Maximize Video Content Through Strategic Placement

The following blog post Maximize Video Content Through Strategic Placement was originally published on: Canada West Internet Marketing LLC

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Video is now perhaps the most valuable content marketing strategy. Video viewing requires minimal effort from users, and when done well, video can convey important information in a new format that increases conversions on your site. Studies have shown that visitors are up to 85% more likely to purchase after viewing video content on a website.

Creating unique video content requires extensive time and resources, meaning a successful video marketing strategy is not easily within reach of every business. Given the value of this content, however, it is becoming ever more essential for businesses to invest the resources into developing their own content. If your message is impactful, informative, and easy to absorb, it will bring you results.

Making videos for the sake of making videos will do little to increase conversions or site experience. The type of video content and its location on a website are related, and both are dependent on where a visitor is in the sales funnel.

This post will cover the intersecting factors to be considered in developing a new video marketing strategy, with real-life examples from businesses who are doing it right.

Where Should Videos Live?

Before we examine the stages of the sales funnel, let’s explore the options for video hosting, as this is often an overlooked element of crafting a video marketing strategy. For those new to video marketing, YouTube may seem to be the obvious and only way of hosting and sharing videos online. But third-party video hosting services and self-hosting videos on your site are also possible. While more complicated and costly, they are the only options if you are creating video for SEO.

YouTube and similar sites like Vimeo certainly have their place in a video marketing strategy. Since YouTube essentially functions as the video-only search engine of Google, the videos hosted there will get a ton of exposure and will more easily show up in Google search results. But, if your video is hosted there and a different site embeds it, the information is on YouTube and not on your site. To counter this, include the text of the video as a blog post or informational page on your website. This is especially important when the video is posted to YouTube but is good practices regardless of where the video content lives.

Third-party or self-hosting allows greater flexibility in how video is displayed while also providing your site with all the SEO benefits of having original video content. It also makes it more likely that viewers will convert into leads or customers since they are already on your site.

Many businesses leverage both of these options, uploading some content to YouTube but offering exclusive or expanded content on their site. As we go through the stages of the sales funnel, we will discuss what kind of content to create for each stage, as well as where and how to share it to maximize its effectiveness.

What Content Should You Create?

Perhaps the most challenging decision to make is what type of content to share with your audience. The content you create depends on where your customers are in the sales funnel. For video content creation, we will look at three broad stages of the sales funnel: awareness, consideration, and decision and action.

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Awareness

At the top of the funnel, people need to know who you are and what you do. This kind of content can be similar to traditional television ads, or it can be more creative and unusual - its purpose is to make your brand more visible to the public. Tell visitors why they need your product or service and what distinguishes it from the plethora available in the market. Audiences love videos that answer questions, are funny and engaging, and show your business cares about customers.

This kind of content works well on YouTube and similar sites. Seattle Coffee Gear has built an extensive YouTube following with their how-to videos on making different coffee and espresso drinks. Their video descriptions and content then direct users to their website, where they can learn more about coffee products and processes and make purchases.

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As visitors move into the consideration stage of the sales funnel, focus on directing them to your site where it is easier for them to take action.

Awareness video can also be displayed on the homepage or landing page, like in this example from TransUnion’s new ShareAble for Hires. Here, they have a simple video that gives an overview of their service directly on their homepage so visitors can absorb this information easily.

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For more ideas on content for the awareness stage, check out this resource from Skeleton Productions.

Consideration

If a visitor converts into a lead through your awareness content, provide more detailed information about your product or service. This can include products reviews or comparisons, step-by-step videos for how a product or service works, or testimonials from satisfied customers.

For example, Renovate America creates videos that feature customers talking about their experience with their services. This lends credibility to the product because it seems more genuine than typical, highly branded content.

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In this example, the video is hosted by a third-party on the website and shares the page with blog content and images.

Decision & Action

Customers who reach the decision and action stage already trust your company. Now, focus on providing even more information about your brand that satisfies their curiosity while building customer loyalty. Videos that show behind-the-scenes of the company, such as a process or company culture, or videos that tell the story of the company’s founding are great content for this stage.

In this example from BambooHR, the short video highlights the core principles of the company culture - namely, work-life balance - and features their company mascot. While company culture videos are often used as recruitment tools, in this case, it serves a dual purpose: since BambooHR is a workplace-focused product, knowing the company background can influence a prospective customer’s decision to purchase their services.

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Videos for the decision and action stage are also ideal for placing directly on your site and can serve as blog posts or additions to a resource library.

