Penguin and Panda have clearly demonstrated that the rules of the SEO game have changed. Many businesses have made the turn toward inbound marketing, recognizing that content is king. Video SEO is an excellent tool for content marketing and inbound marketing, yet many small businesses fail to embrace it.
Small business owners are excellent candidates for video SEO since they posses strong industry knowledge and passion. But properly leveraging that knowledge and extracting it from their heads can be difficult. Here is a low-cost and quick Video SEO Case Study with proven results.
Video SEO Case Study:
Assumptions:
1) Video blogging is quicker than regular blogging.
2) Even casual conversations between experts are helpful to information seekers.
3) Small business owners have passion for their fields that shows on video.
Objectives:
A) Create 4 video blogs per week using an industry expert (i.e., small business owner)
B) Keep production time under 30 minutes per video
C) Use transcriptions to maximize SEO value
D) Implement best-practice onsite SEO mark-up from schema.org
E) Create useful content by answering common questions
F) Keep costs as low as possible
This case study used Google Hangouts (which is free) and automatically posted them to YouTube. From YouTube, videos are easily downloaded. Here is a screenshot:
Hangout participants used low-cost microphones and camera equipment: AT2020 microphone (~$100) and Logitech HD webcam (~$99). Lighting is important, and solvable with a quick trip to the hardware store (~$20).
Completing an SEO video in 30 minutes requires a highly structured agenda:
5 Minutes – Pick Discussion Topic: Keyword research is important to make certain video content meets existing search demand. However, the quality of the content is also critical, so pick keywords on which the small business is knowledgeable.
5 Minutes – Rehearse: Turn the topic into a question and outline 3 points that will answer the question. If the answers feel thin, research them further.
5 Minutes – Record Hangout: Making the SEO video in a single take is very important. This will be hard at first, but becomes easy with practice. Having points outlined gives the road map of what to say, but don’t script every word (too hard and sounds stiff). Keep videos informal and fun. Use direct eye contact with the camera and speak slowly and clearly.
10 Minutes – Produce Video: Downloaded video from YouTube can be edited in Camtasia Studio. Add an intro logo for branding and a final screen with a link to learn more.
5 Minutes – Post Video on Website: Use Wistia for video hosting and transcription. Posting to a blog or website is simple using iFrames. Wistia will also provide a site map and schema.org tags.
Total Time: 30 Minutes
Results of Case Study
Google analytics was used to identify traffic for which a video SEO page was the first point-of-entry to the website. As demonstrated below, there has been a steady increase in traffic with strong time-on-site. This data exclude any video watchers who first landed on the domain on a non-video page.
After recording 75 SEO videos over a 6 months period, 100% received referral traffic. The best 5 videos accounted for 60% of the increase in organic traffic and also had achieved the best rankings in Google. Further off-site SEO efforts would certainly help improve these results.
Conclusions
Most SEOs agree that content marketing is the new link building. Small businesses have strong knowledge and passion, but are often unable to create strong content on their websites. Video SEO is a great strategy for extracting expert knowledge and growing organic traffic. As this case study demonstrates, targeted organic traffic is quickly attained. There are also many secondary benefits to video SEO such as link baiting, branded mentions and social sharing. Finally, this case study demonstrates that video SEO can be produced by any small business on a very small budget.
VIDEO BLOGGING INFOGRAPHIC
Adam Stetzer, Ph.D. is President and Co-Founder at HubShout, a leading SEO Reseller, Website Reseller and SEM software and services provider. He holds a Doctorate in Industrial Psychology from Purdue University and has over 15 years experience in the Information Technology field building enterprise software for Fortune 100 clients such as General Electric, Coca Cola, Pepsi, AT&T, Verizon, Nissan Motors and ChevronTexaco.