How Video Helps SEO

We believe in the power of video content – after all it is literally half of why we call ourselves Juxt.  It’s not just us though, everyone in our industry (who isn’t living under a rock) will tell you that video content is a huge part in optimizing your website for SEO. The question is, why?

The answer is a lot simpler than you would think…..ok maybe not, but the basics are pretty easy to grasp.

Think back to the last time you were looking for something online, what did you do? Chances are you Googled it – I mean, yeah it’s possible that you Bing’d it but maybe don’t admit that to anyone.

Anywho, what’s true for you is true for pretty much everyone else. In fact as of this writing, nearly 93% of internet traffic comes through search engines. That’s a mind boggling stat. It’s also super important; understanding this is paramount to the success of your business. It’s just simple logic, really. If 93% of online traffic starts with a search engine, then it stands to reason that an enormous amount of traffic to your site starts with a search engine – if you take SEO seriously. If not, well then that’s an enormous amount of traffic that is going to your competitor.

Ok so we’ve established the importance of SEO, now we need to figure out how to take advantage of it.

Again, let’s start with just some simple logic. People search for things because they need to know something:

Ok maybe not that last one. But chances are you found this article because you typed something like “What the Hell is SEO” into a search bar. Put simply, the best way to take advantage of SEO is to give the people what they want. That means you’ve got to understand your target audience. Then you need to get in their heads and determine what it is that they want to know. Then, you give them the answer. 

And this is becoming more and more important. Traditionally, search engines worked by pairing keywords from a search with keywords on a webpage. The trick there was  guessing what words people would use in their searches and then using those keywords on your website. Now, though it’s becoming more and more important to understand the “searcher’s intent.” In 2019 Google released their new BERT algorithm, and without boring you with a bunch of tech babble the whole point of the algorithm is to help the computer better understand a person’s intent when they search for something. This means that we’ve got new tricks to learn: We can’t rely on matching keywords anymore. We’ve got to match our content with our audience’s intentions.

We’d be remiss to not mention that a huge reason for this is because of the enormous amount of growth in voice searches, and that voice searches make search engines using keyword matching look like a blind dog trying to do a crossword – but that’s a story for a different day.

So how do we match our content with their intent?

Before we get started, we’d like to point out that video is not the only way to optimize your site for search. In fact, a robust SEO strategy requires a whole lot more than just video. BUT when video content is a part of a well designed and implemented SEO strategy, it really does throw your performance into overdrive. 

Videos appear in over 6% of all Google search results, and that number is growing by the day. This means that having a video on your site’s landing page can increase your chance of showing up on that coveted first page by more than 50%. Why? Well, because people would rather watch something than read something. Again, don’t take our word for it. According to our friends at Wistia, video content can dramatically increase the amount of time people spend on your page – 2.6x more time to be exact. 

This isn’t automatic, though. Like we discussed earlier, the video content we produce has to provide the information that our audiences are looking for. We’ve then got to ensure that we communicate that to the search engines by categorizing the video’s metadata correctly (Give the video a good title, write a good description, and tag the right content categories just to name a few).

So how do you create quality video content that boosts your SEO and converts site visitors into customers? Well please allow me to reintroduce ourselves. 

Recently, we completed a project with one of our clients, Atlanta Tech Village. The goal was to increase their lead generation for their event spaces. ATV is the 4th largest tech coworking space in the nation and they have been providing startups and entrepreneurs with a collaborative work environment for years now. One thing they were not as well known for, however, was their beautiful event spaces that are perfect for a variety of events. 

Thus our challenge, help a client generate quality leads to sell something that they were not well known for.  Our weapon of choice? You guessed it: video.

ATV had tried to do some SEO and lead generation in the past, and in their own words, it had not gone well. Among a couple other things we found during the discovery period, we knew that this was because they weren’t leveraging video content. So, we pitched them on recording a few videos showcasing each of the spaces and – most importantly – answering all the questions that we knew someone searching for a space would have about hosting their event there. On a stylistic side-note, we knew that ATV’s event coordinators Kaitlyn and Hilton were a huge part of why people who had held events there kept coming back: They are fun humans and great to work with and we wanted that to be obvious from the get go.

So, after doing all our pre production homework, we had one big content production day where we recorded all the raw materials we would need to create the videos, the landing page, and the ads we would use to target our audience.

The result? An ongoing ad campaign that is driving an average of one quality lead per day – every day. The ATV team is thrilled with the results and after a few months of tweaking the ads to drive more of their ideal client, we have zeroed in on driving highly qualified leads with a predictable cadence.

In addition to driving these qualified leads their way, another huge win has been dropping their average cost per click  from $3.28 to $1.20. This took a lot of maintenance and upkeep of the ads, but it has paid off: 

They not only get more impressions and clicks now from more highly targeted prospects, but they spend less than half of what they were before.