Are you forgetting to offer your website users the best possible user experience with video content, and as a result missing out on valuable brownie points from Google algorithms?
Recent changes in Google’s algorithms have made the creation of great shareable content even more important. An engaging video on a web page is one of the best ways to increase your page ranking. But simply by having a video on your website, your page ranking will not necessarily increase.
But should your focus be on Google page rankings or User Experience? The good news is that all the recent changes made by Google Algorithms are focused on User Experience, so you must think what the best is for your users; to engage your users and to have your users share your content. As a by-product you will increase your page rankings, just by following the rules.
The Video Must Be Able to Be Found, Engaging and Shareable.
Your video must be FOUND
Putting a video on a website that has very low hits will be of limited benefit to your page ranking. Your page rankings will increase once people find your video and start watching it and sharing it. Consider how to encourage people to watch your video, consider these options:
- Choose the correct video Hosting Platform.
- YouTube is the second most-used search engine after Google. And as YouTube is owned by Google, high rankings in YouTube will transfer to high rankings on pages with the related embedded video.
- Technically, YouTube videos are optimised for viewing on the web and are not dependant on your hosting platform. The user will have a better experience watching an embedded video from YouTube, than watching a video served from your own websites hosting environment.
- Do not just embed the video on the website
- Placing a description and a transcript of the video on the same page as the video will allow you to leverage the content of the video through searchable text. Thus, reinforcing the topic of the page to the search engines.
- This also allows for users is viewing the website on their mobile phone in a crowded environment to read the content while having the video muted.
- Be proud and share.
- Send out the web-page link in an email out to your mailing list. Including existing customers and leads. The more traffic a link receives the more importance Google places on the page.
- Adding the web-page link onto your email signature and encouraging all staff to do the same
- Sharing the web-page URL on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Your video must be WATCHED
A high bounce rate is a death knell to your page rankings. The Bounce Rate is calculated according to the percentage of the users who lands on your page and bounces straight out without engaging with the website, against users who are engaged with the page and click around the page, exploring to a degree. Your bounce rate will decrease when people stay on your site because they are watching an engaging video.
DO NOT leave the video as auto play, as without the “click to play” Google does not measure engagement. As such, the quality of the video matters. You need to have an engaging thumbnail and capture the interest of the viewer within the first 10 seconds. If people start to watch the video but quickly 'bounce' away, you will not benefit from the video. So, why does a low 'bounce rate' matter to Google? Google wants the user (not the website owner) to have the best experience possible. If people are attracted to your site and stay on it for a period of time and are engaged, Google will assume that your website content is good and will enable it to be found by to more people.
Your video must be SHAREABLE
If people are interested in your video they will want to share it with others. Give them an easy way to do this, such as a 'Share on Facebook' icon next to the video. Enable them to link through to your YouTube channel to see more videos and encourage users to subscribe to your channel. The more the video is shared, and the more people watch it, the more your page ranking will improve!
