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If you look at all the statistics and facts surrounding online video, then you are sure to be instantly convinced that your business needs one. You know the kinds of facts I’m talking about; the ones that tell you how video accounts for a gazillion percent of all web traffic and how billions of videos are being watched on video sharing sites like YouTube every single day. There is no doubt that web video’s are huge and there is also no doubt that when used properly, they can hugely benefit your website.
However, video production is an expensive and time-consuming process, even if you don’t opt for a professional production, so you need to be sure that its actually going to be worth it, don’t you? Luckily for you, we’ve rounded up 5 of the ways that online video can drastically help your website in the real world.
#1 – Landing Page Optimisation
Chances are that if you’re making money from your website, you’re going to have a landing page of some sort. Sure, you might not refer to it as a landing page most of the time but if it’s converting visitors into paying customers, then you’ve got a landing page.
Usually when a new visitor lands on your website, whether it be from Google, Bing, Facebook, a business directory or any other site, they likely want to find out more about your company and what you offer. Traditionally, this will involve the visitor reading through whatever boring content you’ve decided to write on your site. The trouble is that a lot of the time, visitors will get bored, and even if they don’t get bored, it’s likely that your text about how great your customer service is and how well you treat your customers is nothing they haven’t heard before and thus, is seen as nothing but “sales spiel”.
Now, replace that text with a well-produced online video saying pretty much the same thing, and chances are that your visitors will stick around for a while longer and also, be more likely to buy what you’re offering. Why? Because visitors are lazy and they’d much rather be entertained by a video than sit reading some boring text. Plus, your video creates a more personal introduction to your business. You can also include things like personal messages, customer testimonials, calls-to-action and much more. This is far more powerful than just plain text.
Check out the landing page for Animoto to see how video can have a hugely positive impact on landing pages.
#2 – Attract Visitors
These days, there are tonnes of websites that allow you to share videos. The most obvious one is of course YouTube, but there’s tonnes of others too including Vimeo, DailyMotion and even social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In fact, more and more websites are allowing you to add video because more and more websites are realising just how popular videos are. A lot of business directories also allow you to add videos to your listings, allowing you to stand out from the crowd.
Adding your video to these kinds of websites exposes your company to a larger audience than ever and yep, you guessed it, attracts more visitors to your website. And why do you want more visitors to your website? Because on your website, you’ve got a beautiful landing page set up with another engaging video explaining your business!
It should be noted that your video needs to be engaging and of good quality to attract visitors. It also needs to be uploaded to places where people are actually going to look. It helps to use keywords in your video title and description to help people to find it.
NOTE: If you find you are struggling to create a quality video for your website, there are plenty of high-quality web video production companies out there that can produce exceptional quality videos at pretty reasonable costs (companies such as UK based video production company; ShortyMedia, who regularly produce exceptional work as you can see from their website).
#3 – Helps With SEO
“Video is good for SEO” is a phrase that is plastered all over the internet these days and while it is true in some respects, the people that say this often don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. So, let’s clear it up…
Just because you’ve shoved any old crappy video on your website doesn’t mean that Google (or any other search engine for that matter) is going to reward you with higher rankings. Now, it’s true that Google does “like video” but this is for a number of legitimate reasons.
If you have a video on your website, chances are that your visitors are going to be more engaged. And what do engaged visitors do? They share your website on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and some of them even give you a nice, juicy link to your site from their blog (if you’re lucky).
Video also brings in more visitors to your site if used correctly and the most visitors you have, the more hype your business is going to receive and the more links it is going to get.
So, video is good for SEO, but it is not as simple as “video is good for SEO”.
Conclusion
Some of you might have spotted it already, but the three points I’ve listed in this post are actually all intertwined. As more visitors are attracted to your website thanks to your brilliant video, more people will link to your website. As more people link to your website, your search engine ranking will increase and more visitors will flock to your website and see your video. This goes round in a circle while all the time, leading to sales/downloads or whatever the desired outcome of your site is.
It should be noted that video is only going to have such a powerful impact on your website if your video is of an extremely high quality and more importantly, stands out from the crowd. There are so many videos uploaded to the internet every day that if your video isn’t truly exceptional, it is going to get drowned out in a sea of similar videos.
For a lot of companies, a perfectly good video production can be produced in-house with just a little bit of creativity and effort. However, if you find that you are struggling, there are plenty of video production companies out there that can produce quality videos at extremely affordable prices.
