In terms of search engine optimization (SEO) and the effectiveness of your larger marketing campaigns, one of the most important metrics to concern yourself with is and will always be your click-through rate. Also commonly referred to as your CTR for short, this is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of people who not only see your page listed on a search engine like Google or by way of a paid advertisement but who also click on that hyperlink and pay your domain a visit.
There is a wide range of different techniques that you can employ to improve your click-through rate, but one of the most important (and effective) of them has to do with video content. In fact, a video is an all-but-guaranteed way to turn impressions into real, tangible clicks in a host of unique ways that are definitely worth exploring.
Promote the Presence of That Video However You Can
Studies have shown that simply using video across your marketing campaigns can not only improve your click-through rates by as much as 27%, but they can also help you enjoy web conversion rate increases of up to 34% as well. You’re only going to be able to get to that point, however, if people know your video actually exists – which is why it’s imperative that you promote that content as much as possible.
Be sure to use the word “video” in the page title tag for your website, for example, because this is one of the first things that displays when someone discovers your site on an engine like Google. The word “video” should also be in the meta description of the same site. This is a simple technique, but it’s an effective one.
While no statistics are available that point towards gains when the word “video” is in these tags, consider a study conducted about what might be the closest parallel: email. Another recent study revealed that sending an email with the word “video” in the subject line can improve your click-through rate by as much as 96%. The simple fact that you’re using video is often enough to get people’s attention – at least enough to click on your link – and at that point, you can let your larger website do the talking.
The Power of Structured Data
Another way to increase your click-through rate with video content – at least as far as SEO is concerned has to do with using structured data across your domain. Generally speaking, structured data helps an engine like Google “understand” what your page is really about. At that point, it makes it easier for Google to connect your site with the types of terms and topics that people are searching for.
Why does this matter? Because if you’re running an OTT service or you’re publishing a lot of video content and you’re employing structured data best practices, Google is absolutely going to notice that. These days, approximately 62% of all Google universal searches include video content. A lot of this has to do with the fact that video is about 50 times more likely to get organic page ranks than plain text results.
Google knows that people love video websites and want more of it. Therefore, once you start publishing high-quality video content, and you can then use structured data to allow Google and other search engines like Bing, and Yahoo, to understand the structure of your pages better, then your page rankings (and click-through rates) will naturally increase as a result. Page rankings are directly tied to click-through rates, don’t forget, as nearly 35% of all clicks on a results page go to one of the top three organic listings.
However, if people know your video actually exists – which is why it’s imperative that you promote that content as much as possible. That said, a short explainer video must be an integral part of local SEO services to give you maximum engagement and footfall in your stores.
Using Schema Markup to Your Advantage
Don’t forget that in terms of search engine optimization, so much of your success will come down to your ability to provide content that is relevant, helpful and valuable to your target audience. In a larger sense, you do this by trying to create videos that are directly tied to the topics that your audience is interested in.
Once you’ve actually done that, using Schema.org markups, is how you can best connect those two ideas with the strongest line that you can.
Schema markups are a type of structured data, that are exceptionally powerful at giving more information about media file types, such as a video file to search engines like Google. Search engines then use that information to show the video file directly in the search engine results pages. So not only does that give your video more exposure, but it also creates additional opportunities for you to rank in popular terms – thus increasing your domain’s exposure and your click-through rates as a result.
With Schema markups, you can specify properties such as the video length, upload date, thumbnail, quality, alternative headlines, and so much more!
Think about it like this: say you performed a search on Google for a subscription VoD platform and you were greeted by two results. The first just had the platform’s name, a one-sentence overview and a link to their website. The second contained all sorts of specific information like their location, a video trailer, and even had costs, and reviews associated with a lot of their products. Which one would you be more likely to click on – the “bare bones” result, or the one displaying reams of helpful information right in the SERPS
Obviously, you’d go for the latter – which is exactly why schema markups benefit your video content as well. By and large, this type of schema markup was created for crawlers- it’s supposed to help Google and other search engines, and provide crawlers with more information about the structure of the web pages, and the type of content use on the pages. By playing directly into that, you get to take full advantage of it.
Video content is a powerful tool for making a deep, meaningful connection with a target audience. So whether your goal is to monetize your videos or you’re using video content to grow an engaged online community around your business, by employing techniques like using structured data, and schema markups judiciously, and promoting the presence of that video in your SEO titles, and meta description, you’ll go a long way towards not just increasing your click-through rate – but increasing your reach, conversions, and revenue as well.
Author Bio:
PJ Taei is the founder of Uscreen, a video monetization platform to help you sell any kind of videos online. if you’d like associated with the account then pj@uscreen.tvI