Video is now everywhere and is at the core of the most successful digital marketing trends today. Learn how to use these videos for link building.
YouTube dominates other apps as a video player and streaming platform, but other trending apps include Vimeo, Vivo, Daily Motion, and Twitch.
Videos are more compelling than traditional content. They increase engagements and conversions and can be embedded in websites, email newsletters, blogs, and social media platforms.
Due to the pandemic, webinars and live streams are also the norms and distance learning and remote working. People share videos from all possible platforms, so digital marketing teams need to add videos to boost SEO ranking.
It is why your business needs to use video marketing to stay competitive and even ahead in digital marketing.
Recently, Cisco notes that live Internet video will account for 17% of Internet video traffic by 2022. In 2022, the live video would have grown up to 15 times more, and Consumer Video-on-Demand (VoD) traffic will nearly double.
Globally, IP video traffic will increase to 82% of all business and consumer IP traffic. It is a four-fold growth from 2017 to 2022. Video isn’t going away.
Benefits of Video Content to SEO
Google search bots that crawl your site look for distinct and several indicators used to rank page quality, keyword instances, and relevance.
Whenever you add multimedia to your content, you immediately add value in these three areas to your content and boost its metrics. Videos also decrease bounce rates and increase dwell time, which is considered a good indicator of page quality.
Something as simple as a video thumbnail makes websites stand out even more in SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
For instance, Zappos released 50,000 videos of numerous product descriptions in one year. This move doubled their linking root domains and increased their domain authority. There is power in video content.
So, what are the different strategies you can use when using videos for link building?
8 Ways to Optimize Video Content for Link Building
#1 Research What Content is Relevant
In using video content, you need to make sure that you still follow the basic principle of producing content, creating content that people need.
Research the recent trends in video content, so you see what people are searching for, enjoying, and engaging with. The videos that will get the most shares and views still answer a problem, a query, or feel a need your audience has.
For instance, TikTok dominates in social media right now during the pandemic. Social distancing measures confined people in their homes. The need for an outlet to create content and view content also increased.
TikTok touched a degeneration under the duress of a global pandemic through light-hearted, short-form content. It became so popular that now, you can increase brand positioning through TikTok.
Ahrefs’s Content Explorer and BuzzSumo are useful tools to determine what video trends to watch out for. Again, your goal is not just the number of views but the level of engagement and the conversation rate of every video content.
A few videos published consistently, high-quality, and leading to sales and subscriptions are better than one video that goes viral quickly. The latter can get eyes on your content, but the proof of the pudding is in the ROI, which comes from conversions.
#2 Focus on Your Target Market
You are optimizing your campaigns by carefully and strategically targeting your audience or niche. You cannot please everyone or appeal to everyone, but you can research and discover which demographic you appeal to the most.
Even if it is a small niche, this does not stop your campaign from being successful, and your content to have a residual effect on your conversions and revenue.
Marketing content is only as valuable as the amount of its exposure, attention, and the links it can build. So, it is best to brainstorm a list of the people and publications who might need or be interested in your video.
Get your team and identify your potential targets. You also need to study your audience’s understanding and what appeals to them, and critical influencers that might benefit from your outreach campaign.
#3 Be Original
Investing in SEO is worth all the time, effort, and resources. Including a creative team in this investment that can help you produce original content for your brand is a great move.
Originality is the primary concern in using videos to build links and make your videos stand out.
Instead of just reporting other’s content, you will be able to produce videos that not only best represents your brand but highlight information in line with your current campaign.
For example, if you promote or advocate a recent trend or promote an ad campaign, you can create videos to boost all that.
#4 Create Mobile-Friendly and Shareable Content for Link Building
Make sure your videos are also accessible on mobile. There are more mobile users than desktop users or other devices.
5.19 billion people are mobile phone users. That is out of a 7.75 billion population. If you have almost 70% of the world’s population on mobile devices, that means all content you are publishing must be accessible on mobile phones first or the most.
If your content is mobile-friendly, your videos have more chances of becoming viral. Although good SEO is not just about being viral, viral content can spark awareness for your brand, where you eventually get loyal subscribers and even customers.
You raise your videos’ power when they are mobile-friendly and shareable through the most popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google directly or via a share widget or button on any page.
#5 Properly Tag and Title Your Videos
Your video content’s title, meta description, and also its file name matters a lot. Create strong and catchy titles that naturally or seamlessly include your main keywords. If you word these tags strategically, they can serve as free advertisement for your website.
For instance, a compelling meta description can contain your keyword while giving a clear glimpse to your audience what your content is about. Since bots cannot watch your video, tags such as the title, alt text, and meta description should provide an ample description of what audiences will get from your content.
Search bots will gauge properly how relevant you are to your target market’s most pressing search intent. You can also utilize features such as subtitles or captions to include keywords in your video content.
It is why it is better to create your original content so you can mindfully and strategically hit SEO factors from the pre-production to post-production of your video content.
YouTube has its keyword research tool you can use when hosting your videos. Its factors are close to Google’s search algorithm. Remember that the words you use on your title, tags, and meta description appear in bold letters when your content appears on SERP.
#6 Make a Video Sitemap
The content you create must be discoverable. Google must be able to crawl and index all your content. Creating a video sitemap is necessary for this to happen.
Like the sitemap of regular content, video sitemaps must point to the video’s URL, along with other properties like duration, ratings, reviews, classification, and the like.
Check Google’s Video Sitemap Guide or review your WordPress plugin to guide you in making a good video sitemap.
#7 Make Your Video Embeddable
Your videos need to be embeddable. Paddy Moogan’s guide helps you still get links from that proprietary embed code. This embed code is available to users and links back to your original video page.
You can place this code into an iframe, so it is easy to find and copy. Please make sure these embed codes work on multi-platforms before releasing it, so your video content will not appear like spam or broken to users and search bots.
#8 Enable Comments on Your Video Content for Link Building
Comments are a form of UGC or User-Generated Content. Since audiences trust UGC more than content released by brands themselves, this is a great way to build up keywords on a page. Video is a very useful conversation-starter.
Videos keep visitors returning to your domain, especially if somebody is responding or reacting to their comments.
If the system you set up notifies users via email when their comment has been replied to, you can optimize generating a buzz around your video content. Comment Reply Notification is easy to set up in a WordPress CMS platform.
Real user engagement on a website brings adhesion and authority to the page in much the same way as YouTube star ratings and feedback help keep a video famous, even if a user does not engage in the discussion.
Conclusion: Keep Your Back Link Edge With Video Content
Businesses using video are ahead of the curve. Using video for link building is a great way to add more visual interest to your content and add more pieces of content to your marketing toolkit.
There is fierce competition in this new normal economy, and using videos helps build brand awareness and get eyes on your content. If you are not prioritizing videos yet, you need to adapt quickly. It would be best if you started including them in your campaign now.
Optimize digital tools like producing video content like a pro, leveraging software to increase profit, or using digital marketing strategies to retain and continually build a strong network of links amid trying times.
