Optimize video content to boost your SEO performance.

Improve SEO with 3 Changes to Your Video Content

Your video content is rock solid, it’s uploaded to your website, and you’re ready to make some money, baby.

Until you notice your page rankings are plummeting.

But wait – aren’t videos supposed to improve SEO?

The answer is yes, and they will, provided you make a few adjustments on your end.

Monitor Length of Video Content

Research shows 2 minutes is the sweet spot when it comes to video. Explainer videos, like the ones you see on home pages, or videos you put on landing pages, are perfect examples.

Ultimately, your goal is to keep viewers on the page for longer, which reduces your bounce rate and helps improve SEO page rankings. When your page ranks higher, it’s more likely you will drive traffic to your site. The more traffic to your site, the more conversions you’re likely to see. Get where I’m headed?

Turn Off the Autoplay

The longer it takes for your web page to load, the more likely it is for the viewer to abandon the page. Forty percent of users will leave if the page doesn’t load within 3 seconds – eek!

That means if you have video content on your page, you want to do everything you can to ensure it doesn’t slow down your page load speed.

One way to do this is to avoid using autoplay, where the video starts playing automatically.

The trouble with autoplay is 1) it takes longer for the page to load, potentially increasing the bounce rate and 2) it could turn off viewers who want to choose whether or not they view the video, also increasing the risk of bounce rate.

If you’re using the autoplay feature on your website, then turn it off. It’s not worth the possibility of losing visitors.

Host Content On Your Website

When you upload your content on a video hosting site, like YouTube or Vimeo, instead of hosting it on your own server, you sacrifice all of the link building potential that can help you improve SEO.

Even if you host the video on YouTube and embed it on your website, you’re giving search engines the option of ranking the YouTube link over your own.

If you want better SEO results, then you want credit for the link. Hosting your own video content does take additional resources, but it can really make a difference.

Conclusion

Video is one of the best types of content you can put on your website. In order for it to align with your SEO goals, make sure it’s meeting the expectations of viewers and search engines.

Get Help With Video

You can have killer video and SEO – we’ll show you how. Give us a call at (415) 992-7711 or reach out to us online.