Does Video Content Improve SEO? 7 Reasons Why in 2023

Does Video Content Improve SEO? 7 Reasons why in 2023

If a picture is worth 1000 words, what’s the value of a video?

Are you searching for ways to improve your website's visibility on Google search results without breaking the bank on ad dollars? Considering Google processes over 99,000 searches every single second, or over 8.5 billion searches per day - it might seem like a daunting task to strive to rank as a top brand in your niche.

Don’t worry, we’re still in the early stages of brands grasping the value of building an optimized website experience. In 2023, there’s one often-overlooked opportunity that can be incorporated by any brand. In this blog, we’re going to explore how this low-hanging fruit can help your brand’s website rise through the ranks of Google’s mysterious SERP algorithm.

Buckle up, and let us show you how you could be missing massive traffic gains by not including video in your SEO marketing strategy! Here are the eight key ways video content is helping companies drive new, engaged, and organic traffic to their website.

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How does video work to improve your website's SEO?

1.) Increased dwell time:

Giving people a reason to stay on your website is crucial.

The amount of time people spend on a website is one of the variables that search engines examine when ranking websites. By adding videos to your website, you can lengthen visitors' time spent on your website, which can ultimately boost your SEO and decrease your bounce rate. In fact, people spend over twice as long on a page with video than without.

If your website has a high dwell time, this can signal to search engines that your website is providing valuable content that people are interested in, and as a result, your website may be more likely to rank higher in search results.

2.) Enhanced user experience:

Video content can play a significant role in enhancing the user experience (UX) on a website, which in turn can improve SEO.

Firstly, video content can make a website more visually appealing and engaging for users. This can increase the chances of visitors spending more time on the site, exploring different pages, and potentially taking desired actions, such as making a purchase or leaving a comment.

Incorporating video content can also increase accessibility for populations such as the vision-impaired, with content that can be heard rather than read. Conversely, including transcriptions of videos on a website can make them more accessible to a wider audience, such as those who are deaf or hard of hearing. As an added bonus, video transcripts can also make videos more scrapable by search bots, which can improve the site's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

User experience optimization is all about making users' interactions with a website or app as pleasant as possible. By including video content on a website, businesses can improve the user experience and increase the chances of visitors spending more time on the site, which can ultimately lead to improved SEO.

3.) Increased social sharing:

Video content has the potential to drive significant social shares, which can ultimately improve SEO for a website.

Videos often have the ability to elicit strong emotional responses from viewers, which can increase the likelihood of them wanting to share the content with others. This is important because Google's algorithm takes into account how often a page is shared on social media when determining its rankings on SERPs.

Videos that are informative, engaging, and well-produced can be very effective in delivering large amounts of information in a short, concise manner. In fact, a minute-long video can communicate 1.8 million words, which is around 3,600 pages of text. This can make it much more likely for users to share the video with others if they found it valuable and informative.

4.) Better search engine visibility:

Search engines love when you include high-value videos on your website.

Video content can be a powerful tool for improving your website's SEO. One of the main ways it can do this is by increasing your search engine visibility. This is because Google, as well as other search engines, places a high value on video content and is more likely to show it in search results.

According to LemonLight, "video benefits SEO both directly and indirectly—the video alone likely influences your ranking, and it influences other factors that go into Google’s selection system." This means that not only is the video content itself likely to be prioritized in search results, but it can also positively impact other elements of your website that are taken into account by search engines.

Also, remember that YouTube is owned by Google. We can assume that Google is more likely to provide search engine results pages that point back to its own video hosting platform. Consider posting the video to YouTube first, then embedding the link into your website for increased visibility.

5.) Greater keyword visibility:

Videos are a great way to rank for keywords.

Video content can greatly improve SEO in many ways, one of which is through greater keyword visibility. Keywords are the words and phrases that users enter into search engines to find what they are looking for. By optimizing your video content with relevant keywords, you increase the chances of your video appearing in search engine results pages.

There are a number of ways to attach keywords to video content hosted on your website. Including keywords in the title and description of your video can make it more likely to show up in search results when users enter those keywords. Additionally, including keywords in the video's file name and any captions or subtitles can also help search engines understand the content of the video and increase the likelihood of recommending your video to target users.

6.) Improved mobile performance:

Don’t forget about the phone user!

Mobile users are on the go and not as likely as someone using a desktop computer to take the time to read a lengthy website page of content. A site visitor on their phone is more likely to want to remain on your page if there is a consumable video option available.

Having this option for mobile users will impact metrics such as your dwell time, increased social sharing, and user experience - all key components to increased SEO.

7.) More potential for backlinks:

Boost your online authority by incorporating video content on your website.

Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors in Google’s algorithms. Backlinks are external links that point to a specific web page. They are important for SEO as they help search engines determine the value of a page and how to rank it in search results. Backlinks also serve as an endorsement or vote of confidence in a website, which can increase trust and drive more traffic to the website.

As demonstrated in the previous points, incorporating video content on your website is a crucial factor for ranking higher on search engines. Since video content can improve the overall quality of a page, and increase the number of eyes that visit your content - the likelihood that your website is backlinked as a byproduct of your increased rank goes up.

In fact, since people spend over twice as long on a page that has video, over one that doesn’t, you’re drastically more likely to receive backlinks to that page.

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