Why your Service firm needs Video SEO for Inbound Marketing

Since 2005, YouTube has brought us videos of cute animals, beauty tips, epic fails, viral videos, and, now, YouTube marketing.

Video marketing has come a long way, originally designed to be noticed and interrupt the viewer’s chosen program. However, now content creation needs to be targeted to those who are seeking it out. Commercials aren’t going anywhere, but YouTube marketing is an entirely new phenomenon of people seeking out content, rather than mindlessly consuming it.

How is Video Marketing different from Video SEO?

Video marketing in general is about getting your videos in front of prospects when they are researching. Instead of interrupting their journey with potentially irrelevant content, you want your firm’s video content to be part of your user’s online journey. You become what they want to see rather than hoping they see what you want them to.

It doesn’t just stop there though. Being ranked higher on YouTube translates to higher rankings on Google, thanks in part to Google taking over YouTube in 2006. By 2011 YouTube crossed 1 Trillion hits, which accounts for 140 views per person on earth. Not taking advantage of the internet’s second largest search engine simply doesn’t make sense for your service firm’s digital strategy. This is where Video SEO comes into play.

Assuming you’ve done your marketing due diligence and created a video that is interesting, sharable, and informative, video SEO (VSEO) services can ensure that your video gets out in front of your audience, and that it converts. In fact, Video SEO optimization instead of text-only content can improve your service firm website’s conversion rate by 80%.

According to recent research, 73% of B2B marketers who have employed video marketing have seen positive ROI, but 48% say they lack an effective strategy. Video SEO is often the most powerful form of video marketing for services firms looking for Inbound leads, as it positions your video content right in front of people who are looking for your services.

The Unrivaled Benefits of Video SEO for Inbound:

1. Gain additional page 1 positions:

When you gain an added position on the first page of Google you essentially gain another traffic source, much like a store or restaurant with multiple locations. By taking up another spot you also push off one of your competitors and in turn take up more of the market share. This results in more traffic and more leads, it’s as simple as that.

Additionally, there’s a bonus benefit that’s often overlooked but in many cases even more powerful… See how your CTR can climb in 2. below.

2. Rev up your firm’s authority:

As a service firm you sell based on your track record, credibility and authority. Unlike product companies where buyers can compare tangible aspects of a product, your service firm needs to stand out via heightened perceived authority and real credibility.

The psychological effect of seeing multiple results for your company immediately lends your prospect a feeling of credibility and authority. This effect increases the likelihood that they will definitely click on your link and get in touch.

The result is that your Click Through Rate (CTR) goes up for both your website listing and also your video listing on Google. Sort of like 1+1 = 4 where the sum of these components drive even higher traffic than the sum of each one would individually.

The fact that Google displays an actual ‘thumbnail’ image of your video as in the above image, makes your company stand out significantly and this can drive more traffic to your site than the competitor websites who might even be ranked above your video!

3. Instant engagement & more leads:

Bounce rates calculate the number of people who land on your page and choose not to explore further. A high bounce rate is not a good thing. Conversely a low bounce rate means people are highly engaged.

As opposed to visiting website text pages, where chances of high bounce rates are more likely, clicking on a video almost always results in more engagement and lower bounce rates because people like to watch videos.

People who click on your video will become far more engaged than if they land onto a webpage first. This increased engagement will result in more actual conversions into leads.

Imagine having 5 or 10 videos all ranking on page 1 for various targeted keywords? This is a very powerful tactic that can be scaled if done properly.

But HOW do we rank videos for SEO?:

YouTube and Google algorithms include a number of factors to rate your video higher.

Things that are considered include:

The number of comments & likes
Total times watched, and viewing duration
location and number of embeds of your video on high authority sites
Number of times your video is shared (social media, on other websites)
quality and quantity of links coming in to your video
onsite optimization & channel optimization using video sitemaps, keywords, captions, subtitles, etc

Having a proper technical video SEO campaign that focuses on promoting the video to accelerate the above results is what your require to rank on page 1 of Google.

Waiting for it to happen naturally and without proper technical implementation, or waiting for a bit of ‘content promotion’ to get you on page 1 is highly unlikely to work. Test it out yourself. Or ask your agency if they have achieved page 1 rankings for keywords with real competition and search volume. You likely won’t find any results.

Unfortunately, most firms don’t take advantage of video SEO.

Surprisingly enough, most inbound marketing agencies understand the value of video SEO but aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities this marketing tactic has to offer. Why ?

Most service firms don’t even hear about the benefits of video SEO in conversation with their marketing agency. Often high quality videos will be created, and then they are just left sitting there on a website or on a channel and don’t even rank in Google! What a waste!

Video SEO is not easy to successfully implement for page 1 Google rankings. Many have tried and failed. This is why it’s often not offered by the majority of firms. Many don’t even know it exists.

In order to benefit from this SEO opportunity, you need an inbound marketing agency with a dedicated video SEO services team that can spend time optimizing your videos with everything needed to rank on both YouTube and Google.

As a services or technology firm you not only need to be exposed in all possible channels, you also need to be seen as a real authority in your space. This is what will drive the highest quality leads. Video SEO provides one of the most powerful ways to do this for your firm.

Even just leveraging it for your own brand, as in the example below for our own agency, can make a big difference. This is just one of the simplest ways to leverage video SEO, as there is usually minimal competition for your own brand name.

At Jumpfactor, our SEO team has a thorough understanding of services firms and how their long sales period and specific buyer personas change their marketing needs. We leverage Video SEO to boost your company’s authority and in turn drive more traffic, more leads, and capture higher quality leads than your competition.