Using Video to Promote Your Site

Why Video?

Many marketers ignore video promotion as a method to surpass competitors in the search results. However, in website promotion video has several advantages:

  • Relatively low competition
  • Links to videos stand out sharply against the standard text links
  • Creating a video is not so difficult and expensive as it seems
  • People readily share links to good videos

Video Content

Video topics should be interesting. If the topic is broad, make a series of short videos.Below are several examples of video plots and titles.

  • Educational videos: “How to” type videos attract many users, especially in specific industries
  • Demonstration videos work well for sport, tourism, household appliances, or mobile devices
  • Tips on how to use complicated product or service
  • Product reviews
  • Specialists’ comments on news or events

Video Length

Size matters. The longer the video is, the less probable it is people will start watching it and watch it to the end. That is why it is advisable to make videos no longer than 3-5 minutes.

What’s in a Name?

Another important factor is a video title. When writing a title, try to choose two or three keywords which your video potential viewers might type and then append the “video” word to it. You can use Google Keyword Tool for this purpose. Make sure to test your video potential title — put it in quotes and search for such keyword on Google. For example, “how to choose the right tires”. Use only unique titles for your video; unique title is more important than the title stuffed with right keywords. Limit the title length to 55- 60 characters – in this case the user will be able to see it in full in the search results, which in turn will increase Click Through Rates.

Search Engine Optimization

Apart from keywords research for the search engines, you can also use special tags containing important queries. This will help search engines understand what your video is about and rank it higher than similar videos of your competitors without tags. YouTube allows publishing text subtitles to the video, and here you can freely incorporate keywords along with company name. During its ranking process Google prefers pages with large chunks of useful and unique content.

Where to Upload?
Should you upload a video to your own website or opt for popular video hosting services such as YouTube or Vimeo?

There is no definite answer to this question. However, using video hosting services has some advantages. Firstly, cost saving. If you have a lot of videos you may need very expensive hosting resources. Secondly, if you experiment with several search queries, it becomes obvious that “common” websites share is extremely small in comparison with YouTube. There is explanation for it: YouTube service belongs to Google, besides, it has what optimization specialists call “trust”. That is why even in the beginning YouTube video has some advantages. If you do decide to host your video on Youtube, Vimeo, or a similar site — make sure your web developer does not send people off-site to see the video. You should also consider that people may discover your company first by searching through the videos in Youtube. In this case you should simultaneously interact with the audience by gently offering your services and inviting them to your website.

How to attract users to your website
If the your company was originally discovered through a video hosting service, how to make the user who has watched the video to click through to your website? If possible, mention your company name at the beginning and at the end of the video. If not, show your logo. The best option is to have your site name and/or address displayed during the whole video. It is important, however, not to overload video with logos and links, as it will distract the viewer and make the video too pushy and promotional.

Some large video hosting services, such as YouTube and Vimeo, allow embedding your site link into the video description. If on top of that you have your own video channel on these websites, make sure it contains your brand name.