4 Ways Videos Improve Search Rankings and Traffic

Over the last few weeks, we’ve discussed several ways to use videos to advance your mission including live streaming, a welcome video, and video testimonials.

One underrated way videos can help your organization is to improve its position in search engines.

Yes, that’s right – videos are great for SEO! (Search engine optimization)

4 Ways Videos Help SEO

1) YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet.  Most people overlook YouTube in their SEO because they’re solely thinking about how to get their website into the search results.  But people do more searches on YouTube than Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine other than Google.  Therefore…

• A) If your organization doesn’t have a YouTube channel yet, create one
• B) Anytime you create a video, upload it to your YouTube channel. (And be sure to include relevant keywords in the title, description, and tags of the YouTube video)

2) Google shows videos in the search results. This means if you create a video and then include it on a web page (or blog article), both your video and your web page have the opportunity to be shown in the search results.  Google doesn’t show videos in the results of every search, so it’s helpful to create videos that target keywords for which Google does include videos.  (Hint, videos are a big part of “How to” search results.” 

3) Video improves the quality of web pages. Google is going to great efforts to try to put the best content at the top of its search results.  Generally speaking, a page (or blog article) that includes not only text but also images and video is going to connect with more people emotionally and help more people. Therefore, Google is going to want to put that page higher in the search results than a similar page with no video.

4) Video increases time on site. Google uses “time on site” as a factor in its search ranking algorithm.  If a person searches for something, clicks to a site in the search results, and then 10 seconds later comes back to the search results and clicks to another site, this tells Google the first site didn’t meet their needs, and Google could move that site lower in the search results.  But, if a person clicks to a web page and they watch a 2 minute video before returning to the search results, or they don’t return to the search results at all because the video met their needs, Google may move that page up in the search results.

My advice when it comes to using videos for SEO is to start simple and go from there…

Start with your existing videos. This is the “low hanging fruit.”  Do you have videos you could upload to YouTube?  Do you have videos you could add to pages of your website to enhance them?  Could you take a 30-60 second clip from a longer video (e.g. Sunday sermon) and publish it in a blog article to highlight that point?

Consider creating new videos.  What new videos could you create that would resonate with your audience or enhance visitors’ experience on our website?  A welcome video and video testimonials should be at the top of this list. Another idea… adding a short selfie-video to announcements.

Bottom line…

Anyone can start using videos to improve their search rankings and increase website visitors.

If you’re tired of trying to learn and do SEO on your own, let’s talk about how we can come along side you to help with your church SEO or SEO for your Christian business or ministry. Fill out the consultation request form below to schedule a call.

Comment and Discuss

• What video SEO are you doing?
• What questions or comments do you have about video SEO?

Read more articles on how to use video to advance your mission.