You know the value and importance of using video in marketing campaigns, even those that are done nearly solely online. But, how do you get the search engines to pay attention to the content you are creating?
The statistics are outstanding – with more than 60 percent of today’s businesses using video as a key component of their marketing. That’s up 66 percent from 2015. Another survey found that 91 percent of companies will increase or spend more on these types of marketing efforts. Your company needs to do the same. But, creating a promotional video isn’t enough. Businesses need to know how to take that content and ensure that people see it. To do that, you need to ensure each video you create is optimized for the search engines.
How to Make Video Reach Your Target Audience
With 75 percent of companies saying their videos are effective and 93 percent say the videos they create help customers to truly understand the product, most companies don’t know how to create a video and get it in front of the right audience. Here’s a breakdown of how to do that.
#1: Utilize Closed Caption
When you have closed captions on your videos, it is likely you’ll get more viewers. The reason is quite simple. A search engine cannot translate the graphic images on your videos into information it can use for indexing the video. However, they can use closed captions for this purpose. Of course, this also helps you to ensure your content is available to more people including those who may have hearing disabilities. It just makes sense.
#2: Create and Use Transcripts
Along the same lines comes the use of transcripts. First, recognize that your target audience cannot always watch a video with the sound up (think about all of those people at work!) Second, search engines can use the content from a transcript to help index your video. The addition of transcripts, according to a study done by Liveclicker, can increase your revenue by 16 percent because more people have access to the content. Transcripts do not have to be detailed and shouldn’t be riddled with keywords, but they should be on the page of your video.
#3: Add Subtitles to Your Content
More specifically, include multi-lingual subtitles to your videos to see another boost in indexing and effectiveness. When you have closed captions translated, you improve the number of people who can read and use those to make a buying decision about your product. This may help to increase watcher engagement by as much as 40 percent. And, the number of people who watch a video start to finish grows by as much as 80 percent.
What Should You Do Now?
If you are currently using video in your marketing plan, that’s fantastic. The next step is to insure that the search engines can find that video and place that video in front of the right people. To do that, take these three steps. It does not take long and it does not cost much to make these changes, but it can result in a variety of improvements for your video’s search engine ranking. And, ultimately, your video cannot be effective if you do not make it easily accessible to the target audience you’ve created that content for.
