Do video really help in optimizing?
If so, then how?
What role does video play in SEO?

Video has countless benefits, can‘t name few. Video is one of the most effective mediums for communicating your brand’s name, from helping explain how a product works to providing the final information that can close a sale. And don’t forget, it also has an incredible indirect benefit i.e boosting your search engine optimization (SEO).
Yes, video works wonders in gaining an excellent position for your website on Google.

Effective SEO is crucial in getting your brand in front of million eyes.
Effective SEO is also must as the competition is really too high in 2018.
Appearing on that first search engine results page can get you tons of new website traffic and increase your overall website performance.
But did you know video can actually help get you there?
To know better we questioned eight SEO experts to weigh their effective and practical light in.

How does video affect SEO?
What would be your number one tip for using video to optimize SEO?

1. Identify queries using video content to compete for those terms resulting in video results.
Incorporating video in your website content can have indirect benefits on overall performance. Videos that are placed appropriately within the content of a web page could increase the actual visitor engagement. When visitors dwell on a website instead of bouncing back to search results, its indirectly a positive sign to search engines that your content satisfied their query, their need ,their requirement, and obviously you’re more likely to rank well.
In this manner Brands can also rank on page 1 of Google in the video carousel.
Identify queries that yield video results and compete for those terms with your video content. Most of the video carousel results appear to be sourced from YouTube, so make sure to host your video content there.
Although the video carousel mostly replaced video thumbnails, some SERPs still do show thumbnails.
In the event that your page ranks organically and is accompanied by a video thumbnail, it could increase click-through rate, which will help you maximize the number of visits you get out of your rankings.

2. Include strong videos on key pages to dramatically influence visitors and increase time spent on page.
Many people think video SEO is just about getting a high ranking on YouTube search or the Google search“Videos” tab.
But wait, that’s not the only prospect. It’s more about how you use video to improve the SEO of your main website pages.
Having strong videos on key pages will influence visitors and can dramatically increase their time spent on page, which can improve your domain authority with Google.
For instance, If people land on your site and stay for five minutes (because they watch some great videos,) that can help with your ranking.
Also, videos can be a great source of raw content for ranking on keyword searches. Always transcribe your audio into text and add that information to the meta data of your page. This way your content will still be indexable by Google, giving you a better chance at ranking for keywords.
Video SEO isn’t just about optimizing the SEO results for your videos themselves.

 3. Focusing all efforts on addressing your customer’s pain points.
Consumers, visitors use search to find answers.
While they might indulge in watching your brand’s fun viral spot or emotionally resonant story they discover while Google-sleuthing, eventually they’ll return to seek help with their intended task in mind.
If your videos are focused on satisfying those requirements“, it will certainly give your business an organic SEO boost.
Thus, from a content perspective, I’d say one of the best ways to get SEO value out of video is to focus your efforts on addressing your customer’s pain points.

4. Consider how many different places you can syndicate your video effectively.
Video’s impact on search can be seen from the below angles:
1. Videos add to user engagement, which is going to continue growing as a signal.
2. Videos that are syndicated to platforms like YouTube provide an additional channel to gain traffic from.
3. Videos that convey trust can positively impact conversion rates.
Here are a couple of video tips that can help boost your site rankings.
1. Use a video site map; Google seems to prefer videos slightly over non-video content, so when you use a video embedded in a new page, you have a faster rate of getting that page indexed .
2. Video can be seen as the beginning content type; Consider how many different places you can syndicate the video. Of course it can live on YouTube and link back to your specific blog post with that same video embedded, but the transcription of the video is valuable text content, splices of the video may make for shareable
3. Facebook and Instagram video snippets, still images from the video might make sense to share out additionally on Twitter, and the audio could be reused on a Sound cloud pod-cast.

5. Style your video to help it be noticed by search engines.
Now a day’s many clients have videos on every page of their site, including e-commerce pages.
These pages often offer products that are difficult to visualize without video. In these cases, videos help not only show potential consumers how to use the products, but ultimately help turn them from visitors to customers.
Offering a transcript of your video content enables them to be indexed by search engines, which ultimately lead to more site traffic.
Keep videos short, show off your products well, and include transcriptions so more of your site content is indexed by the search engines.

6. Work towards a definite goal in mind..
How video affects SEO really depends on your goals when using video in your marketing campaign and which video platform you use.
Of course, Google owns YouTube, so that’s the best SEO option by far.
However, even YouTube has great limitations. You can host your video on YouTube for the foundational SEO best practices, but link and highlight the video on your own website. This increases click-through and conversions.
Always start with a goal.
Sure, your competitor may be optimizing through video, but you need to have clear goals in your video’s messaging, while being able to clearly identify success rates through key performance indicators (KPIs) and return on investment (ROI).

7. Your video must be engaging – the longer a user stays on your site, the higher you can rank on Google.
Its clearly understood that the number one reason for using video on your site to improve SEO is to increase the amount of time users stay on your site.
Time on site is a primary factor used by Google to determine whether or not to rank your website versus another website for the same keyword.

The more engaging your video content is, the longer a user will likely stay on your site and the higher you can rank on Google.

 8. Optimize for YouTube ranking first and foremost.
We must have a blog. We must have social media. We must have video. Video can be an important contributor to your overall SEO, but it’s important to be crystal clear on how video is going to help you achieve your marketing and SEO goals.
A common issue we see with SEO is this checklist mentality to ranking.
There are a few ways in which video can contribute to your SEO strategy.
1. Exposure – Awareness is the foremost marketing goal. Getting in touch of the right people at the right time is powerful. And the right place is often a search engine. Sometimes video’s are the best way to illustrate an answer. We can also often rank video more easily in Google search. And of course, our video can rank on our own site and on third-party platforms like YouTube (which is also a search engine and where we also want to rank highly). So, video gives us a way to get in front of people on search engines.
2. Engagement & Conversion – Video can help us engage our audience. This can help us convert more visitors to customers. So, if we’re looking at the end goal of conversion , video helps convert users from search engines, then get them initial exposure and moving that user closer to a conversion.
3. Authority –videos can be a useful tool for link building. Building authority helps us drive more traffic to our site.. So video can help by providing a linkable asset to help us raise the authority of our site with relevant links.
Thus ,one major SEO tip relates to ranking videos directly on YouTube. Start your search for targeted keywords there. Pay particular attention to the search suggestions. Then you have an opportunity to create a killer video.