Do Explainer Videos Help SEO?
-
My company makes explainer videos. I often come across a lot of (seemingly) inflated & unprovable stats, pertaining to explainer videos, from other companies.
This article claims that "Having an explainer video on your web page makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results"
Is there any real data to back up such a claim? Do explainer videos really help SEO? How?
-
That makes a lot of sense - it's kind of what I figured: videos don't help you rank better by themselves.
I feel like the claim, "Having an explainer video on your web page makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results" is definitely misleading. As an explainer video company, we want to understand these things and provide more clarity to our clients up-front regarding Video + SEO.
-
Thanks for the resources! Very helpful.
-
Thanks for the answer and the advice! We've recently been focusing on SEO and marketing tactics for our clients, as they use their explainer videos that we made for them. We strive to make effective videos, not just "good" videos.
-
I definitely understand the purpose and usefulness of an explainer video. As I mentioned, that's what my company, Wick Video, does
Not to stray off topic, but I think "going viral" is something you can't really plan for - and not really the purpose of an explainer video - the main purpose is to convert more leads.
-
Jeremy,
I'm going to answer "yes", but only because I tweaked your question a bit to "Can SEO help explainer videos reach more people?" As Moosa pointed out, (explainer) videos are just another form of content that search engines and other sites can make readily available to people at a moment when they might be most likely to consume it. As an obvious example, if Google determines that a certain video is among the best answers to a searcher's query, it will list that video more highly in their results and the searcher can click through to experience it.
A difference between video and other content, especially web page content, is that video has places in addition to traditional search engines like Google and Bing, where a searcher may go to find it--places such as youtube, vimeo, facebook, etc. As mentioned in the article you referred to, people spend a lot of time at these sites and spend substantial amounts of time watching videos.
But videos do take some amount of written content and meta data associated with them in order for search engines to associate their message with particular searches. And for even broader reach, videos need to have a reason for people to share them with others. These are the SEO-type factors that many webmasters overlook and the factors that sources such as your article seem to take for granted.will happen. The truth is that (understandably) most webmasters don't have a clue of how to associate their video with proper content/meta data and most explainer videos have little to no "share it others" value--either because tools provided by the video creation platform don't make it possible or because the creator just isn't very good at making sharable videos.
As there are now many, many companies that make explainer videos easily available today, a differentiator between those companies would be if they also promoted a service that maximizes the video's visibility for the client. Such a service would delve into the heart and soul of the question that the video is meant to answer to ensure that it is, in fact, answering the right question for the right audience; it would ensure that the right vocabulary is utilized in associated copy and meta data; it would ensure that it is uploaded to theme-appropriate location on the web; and might even provide outreach to webmasters who might be willing to repost or link to the video--all the the SEO-type things that actually make it possible for a video to reach an audience beyond those who might otherwise just have come across it by accident.
-
Lets look at it a different way.
DOES YOUR SITE NEED OR BENEFIT FROM A VIDEO
if the answer is yes, then create one, if no, then don't.
Don't just create content for the sake of it, that way, when you do create a video and it actually serves a purpose then it has much more chance of going viral.
As the name suggests, explainer videos are a great way of presenting a difficult process, or helping people visualise a journey. Take a look at your support emails or FAQ's, what are the common pitfalls for your customers? could you merge all your FAQ's into an explainer video? Chances are, your competitors will have the same issues and so will their customers, if you solve your problems with an explainer video, you also solve theirs....viola your video is going viral.
Some reading:
-
Yes, I also agree with MoosaHemani.
Additionally, would like to mention few resources which you may find helpful- 10 Video SEO Tips That Can Truly Impact Your Rankings
-
Forget explainer videos, does having a video on the website directly increases the chances to get better visibility in search engines? And the straight answer to that question is, NO!
There are lots of BUT attach with it though!
For instance, that video goes viral and you get lots of link back to the website and that page and as a result you get better rankings. Yes it all happened because of that video but directly that video didn’t really help the page get better rankings.
Another idea could be, people (bloggers within your industry) uses that video and as a credit gives you a link back that as a results help you get better rankings.
