Contrary to popular belief, content remains supreme as far as digital commerce strategies are concerned. But like many things in this world, it too evolves.
These days, content seems to be more engaging and thus more likely to convert readers to customers when visually appealing. One study even suggests that a landing page with a video, for instance, could help a company land new deals by as much as 80%.
Visuals are endearing to the public for a variety of reasons. The Social Science Research Network previously revealed that about 65% of the population are visual learners. They understand something more effectively when texts come with pictures or videos.
Second, the brain is more efficient in processing images than texts. It can work on over 60,000 photos, according to studies. Third, more people are using mobile devices with incredible processing speeds and excellent graphics. In other words, pictures and videos appear so much better-and hence appeal-to a growing number of mobile users and shoppers.
Taking advantage of SEO web services further maximizes the power of videos in marketing. Specialists can now use them to boost traffic and help strategic pages land in the top search results.
But there's a bone of contention here: should someone embed these videos, say, from sites such as YouTube? Or should they produce their own and host them in their preferred servers? Fortunately, Google has a straightforward answer.
Either Works, Google Says
While videos are now an essential tool in content marketing, marketers and digital entrepreneurs seem divided on where to get them. Some say they may be better off with videos from well-known platforms such as YouTube (also owned by Google). Not only is it more cost-effective, but it also spares marketers the time-consuming process of creating a video from scratch.However, others say that it's not the best idea since these videos can compete with the landing pages in the search results. As an example, let's pretend that you have a blog post with "affordable houses in Atlanta, Georgia" as the primary keyword. The pundits for more personalized videos claimed that the video you embed on this blog post could appear first instead of the article you wrote. It could then drive traffic away from your site, defeating the purpose of the video.
Instead, one can create videos and then use content delivery networks (CDNs). These are a congregation of servers located in different parts of the world whose job is to hasten the delivery of files that belong to a particular content like a blog. Thus, videos and images load more quickly in this manner.
But in a recent discussion, the senior webmaster analyst of Google John Mueller shared that it doesn't really matter where and how the videos end up on the content page of a website. After all, they have the same SEO value whether they have been embedded from YouTube or any of the servers chosen by the content creators.
The primary reason goes back to the core of Google's search results: in the end, it's all about the value of the content.
This could also explain why a YouTube video's landing page could end up at a higher place than the content page where you embed it. As Mueller said, it may happen if Google's algorithms believe that the video itself contains more information than the content you've made.
How Long Form Helps
The bottom line is when it comes to better SEO, it's no longer a question of whether you should have something visual in your content like a video. What you need to focus on is how to use it to enhance your content while increasing your chances of appearing on the first page of your chosen keyword's search results.One of the best strategies is writing in long form. As its name suggests, long-form content is a page that contains over 700 words. It can go as long as 3,000 to 5,000 words. Believe it or not, this tactic produces high conversion rates. It could be because:
- Long form helps you add more value to your content. You can explain topics, and their subtopics, more effectively.
- You can include more primary and secondary keywords. You can even have related keywords, and all these can make your article more search-friendly.
- Long form gives you the chance to build your credibility. Some excellent types of long-form content are white papers, such as research, surveys, and case studies.
- You can add other media files besides videos.
Muelle's statement only repeats what Google has been saying: give something valuable, and you'll likely get the placement you want in the search results. From an SEO standpoint, this works regardless of where the video comes from