Test & Adapt

When creating a video for social media platforms, consider how videos are viewed on that platform and adapt your video accordingly. For example, Instagram’s default video setting is muted sound, so don’t rely on audio to convey your message in an Instagram-targeted video. Ideal video settings and content vary across social platforms, so be sure to consider these maximize the effect of your videos on these sites. BufferSocial has a great resource listing considerations for creating video content for different social media sites.

Videos for different social platforms, or even YouTube versus your company website, do not have to each be their own production. Consider making one long video and editing shorter versions with different shots, with each version intended for a different platform. This is also a great way to leverage YouTube’s reach to direct more visitors to your site: post a teaser video on YouTube, and direct them to your website for the full version.

Finally, the key to any marketing strategy is to test it constantly and adapt where needed. With video content, this can include testing video placement on the page, seeing which social platforms garner the most video views, and measuring views based on video length. When beginning a video marketing project, these tests will be crucial to determining where your resources and efforts should be focused.

As video content becomes ever more necessary for digital marketing success, small businesses and startups must learn to navigate the tricky balance of what to create for what visitors and where to place them to maximize their investment. It takes a broad perspective and a willingness to be adaptable, but a successful video marketing strategy is possible even for those with limited resources.

Resources for further reading:
Creating an Online Video Strategy from Moz
How to Make a Video Content Strategy that Will Engage Your Audience from CoSchedule

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Seven Easy SEO Tips

Seven Easy SEO Tips is courtesy of: Canada West SEO Company

Writing with a search engine in mind can be a daunting challenge. You know that there are a bunch of things you're supposed to do, a bunch more things that you're not supposed to do, and additional rules that seem to exist just to make you crazy. Trying to keep all of these things at the forefront of your mind while writing copy, especially something that screams SEO like a meta description, makes the entire process feel more difficult than it has to be.

Rest assured that you are not the only one dealing with this issue. Heck, even professional SEO writers feel it. This article discusses seven easy tips that cover the basic needs of SEO, allowing you to concentrate on your content instead of the nuances of several search algorithms. You'll be surprised by just how much simpler SEO copywriting can be!

1. Write for The User

The most common mistake writers make when producing SEO content is to take the search engines as their primary audience. Google is NEVER your primary audience. It is a tool that internet searchers use to find answers to whatever query they have immediately. They succeed whenever a user is satisfied with the results they offered and return to that engine with their next query.

Hypothetically, let's say you create an article that checks every box the search engine is looking for. It zooms up to the top of the list results because the search engines think that it is the ideal content. Mission accomplished, right?

Wrong! The purpose of SEO is not to get to the top of the page but instead stay there so that as many eyes as possible can spot you. If the article above achieved its ranking by catering to the search engine instead of real people, those people will find your page, click on it, and leave in disgust. They will not be converted into business, nor will they consider you to address their future needs.

Search engines are smart, and they can notice when your site is user repellent. While it initially thought you had created the ideal content, it now has new data that suggests you didn't. The new information trumps the old, and your post will fall down the rankings as quickly as it ascended them.

Therefore, it is imperative that you avoid compromising the user experience to make search engines happy. Ultimately, it is users, not search engines, that determine your rankings.

2. Remember Why SEO Best Practices Exist

It's easy to think of all the rules associated with SEO as edicts from a higher power, but remember that each has a practical reason to exist. For instance, keywords exist because they teach search engines and users alike what a given article is about. Old-fashioned keyword stuffing and other SEO techniques that no longer work was rejected because articles emphasizing them failed to provide users the information they were looking for.

This means that there is no magic formula to determine how many times you need to use a keyword in your content. An automated solution like that appeals to a computer, and you're trying to appeal to a fellow human being. Instead, allow the flow of whatever you're writing to dictate how many times each keyword is employed. Reading it out loud is the best way to get a feel for this.

If you find yourself saying the same word or phrase so often that it starts to lose its meaning, it is safe to conclude that you used it too often. Adjust accordingly.

3. Assign Your Keywords

If you try to rank for too many search terms at once, you end up confusing search engines and end users alike. What is your article even about? No one will be able to find you, and your SEO rankings will plummet.

Instead, assign each page of your website a small group of extremely similar search terms to rank for. There will be no question what you discuss on each page, allowing search engines to guide users where they want to go effectively. Your users will also know that they have found exactly what they were looking for.