What I mean to say is that video itself alone cannot help you get better rankings but its just a content of the website that when go viral can produces links back to the website that have a direct impact on rankings.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help Me Change My Client's Mind
My client wants to build a second site to provide targeted links for SEO to his main site. He's interested in buying a TLD with some near topic authority/links and then build the second site's authority up from there. He is clear that this could get him in trouble for a link scheme, but thinks it can all be hidden from Google. Off the top of my head I was able to recall a few of the pain-in-the-neck things you'd have to do to not get caught, but he seemed unconvinced. I recall you'd have to have: Different registrar Different contact/WhoIs Different site host Different G/A, GWT Logging into second's site's G/A, GWT with different IP address not used for main domain With the exception of the last one, he didn't seem to think it would be too hard. Aren't there more difficult maneuvers required for hiding this from Google? I want to be able to point out to him how ridiculous this low integrity effort will be, without losing the client. Thanks! Best... Darcy
Algorithm Updates | | 945010 -
Having 2 domains with same name - Impact on SEO
Hi AllAs we still dwindle with the rankings not coming in line with the efforts.I have a question: We have 2 websites 1. http://www.example.com/ (which lost traffic and rank in Jan 2013). So we assumed that it was due to some penguin penalty. So we worked on disavow extra but nothing actually helped.Though there was no manual penalty mentioned in the GWT. Frustrated with this we thought of having another website 6 months back: 2. https://example.org/ - we did all the right things and by the book. But we are not seeing ranking here too. We did backlink analysis on all competitors and worked on only quality links they had. So all our links are highly highly relevant. But still the ranks are not moving beyond third page...in fact they moved to 6-7 page in last 2-3 days. Please suggest .. 1. is it due to same name of domain (our brand name) causing the issue. If yes should we go for 302 or 301 redirect to save ourselves from any penalty that our last website may have got. We can not leave that name unattended as our cataloges etc have that website mentioned. i will expect a scientific reply here not gut feeling please. 2. Is it to do with .org domain extension that it should not be with commercial organizations like us Kindly reply at the earliest Regards Aman
Algorithm Updates | | Aman_1230 -
Timeline for 301 Redirects to Take Full Effect in SEO Rankings?
Hey, I am working on transitioning a website and all of my current URL's will be slightly changed (moving to dynamic pages). I understand that I will need to 301 redirect all the old pages to their new counterparts but I would like to know how long it will take for the 301 redirects to take full effect in the search rankings. I ask because my site is an e-commerce site that receives 90% of it's business in January and the transition would take place December 15th. If my search rankings are not back up to par by January 1st then I will take a drastic hit to revenue. Please help this SEO noob out!
Algorithm Updates | | Stew2221 -
How Do I Optimize with Google's Video Search?
Hi everyone, I am looking here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/schema and I don't fully understand. Could someone please explain, step by step, what I have to do to optimize for Google video search? I.e. Step 1 do this Step 2 do this. I don't fully understand Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Does articles for SEO purposes have a minimal and maximum word count in ordered to be crawled/indexed by Google and other search engines?
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Non .Com or .Co Versus .ca or .fm sites - In terms of SEO value
We are launching a new site with a non traditional top level domain . We were looking at either .ca or .in as we are not able to get the traditional .com or .co or .net etc . I was wondering if this has any SEO effect ? Does Google/Bing treat this domain differently .Will it be penalized ? Note : My site is a US based site targeting US audience
Algorithm Updates | | Chaits0 -
How to write a good resourceful SEO enabled article
We have our saas based website - most of our online customers are those who keep coming back to us and my GA is full of their footprints. I completely want to concentrate on getting hold of those who might really need our software and as of now are not able to find them . Including keywords through which people might want to find us is one of the ways. Next how do I publish that to the majority of the users to find and get traction better on that article or post? Would posting links to facebook twitter etc and getting people to find those articles there and link back and come on our main website to read it - will this help? We sell cloud based software but have various domains where our customers can make use of it. There are at least 5-10 of them. We don't have content at all on our website. In a few simple steps how can I get started with this - Content generation **Linking back the content ** Generating good foot falls from users to those cotent Notching up on google for those content page A detailed insight would prove much helpful Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | shanky11