Is Video An Effective SEO Technique?

Every website owner is well aware of the importance of SEO or search engine optimization.  The search for the secret formula that will enable you to draw traffic to your website has been a competitive free for all for quite some time.   Just when SEO experts thought they were getting a handle on content for websites that would send the crawlers reeling along came web video.  It became clear that no longer would a site be complete with the written word alone.  Web video was the new frontier.  Of course the power of the written word reigns supreme but the value and effectiveness of sound web video SEO technique should not be underestimated.

Although web video is comparably new to the scene the loyalty to it has become immense.  The success of video sharing sites like YouTube has been phenomenal.  YouTube received over 90 million visitors in March 2009 and is easily the most popular video sharing site online.  People are fascinated with videos.  They enjoy creating them and they will stop to watch them.  The 25 to 35 year old age group has proved to be very attracted to web videos.  They just happen to be the age group with an established conversion rate on the Internet as well.  The opportunity to reach them with web videos makes this method an effective SEO technique.

Of course like all SEO methods it must be utilized wisely.  Proper placement and content of videos must be precise.  Recent studies have shown that almost 40% of users find their videos through the search engines.  The major search engines like Google and Yahoo have enhanced their ability to include videos into their search engine process.

Web videos can be SEO friendly on your website or through Video sharing sites like YouTube.  Through video sharing you get your message and your link out there to draw people to your website.  Web videos on your website can draw them further in for the sale.  By properly preparing your videos for SEO they can be picked up in the search engines and drive traffic to your site.  The short, sweet and straight to the point web video can make an excellent SEO tool.

If you want to drive traffic back to your site from sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo or Google than the first step is to plan a video that presents your message clearly and precisely.  It must be short and offer solutions to the viewer’s problems.  You have to prevail upon them what you can do make their situation better with the product or service you have to offer.  Then you have to create the video itself.  Making your own video to place on the sharing sites is not as hard as you might think.

You can make a video to promote your website with a digital camcorder, a webcam or a cell phone with video recording capability.  The camcorder will offer better quality but the webcam and cell phone are potential options to explore.  Of course you also have to option of paying someone else, like us to create a professional looking video for you.  The important thing is that you get your video with an optimized set of tags and descriptions, on as many top ranking video sharing sites that you can.  It cannot be stressed enough that the video does not have to be of academy award quality but it does have to be professional and precise.  You can put a million videos on sharing sites but if they lack substance and quality it will benefit no one.

However, if you place quality videos on various top ranked video sharing sites the benefits can be enormous.  First of all you are getting your brand in front of millions of potential customers.  The more familiar users get with your brand the better.  Of course all of your videos will be accompanied by a link.  The video message will drive users to utilize the link to explore your website.  It is feasible on sharing sites like YouTube to get lucky (with a bit of technical skill and SEO knowledge) and have over a million views on a video.  The more views your video receives and in addition the clicks to your website, the higher your site moves in the search engine rankings.  Quality videos, properly placed on video sharing sites can certainly enhance the traffic to your website.