Imagine being able to give your best sales pitch to a prospect at the exact moment they make their buying decision. Now, with video SEO, you can. Unlike SEO for a Web site, video SEO can place multiple versions of a customized video about your business with major search engines, such as Google Video, Yahoo Video, MSN Video, AOL Video, Media Café and YouTube. Each version is optimized with specific keywords for prime placement. In this manner, a single business can own organic search in their specific industry because each video comes up independently in the search results for those specific keywords. As a search is made and results are displayed, it is possible for a company to own the entire first results page with video SEO.
Forrester Research observed recently that for keywords on which video results were offered, an average of 16,000 videos were competing for space on results pages — which contained an average of 1.5 video results per page. This means that each video had roughly an 11,000-to-1 chance of ranking on the first page of results. In comparison, for non-standard HTML results, there were an average of 4.7 million results competing for a spot on results pages with an average of 9.4 text results per page, or a 500,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of results. If you compare the likelihood of a video result appearing on the first page with that of a standard HTML result, indexed videos have, roughly, a 50 times greater chance of making the first page.
Prior to 2007, videos were only shown in video-specific searches. Today, with the new universal or blended search, multiple types of information are viewable in one unified search result. That creates more competition for real estate in search results, so it’s vital to get prime position.
A ComScore study on 2008 Google user behaviors with blended results noted that video ranked second to news for total clickthroughs. Additionally, Jupiter Research reported that users are more likely to click on specialized content — such as video — when it appears within blended search results vs. vertical results. Video SEO needs to become an integrated part of a firm’s total SEO plan to drive traffic and gain name exposure in the market. When it comes to Web sites, if you build it, they won’t come — if they can’t find it.
