When I attend networking events and stand up to do my “sixty seconds”, I often tell people that if they don’t have video on their web sites, they should because it will significantly improve their performance on Google.  I rarely go into details because I only have those sixty seconds so this post is here to help explain the benefits.

The first thing to know is that Google is the biggest search engine in the world.  Many other search engines use Google to get their results so performing well on Google is really important if you want people to find you on the web.

There are certain things that Google take into account when ranking the search results and one is the amount of time visitors spend on your site.  Video has proven to extend that time and figures vary depending on where you look but typically, more that three times as long.

Now, Google owns YouTube which is the second largest search engine in the world.  You can get a double whammy if you host your video on YouTube and embed it into your web site, because each time someone watches the video on your web site Google will be ranking your site higher and, at the same time, YouTube will rank you higher because you’ve had more views.

So, when you want to share your videos on social media, share the link to your web site, not the YouTube link, because your website will benefit from the increased traffic and the video play count will also increase on YouTube.  If you simply share the link to YouTube you’ll lose the Google benefit. Remember that the number of links to your web site also increase your google ranking so you really want those social media links pointing to your web site.

A few points to note:

• Google loves good content and the same is true with video, if the video is boring then people won’t watch it for long and the benefit will be lost.
• If you want viewers to stay you have to grab their attention in the first few seconds.
• Place video on your home (or landing) page.  That’s the page you would normally want to boost on Google. Of course more video on other pages helps. 
• Video on it’s own is unlikely to get you on page one, your web designer must put all the other search engine optimizations in as well.  But you stand a good chance if you have the SEO and the video.
• Your viewers will judge you by the quality of your video so if it’s poor quality or just thrown together, they may expect your products or services to be the same.  So make sure that you get a professional to produce your video.  We can help there!