6 Ways You Can Use Video Content to Boost Your SEO

If you want your website to rank well on relevant search engine results pages, you’ll need a strong search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. This will usually involve conducting keyword research, creating content marketing, building backlinks, and more. But one element businesses may forget to include in their SEO strategy is video content. This can be a huge mistake, as creating high-quality video content to boost SEO can be a proven way to help your brand stand out.

In this guide, we’re going to take a look at how you can use video content to boost your SEO rankings so you can help more of your ideal customers find you. 

Use videos as link building tools

Every SEO strategy requires an element of link building. When other authoritative and relevant websites link back to your page, Google and other search engines will take this as a vote of confidence and give your rankings a boost.

Creating high-quality engaging videos relevant to your industry might get you noticed by publications and businesses. They might wish to share these videos with their own readers. If they do, they will credit you with a link, giving your SEO a boost.

But you don’t just have to make videos and hope that people will share them. When you publish a new informative video, reach out to websites and businesses within your niche to let them know. Tell them you’re happy for them to incorporate these videos into their own content, as long as it is credited through a link back to your website.

Using video content to boost SEO is not only valuable for optimization, but it is also a great way to build relationships, links, and awareness of your brand. 

Create videos showing your authority and expertise

One of the reasons video marketing is such a powerful tool is that it allows you to easily show your target customers what you’re capable of, making it very clear you’re an expert in your field.

And it’s not just your customers that will be interested in this. Search engines like Google aim to point their users in the direction of authoritative and trustworthy sources of information. So, if you can show that your website falls into this category, they’ll be far more likely to send potential customers your way.

This means you should focus on creating videos about the topics you specialize in. That way you can build trust with both search engines and internet users. There are a lot of websites already doing a great job of this, so let’s take a look at a few that are already using video content to boost SEO for inspiration.

Celler Legal is an employment law firm that helps clients handle work-related disputes. On their website’s homepage, they highlight a welcome video that clearly outlines their expertise.

The video explains the types of cases they handle. It also introduces some of the attorneys who work at the firm and explains exactly what they can do for someone who is having a legal disagreement with their employers. Once someone watches the video, they’ll have no doubt about the company’s expertise. The trustworthiness the video establishes will appeal to search engines just as much as the people watching. 

Neil Patel is a professional who creates video content to boost SEO. His videos focus on showing his knowledge and positioning him as an expert in his field. In his guide to getting started with SEO, he has a section all about guest blogging, and he’s inserted a video he’s made on the topic.

From his video, you can tell he really understands the subject he’s talking about, and he’s been able to go into a lot of depth while still keeping his content engaging. This is arguably a lot easier to do with video, compared to a lengthy written article.

Include popular keywords in your titles and descriptions

In order to use video content to boost SEO you should come up with video ideas based on keyword research. Keywords are the phrases your ideal customers will typically type into Google when they’re looking for information relating to your industry or niche.

Research target keywords to come up with video ideas, and try to get them in your video titles and descriptions. This will help to ensure your video SEO is optimized and the videos will rank for the most relevant queries, helping the right people to find your content.

There are a variety of free and paid-for tools that can help you find the keywords you should be targeting. Recommended ones include Google Keyword Planner and Answer The Public. 

If you would like to learn more about getting this right, make sure you check out Loganix’s guide to keyword metrics, which outlines everything you’ll need to consider when carrying out your research. 

Create videos that answer FAQs

In addition to planning video content around keyword research, pay attention to what kinds of questions your customers are asking when they get in touch. If the same queries keep coming up, it’s likely a lot of other people will want to know the answers, too.

Let’s take a look at some businesses that are already creating high-quality video content to boost SEO by answering commonly asked questions relevant to their businesses.

BeacoStac is a company that specializes in helping other businesses to create QR codes that they can use in their marketing materials. On their QR code generator page, they have a video called “How to make a QR code for free”.

This is likely to be a common question from BeaconStac’s target audience, attracting a lot of relevant visitors to their website. The video is short, easily searchable, straightforward, and gives the viewer a bit of background on QR codes. 

Looka is another business that gets their FAQ videos right. The company focuses on helping small business owners to create their branding. They probably get a lot of questions about designing a business logo. They’ve leaned into this on their logo maker page by adding a video tutorial that explains how to create a logo in under five minutes.

Lastly, Airbnb helps to inform their prospective clients and put their minds at ease with video content. They have a video called “What is Airbnb?”, which covers all the basics about how the company works and what they offer those who choose to work with them.

The video is just over a minute long, but it packs in a lot of information and answers FAQs people might have when they’re thinking about using the company’s services. Not only is this great for SEO and building trust, but it’s also likely to save the company’s customer service team a lot of time, as they won’t get as many messages or calls with the same questions.

Provide a transcription 

After you create your video, it’s helpful to both you and your customers to provide a transcription. This makes the video content more accessible, and will also give search engines more keywords so they can better understand your content and rank it for even more relevant searches. Whenever you write a video script, it’s a good idea to incorporate your target keywords naturally. 

Take Moz’s Whiteboard Friday series  for example. This company specializes in SEO, and puts out a video tutorial each week covering a particular topic that is relevant to their readership.

What we’re most interested in, though, is the fact that these videos always come with a full-length transcript. This gives Google and other search engines a lot of context about what the video explores and will enable them to rank this content accordingly. 

Repurpose written content into videos

Google recently confirmed that you won’t be penalized for duplicate content if you turn your written guides into videos that provide the exact same information.

If you save time by repurposing your existing guides, you won’t have to worry about it having a negative impact on your search engine rankings. In fact, it could help to boost them, as Google is very aware that different segments of your audience will want to consume content in different ways.

So, if you’re stuck for video ideas because you’ve already covered everything on your blog or with your knowledge hub, consider repurposing those articles. Promo.com has a great guide to turning your written content into winning videos, which will walk you through the process. 

Summary

Video marketing is the future, and it’s definitely worth including video content to boost SEO in your strategy.

By creating videos inspired by keyword research, using your videos as link-building tools, answering FAQs that you receive from your customers, and providing transcriptions with each video you publish, you should be able to climb the SERPs and reach a wider audience.  

Ready to get started? Take a look at Promo.com’s video maker and editor, which will help you to make high-quality and engaging content to attract your ideal customers.