Having video content on your website used to be expensive and damaging to site speed. Things have changed. We take a look at what it has to offer and how it can benefit your business.

In 2015, online video surpassed social media for the amount of time users spent per day engaging with it. In fact, it's grown so much that it's now overtaken Facebook. It's become the primary way we spend our time online. Millennials (a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000), now spend more time watching TV online than on traditional televisions, clearly showing the shift in behaviour.

It's not all about cat videos either. Recent statistics show that by including video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80%, and that 92% of mobile users share videos with others*.

Video content performance
Video is hugely engaging, and the reason for it's rapid growth online is its performance. It can communicate in 30 seconds what can normally take 10 minutes to read. Plus your audience are much more likely to remember your message through video over more traditional words and picture content.

Producing cost effective video content
With the cost of high quality cameras dropping in price, and more and more software packages making it simpler to edit footage, it is now easier than ever to put a half decent video together. Yes it might not be J. J. Abrams quality, but it will help engage your users and keep them on your site longer. If you've not got the time or equipment to create your own video, there's never been a better time to work with a professional and create cost effective video content that works for your business and budget.

Improving search engine optimisation (SEO)
Having video content as part of your overall content mix gives search engines (google / yahoo) indication that the content is quality rich media. It is also expected that as the demand for video content grows, it will become more of a prominent ranking factor, helping improve your websites search engine optimisation. Having quality content on your site is what good SEO is all about, so adding great video content to the mix is invaluable.

To benefit from it properly though, video content needs to be setup correctly. As with photos and graphics, video needs to be labelled correctly, to allow search engines to identify what the content is. Including keywords in the file name, video title, description and tags make it easy for search engines to see if your video is relevant to a users search request, and in turn drive visitors to your site.

Other factors where video can help SEO is by adding a transcript of the video content to your website. This adds valuable content and helps increase its search-ability. Another is using a video sitemap. Similar to a website sitemap, a video sitemap can contain valuable information such as video duration, ratings, view count, age restrictions etc... All helping search engines evaluate whether the video matches a users search criteria.

One point that has always plagued video content online, is file size, and it's impact on page speed. Search engines use page speed in their algorithms as a ranking factor. Users don't stay on websites that take an age to load, especially mobile users. So getting the video file size down is key. One way around this is to load a thumbnail of the video, and only load it when the user clicks play. This allows the web page to load quickly whilst still giving the user access to the video content. It is also important to make sure your video content is responsive. Some video players don't respond well to different devices, but again getting this right is important to your ranking in search engines.

Video content on social channels
So once you have your video done and looking slick, stick it on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.... By creating a great video it also opens up the possibilities of promoting it via social channels. Creating a YouTube channel that has great likes and view numbers, and using other channels to point users to your website or share your content, will help drive traffic and increase your ranking.

Conclusion
Video will continue to grow as users engage with it even more and the demand increases. Add to this the growing importance that search engines are giving it, and video content becomes a key ingredient to any online marketing strategy. Here at sevenseven, our team can help your business create great video content and use it to drive visitors to your website. If you would like to discuss a video content project and find out how affordable and beneficial it can be, simply get in touch today.

*Source: HubSpot - August 2015