4. Work in A Simple Format

This may seem basic, but it's essential. Producing content on a word processor gives you more formatting options than you'll realistically need for SEO content in an intuitive interface. It's an excellent option.

By contrast, you should never compose content directly on your CMS. It's far too easy to misclick and send content live before it's ready, or miss something stupid and end up publishing something that looks unprofessional.

5. Ctrl + F/Cmd + F Is Your Friend

Most word processors support a handy, underutilized "find" function that highlights every instance of whatever you type into its search box. It's accessed by hitting Ctrl and F simultaneously, but Mac users need to hit Cmd and F instead.

If you try to find one of your keywords and almost nothing is highlighted, you haven't used it enough. If your whole post lights up like a Christmas tree, you've used that phrase too often.

Either way, you get a handy visual representation of how often you used your keywords if they're spread out or clumped together and any areas that could use some tweaking.

6. Concentrate On Mobile

Nobody likes reading big walls of text on the internet, so you don't write big walls of text on the internet. However, your moderately-sized paragraph on a PC might look like a wall of text on a device with a smaller screen. Did you consider that?

Search engines are increasingly concentrating on mobile devices because users are choosing these devices more often. One easy way to improve their experience is to make any lists a series of bullet points instead of a long sentence with a bunch of commas.

7. Structure Matters Too

Headings and links are still critical components of SEO, but much like keywords, they need to feel natural. For example, using your primary keyword in your H1 makes sense because it shows both search engines and prospective customers what that page is about. Related phrases should be in the subheadings that follow because the content is still discussing that topic.

Internal links should be inserted wherever users might legitimately want more information and nowhere else. For example, calls to action should include a link to purchase whatever you've been talking about. Leading with the same link would make little sense because you haven't pointed out why users might want it yet.

Ultimately, all seven of the tips above are advice on how to achieve the first one. Concentrate on your end user, and SEO will sort itself out.

 

Looking for more information in regards to SEO?  Contact Canada West I.M. today!

 

Edmonton SEO Company

Canada West Internet Marketing
10050 Jasper Avenue #2020c
Edmonton, AB T5J 3R8
(780) 628-7535

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The SEO Trends and Changes in Google To Expect In 2018

The SEO Trends and Changes in Google To Expect In 2018 was originally published to: Canada West Internet Marketing Service

Be prepared to for algorithm updates targeting fake news

In 2010, Google was getting various critics from the media due to the "content farm," that is the clutter users receive after searching. Overwhelmed by the critics, Google had to respond. Its response was a proclamation that they hear and understand their users complains about the content farms and site. They explained that they were working on finding a solution to the problem.

Later on, in February 2011, the Google Panda update was launched. Google Panda update was targeted on the spammy and the content that was of low quality.

Many may wonder why I am bringing this up; the reason is that the media is complaining about the fact that Google has allowed the spreading of fake news. Danny Sullivan terms the matter as the biggest ever quality search crisis that Google has ever experienced due to the extent of the problem.

These claims are severely tarnishing Google's image. The problem is a tough one to solve, but Google is motivated to provide a solution.

Some of the tactics that Google has used to solve the problem include:

• Adding fact check tags for search results displayed
• Banning publishers who have been reported to spreading fake news,
• Coming up with new ways for users to report auto-complete suggestions that they consider offensive.
• Adjusting their algorithms to remove non-authoritative info, for example, Holocaust denial sites.

In 2015, researchers released a research report on the Knowledge-Based Trust (KBT). The research shows how Google will be able to evaluate the websites by analyzing the accuracy and factuality of the information they post rather than just focusing on the inbound links it has. However, even if this system would be implemented, there is still the risk that incorrect facts will still article before the website is shut down.

It is good to recognize that Google is doing all it can to work on ensuring factuality in their services. This may be achieved by the KBT if altered, to solve the loopholes it has. However, we may never know if the system was implemented, but they did not have any results, so they are working on a better version.

The use of Voice search and features snippets will grow

Currently, for all the five mobile searches, one is made through a voice search. The growth of the Google assisted devices example Google home will promote the increased use of Google searches. As Google sources its voice search results from features snippets, the snippets are thus also expected to grow similarly to the voice search.

To support this, Stone Temple Consulting did a study last year that shows that featured snippets accounted for about 30% of the 1.4 million queries that they used in their test the statistics show that the use of featured snippets is growing. If their use continues to grow, then they will be able to rival the organic listings. Thus, advertisers would be more interested in featuring in them. For more information on how to use and target the featured snippets, you can check Stephan Spencer's primer on the topic.

