedded video content can also increase sales by up to 144%, making conversions easier and campaigns more impactful.

Social media was built for video, and it’s now the most popular form of content by a country mile. Engagement with videos on Facebook is almost double that of text or image-based posts, and 1 in 4 Instagram users have made a purchase after seeing an Instagram story.

It’s not just your website and social media that feel the benefit of video marketing – 71% of sales professionals confirm that video emails outperforms text-based emails, as video gets your message across in a quick, succinct and engaging way.

We know how important return on investment is. With 87% of marketers who use video seeing a positive ROI, video is becoming one of the most reliable forms of marketing around, as well as the most impactful.

Varn explain how video can help your SEO

We know that 75% of searchers don’t scroll past page 1 of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) so making sure you are up there in the rankings, on page 1  is really important. Without a doubt, creating video for your website can dramatically improve your ranking results on Google and positively affect your SEO efforts. We know that the search engines love video and that’s because people searching love video and are increasingly consuming more and more video.

Creating video is a fantastic tool to target keywords in the search engines. With an engaging video it is likely that people will spend more time on your website and this can increase something we call ‘dwell time’.  According to Search Engine Journal dwell time is defined as

“the length of time a person spends looking at a webpage after they’ve clicked a link on a SERP page, but before clicking back to the SERP results.”

We know that increased dwell time will mean the Google bots will identify your video as valuable content and this means better rankings for your website.

There is some interesting data on the value of video from Wordstream and here are a few stand out stats for us:

1. Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from SERPs.
2. Video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more.
3. The average conversion rate for websites using video is 4.8%, compared to 2.9% for those that don’t use video.
4. Having a video on a landing page makes it 53% more likely to show up on page 1 of the SERP.

So with Video having such a powerful impact in a search, here are some top tips from Varn to make sure your video can rank better:

• Content is king: It is important to make the content of your videos as informative, entertaining and relevant as possible. It should be rich with content, and have a purpose. The most successful videos seem to be those which are memorable, and which leave the viewer wanting more. Don’t just create a video for video sake – it needs to be compelling and tell a story. Videos which demonstrate ‘how to, ’step-by-step processes, as well as those which express opinions about relevant topics, typically do quite well.

• Keep it short: The ideal length for a video to help with rankings is to aim for around 1-2  minutes with Wistia advising that 2 minutes is the sweet spot as after that time there is a significant drop off in engagement.

• Optimise titles, descriptions and tags: It is vital to grab the attention of Google and similar search engines crawling your content. The title of your videos can be easily optimised by making sure that you include your main keywords, whilst making it catchy and interesting. Keyword research will help define the keywords which are best suited to your company or services. Don’t forget to optimise descriptions  as a video description is a brilliant way to entice people into watching your video, whilst improving your website SEO. You can include a number of vital SEO keywords, whilst making it interesting and engaging. It is also easy to add tags to most video platforms and is the perfect opportunity to add a variety of keywords related to the service or goods you are promoting.

• Create a video sitemap Most people know the importance of uploading an XML sitemap to their website – it is a vital part of website SEO. However, not many of us have heard about Video Sitemaps. These are a very important aspect of video SEO. Adding a video sitemap where you can add information about the duration of your video, a title and keyword rich descriptions allows Google and similar search engines to crawl the information on your website, as well as the information within the videos. This will tell Google exactly what the video content is on your website which will drive traffic and help Google properly index it. They can then begin to rank your website for keywords related to your video content. Once you have created a video sitemap, it is important to submit it directly to Google, via Webmaster Tools.

• Share It: Make sure your video is not only on your own website but that it is present across as many platforms as is relevant for your target audience.
  Upload to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram and see your video travel! When you upload videos to external platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, they create backlinks to your website. Having backlinks from video websites with a high Google Page Rank score, and with good SEO, can improve your own search engine optimisation. Adding links to your videos within other websites with similar content to yours can also help. YouTube is the second biggest search engine by users in the world, and it is getting bigger every day with new content creators launching channels and new viewers watching them. All of this is supported by a monetised ecosystem of ads and targeted content that could be well worth exploring for your site’s SEO in 2022. With this in mind you maybe interested in reading our Ultimate guide to YouTube SEO.

• The importance of embedding: When you embed your videos, make sure that you allow other people access to the coding. If others are able to share your videos and embed them elsewhere, then this can help your videos reach larger audiences. This can even help your videos go viral. It also helps create backlinks and valuable shares.

• Thumbnails that engage: Make sure your thumbnail is high quality and catches the eye, but is also relevant and engaging. This is important as Google shows a video thumbnail next to a search result about 26% of the time and people are more likely to click.

If you have any questions about the power of video for SEO do contact the specialist search marketing team at Varn.

About Varn

Varn is an expert specialist SEO search marketing agency. Technical SEO * GEO + AI Visibility * Data Analytics * Digital PR * Content Marketing