Top Ways Video Can Boost SEO for Manufacturers | Episode 040

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

While interviewing industrial marketers at MODEX about their favorite methods of outreach, one of the most common topics to come up was video. We were hardly surprised, to be honest. Our team already lives and breaths video marketing as a way of life.

It’s evident that consumers are trained more and more to consume video beyond any other medium.

As well as being really rich content, video can also drive a lot of SEO value. If handled properly.

WHAT’S SEO, AGAIN?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. AKA: making your content/page/site particularly appealing to search engines, like Google.

The more SEO value you have, the higher on the list of search results your content will be.

Those positions are highly-coveted and highly sought-after. Videos are not only a great way to move up the ladder and boost your site’s credibility, but that’s not all they do. The videos themselves might even pop up in search results. And they’re far more likely to be clicked by searchers than plain text results.

So how do you make sure that happens?

1. TRANSCRIBE YOUR VIDEOS

As much as we assume footage itself is enough, Google and Bing and Yahoo and other search engines don’t think like people. They still need words to help them process pictures.

If you have captions or a transcription alongside your video, that helps search engines recognize your video as having valuable information.

You can hire out many different companies or services to help transcribe your videos. If you’re on a budget, you can use YouTube to get a head-start in a pinch. (Just make sure you spell-check and update the content so you don’t end up with some very unprofessional captioning fails).

2. INDEX YOUR PAGES

Adding the transcription to your video or to the webpages where it’s located will help attract Google’s attention. But that in itself is not a guarantee.

You or your site manager also need to make sure that your webpage is “indexed,” meaning it is not on Google’s ‘Do Not Call’ list.

You can do that by using, among other solutions, Schema Markup. This system helps you add descriptions, tags, and other information to your webpages. It helps search engines understand and navigate your website more easily.

3. TEST YOUR PAGES

Once your video and your transcription are online and indexed, go visit Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Past the url of your page into the blank. If all goes well, that page’s information will pop up and include a “Video Object” with the data that Google has about it.

But if you do not see a video object (YouTube embeds may not show up, for example), then as far as Google is concerned…there’s no video on that webpage.

You can also try searching for your webpage or topic by going to Google.com/Video to see if your video comes up in the feed. You can check either with your website url, or with a YouTube url that takes your viewers to that magical land of long-lost vines and distracting cats.

This is why we always harp about getting more sophisticated video-hosting platforms. YouTube hogs all the credit for your content.

Just hang in there.

As important as video SEO is, it also is not going to be easy. Indexing and hosting and transcribing takes effort, whether you do it yourself or pay someone else to help with the heavy lifting. But perhaps that’s kind of the point.

An SEO-optimized video shows that you’re hard-working, credible, and dedicated to your craft.

Is it tough? You bet. But is it worth every penny? Absolutely.

We would know.

 

 

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get each of our weekly episodes sent directly to your inbox; or subscribe wherever you download podcasts so you can listen on the go!

If there’s a particular topic that you’d like for us to talk about, or if you have a particular a challenge that you’d like us to take a crack at, send us an email. We’d be happy to answer them for you – and if your topic gets picked for a future episode, you’ll win a free IndustrialSage t-shirt!

 

Sponsored by Optimum Productions