How Does Video Content Impact Your Rankings?

If you have been on a website or social media lately, it’s a good bet that you have seen video content everywhere. Video has become the preferred medium over the last few years, and it is everywhere. But does it help with SEO? To answer that, we need to look at how search engines rank sites.

Videos Provide Informative Information

Google, the world’s most used search engine, values two things when generating results – the quality of your content and its relevance to a potential customers original search terms.

Google doesn’t just look at the text on a particular page. It also scans for other types of media to see precisely what a website may have to offer. If the websites have a mixture text and quality visuals like videos, that means your pages are considered informative – giving a boost to your SEO rankings.

Videos bring Traffic to your Website

Another one of the qualities that Google looks at when determining search rankings is the amount of incoming traffic your website has. If the domain has a massive amount of regular visitors, they’re most likely coming for a reason.

People are more likely to visit your website by watching a video on YouTube or other social media channels than they are any other type of content. The more video content you create, the more quality traffic you can draw to your pages, which will, in turn, help your overall SEO in the long run.

Videos help your Traffic Stay Longer

Another important aspect to remember is that search engines like Google look at how long people are staying on your site once they finally arrive. If you have a large amount of incoming organic traffic, but those people all leave after just a few seconds, it may cause Google to view that your content isn’t very good and the customers may be going elsewhere for to find better search results.

Final Thoughts

A video will more consistently keep people on your website landing page for longer periods of time. People are more likely to watch a video than they are to read something like a blog post, even if those two things are trying to get across the same core pieces of information. Relying heavily on video to increase the amount of time someone spends on your page, you significantly improve your bounce rate, which helps search engines like Google and Bing boost your article to the top of their rankings!

—Aliah Rasmussen, SEO Specialist II, Sesame Communications