The use of videos has become one of the most important aspects of SEO and even 85% of marketers use video as a tool to boost SEO. Nowadays, people think that text content is no longer essential in the picture. According to them, videos will replace text content shortly. Most people spend the maximum of their time on TikTok and YouTube videos. They hardly read articles or blog posts today. Video titles, thumbnails, video descriptions, and so on have become the defining factors of sharing, and most people do not even click or read the content as much.
The primary factor responsible for this change is Social media. Social media has weakened our concentration and attention span to a great extent. It has pushed people to accept new content constantly. Sometimes, there is no need or benefit for fresh new content. However, people have always been forced to accept so.
There is no element of doubt that videos are necessary, but they are not easy to make.
Certainly, anyone can pay some amount on platforms like Fiverr to avail of an animated explainer or get a webcam record. However, not a lot of people watch those. There are countless good videos out there, so simply producing a video will get you nowhere. Lately, a lot of good online video editors have emerged which help you to edit a video online without putting a dent in your wallet.
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Videos and SEO aspects
Does video directly impact the SEO ranking? Well, not really.
Videos have no direct link to the improvement of SEO of a web page. However, they do contribute to it indirectly. For instance, they help us in two ways: video search engine results and video SEO. If we consider search engines such as Google, they do not mention video being an important SEO factor in the algorithm. Web pages that contain videos do not receive an extra boost over other pages. There are pages on Google about video SEO. Like, we can see videos more often in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages).
Other SEO benefits from video
Although a video does not directly benefit SEO, it has many secondary benefits which boost SEO in several ways. There are plenty of active methods by which a video’s presence and optimization can increase the site’s visibility.
Video metadata
This helps in indexing your video, which helps viewers find it easily. Simply put, if it is present in your blog, it works as a bonus addition that leads to better search results, even if by a small margin. This is because even a small margin can make a huge difference. When someone decides to embed a third person’s video for better reviews and responses, then that third person receives attribution on the search result.
Video thumbnails
Video thumbnails play a significant role in attracting viewers’ attention. We recommend you choose a custom thumbnail picture that contains proper data to attract viewers’ attention.
Video results box
There are queries where a video will be the best relevant result. In such cases, a box with three to five video results is present at the top and an option with browsing only video results. The box will contain sites that host videos and the sites that embed the videos. In most cases, the original hosting websites are in the top results with other prominent websites.
Youtube Traffic
If a quality video garners good traffic on youtube, it might help re-direct some part of it to your website. Thus, although it might not add directly to your SEO ranking, it can still improve your site visits.
Dwell Time
Although Google ignores dwell time, we do not believe the same. Google claims it cannot perfectly measure single-page visits. But we tend to think Google has access to the data of Edge and Firebox as Chromium supports them. So there might be some information under Google’s capacity.
Indirect benefits
There are other factors too that can matter. For example, embedded videos may give content or blog more shares. This will bring more audience to the content.
This concludes our list of some of the most important benefits of videos. Although they are not direct ways to improve SEO, it is a collection of many secondary benefits that becomes a part of primary factors.
How can potential videos create problems with SEO?
Just as videos can indirectly boost SEO, low-quality videos and certain wrong strategies can have the opposite effect.
Videos can decrease the site’s speed and loading time
The most necessary modern benchmark in SEO is site speed and page loading time. Getting a site loaded quickly is very important to garner more audiences. However, when there is a video embedded in the site, it may get challenging. This is why measures must be taken to reduce loading time: a proper image screenshot must be adequately compressed and loaded as a placeholder. This will avoid many issues and cover up the speed rankings.
The blog does not have quality content surrounding the video
It is fine if the blog’s main page has 90% video and viewers are aware of that fact. However, it will be a huge letdown if the users are not aware and there actually to read the content. If a page has less number of words and a video, it may look like thin content depending on how Google counts the video.
Auto-play videos can reduce dwell time and increase bounce rate
90% of the population does not like auto-play, but it is still widely used. Although Google does not obstruct this, many viewers might penalize it if possible. It is a known factor that most people who read blogs or articles will exit a page if it has an auto-play video. This becomes more unbearable when the sound is on and forces the bounce rate to be high. Therefore, it kills the dwell time and makes the blog or article a lot less attractive to users.
Videos may bring accessibility problems
There are various accessibility issues with videos. Sometimes, visually impaired people face problems with videos with a lot of visual changes. Loud audio in the videos can also result in a huge letdown in the content quality.
Some viewers cannot or do not want to watch videos
There are certain situations where watching a video might not be feasible. For instance, if someone is on their way to work and does not have a headphone. In such a situation, they can watch it, but most prefer not to. Moreover, it becomes more problematic if they are in a public space surrounded by people. One might not have that much duration in hand to sit back and watch the video.
Video consumes more time than text. We can read a text quickly and understand its context. However, for a video, we need to watch it till the end to understand it completely. Searching a keyword in a text, the table of contents, or the subheadings is easy. Whereas in a video, you need to search for the exact spot where the required content is present.
Should we invest in videos?
The question, in the end, is whether investing in videos for content marketing is worth it or not. The answer is a definite yes if you invest sufficient time and energy to make high-quality videos. It all relies on the value we receive from the video, how the audience accepts and the investment and sacrifices we make to produce the video.
Low-quality video might be less effort, but it will not bring in an SEO boost but rather lag the blog website. Therefore to incorporate videos into articles or blogs, one must adequately review the video quality and content before publishing.
