Globalspeak: Visibility creates results

Video is growing from a “frill” some businesses occasionally include on their websites to an essential, competitive differentiator that drives search engine optization (SEO) and increases brand identification. Whether increasing a company’s thought leadership role or retention and use of product and service offerings, video is the acknowledged king of marketing and should be a central part of any company’s online strategy. Ever since Google integrated video into its universal search offering in 2007, websites featuring video have gained a significant SEO advantage. When a company integrates relevant videos that match the content of its website, search engines find and index the video separately within the site’s context. This process improves the overall website and video search ranking for the businesses’ keywords and also allows search results to be presented with

The most search engine reliant businesses already use video. In the e-retail space, for example, 68 percent of the top 50 retailers were using videos in 2009, a surge from 18 percent in 2008 according to a recent eMarketer report. Now, almost 40 percent of users who use Google see video options in their results.  According to customer feedback, approximately 80 percent of online users view an entire video, and 25 percent click to purchase products, which drives an overall revenue lift of 10 to 15 percent.matching videos, making the results listing more appealing and subsequently increasing search-based traffic.

To gain the full potential, videos should be used across the website.  Video on all pages that are likely to be found in a search using particular keywords will create a powerful search engine results strategy.  Additionally, Website video can increase a company’s reputation for thought leadership and retention of products and services since people remember 80 percent of what they see and hear, as apposed to only 20 percent of what they read.

Three more factors drive the ability to achieve a higher SEO ranking using video: video markup, video sitemaps and syndication. When videos and the factors are implemented correctly, the increase in search-based traffic is significant and, undoubtedly, the secret weapon for businesses today!  Video is now a must-have element of any serious, viable business on the Web.