Most aspects of the searches will be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Google's Machine learning AI system, RankBrain which was introduced two years ago to help google process its results has evolved from handling 15% of the search results to all of them.
Google has also developed its AI through developing Cloud Vision API. The Cloud Vision API can recognize a vast number of objects.

However, Google has stood out more with its AI inventions due to the invention of an AI that is better at building other AI's than human beings. The project was headed by Google Brain, and they were intent on building an AI that Google would use.

Although the system has its advantages, it has a few disadvantages as well. One of them is that after attaining a good solution, they will stick to it rather than try to get a better solution. Also, they tend to create a correlation between very different things thus making it very superstitious. To add on to their problems, they were responsible for creating the machine-learning algorithm but not the final algorithm thus they are finding it very difficult to predict its behavior.

Google will continue to work on its AI which they will incorporate into their search algorithms. Google users should thus be prepared for unpredictable results or behavior from the search results.

It is important to note that optimizing AI is not similar to what is done for SEO strategies, instead to optimize AI; the machine has to learn to make predictions more like humans.

Manipulative guest posting will be handled soon.

Google announced in May that they do not appreciate the fact that some webmasters were using article marketing to get more links to their sites. This practice is against Google's guidelines and would result in penalties. This announcement brought about the feeling that Google was working on an algorithm that would handle the matter accordingly.

Manipulative guest posting as recommended by Google is explained as information or an action that would be a 'yes' if asked if the tactic helps the users or I would still do the action even if the search engines were not in existence.

It is thus essential to avoid guest posts that do not increase brand awareness or become a source of referrals. In some cases, posts are done to influence search engine rankings positively. However, this solution does not work effectively in the long term.

The rule on the guest posting is a common knowledge that people in the SEO community are familiar about. However, some marketers will still pursue the strategy as they convince themselves that it is a legitimate act. EzineArticles can bear witness to article marketing regulations.

'Linkless' mentions

Bing confirmed that they track the brand mentions that have not been linked then use then as ranking signals. Google also indicated that they do the same as well in a patent they made.

With AI continuing to play a more significant role in rankings the searches from Google, then more 'linkless' mentions are to be expected.

This would benefit smaller brands which are unable to reach the required threshold that allows them to get press. This will be achieved by the fact that although the ways of getting brand mentions through mentions are not very different from using links, mentions are usually more commonly used than the links thus offering an opportunity to the smaller companies.

This factor thus increases the value of being part of online conversations or starting up the discussions on your own instead.

An Interstitial crackdown may happen soon

Google has had an intense battle with mobile ads that are very intrusive to its users. Google announced a mobile interstitial penalty early 2017 to further fight the issue. The most affected sites were those that had aggressive adverts on their pages that prevented users from using the interface at all.

According to SEO expert and columnist Glenn Gabe, he stated that the penalty mainly affected the small brands as the big brands were left free thus the effects of the penalty did not meet the expectations. He believes that in the future, Google will handle this matter. The main reason that the big companies were left free was due to the trust that they culminated over time. The result of this battle, however, will depend on how Google handles the intrusive advertising vs. branding issue.

Mobile-first indexing

Google announced that the mobile searches had surpassed the desktop searches three years ago. Also, last year BrightEdge noted that 57% of the traffic in their servers was as a result of mobile devices.

To accommodate this change, Google now aims to rank its search results while basing the content on the mobile versions. The listing strategy will also apply to desktops. The mobile first index is expected to be launched this year according to some of Google's representatives.

This means that by the end of the year, the signals that only affected mobile searches will affect all types of searches. The changes to the mobile first index will thus mean that sites that cannot be accessed by mobile phones will become obsolete over time.

Google became a common phenomenon in the late 1990s. Since then it has been involved in massive growth and complications, but it has still maintained its position in the world as an excellent supplier of information.

For this year, we expect Google to strive to develop its AIs then try to combat the political and media criticism to find solutions to some of the common problems that it is faced with. Typical examples of such challenges are the aggravating adverts and manipulative guest posts.
We also look forward to the launching of the mobile-first index and the changes and different experiences it will bring about.

All these are factors that the SEO community to be on the lookout for. They should thus be focused on creating long-term SEO strategies to keep them ahead throughout the year.

If you are looking for SEO help for your business website, the Edmonton SEO Experts at Canada West Internet Marketing https://ww1.canadawestinternetmarketing.com/ can help you. Call us today!

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