Start integrating video into your SEO strategy

Sara says: “Integrate video content into your SEO strategy, be it long-form, short-form, vertical, horizontal, or square videos.”

You want to leverage video on the SERPs themselves and also on other platforms as well – like YouTube and TikTok. You basically want to create video content that you can also post on your website. For each of those, there are values that they are going to bring to your business.

We are past the way of thinking when we were just obsessed with blog posts and ranking in search with text. We want to rank with video as well because there's a high demand for it. Therefore, we also need to leverage other platforms and optimize for them – because there's YouTube SEO and TikTok SEO as well.”

What does Google’s new Perspectives filter mean for video?

“Google has launched the Perspectives filter on US mobile and it shows a lot of different content there. It's a new way of trying to get different or alternative views on the topic you're searching for and a lot of the content that's shown there is video.

If someone is looking for reviews or information about your brand or product, you definitely want to be there. One of the easiest ways to try to rank in the Perspectives filter is to create good video content – ideally short video, but it can also be long-form.”

Where does Google pull the Perspectives video content from and what type of video does it favour?

“It’s mostly from either TikTok or YouTube, and it's mostly short videos. When I did my research, I found some people saying that it will also feature long-form videos, but I haven’t seen a lot of them so far.

From what I’ve seen, it seems as though long-form videos might be less likely to rank but we have to be aware that correlation does not equal causation. It could just be that there are fewer long-form being created videos for certain topics.”

How can SEOs optimize their videos on YouTube, TikTok, etc., to appear more in the evolving SERP?

“The first step is to look at the assets you have. If you already have long-form videos, you can cut them into shorter ones, for example.

When it comes to the assets on your website, then you have to look at the schema. You need to have the right schema and you need to make sure that the video is indexed. Then, in a perfect world, you can add a transcript of that video as well. I also like to add subtitles, but that's mainly for accessibility. Adding a video transcription is great.

If we're talking about optimizing video on other platforms, there's a lot that goes into that. One thing I like to do is audit what you already have. If you don't have any video yet, then start publishing – and all the basics will still work: tags, titles, adding more information in the description box, etc. All of these basics are still there.”

Why is video becoming so much more important?

“There are a lot of reasons. First of all, Google launched the video indexing report last year, and they recently updated it with more information about issues that can impact your video indexing.

We also have the Perspectives filter, as we just mentioned, and a decent portion of that has video content. We already have an existing video filter too, and then we have YouTube shorts, TikTok, etc.

All of these things show that Google is very interested in video and they also show that users are very interested in video. TikTok has over one billion active users every month and all the content they're consuming is just video.”

How do you decide what content to start producing on video, particularly when you want to be featured in the Perspectives filter?

“Doing your keyword research – looking at what people are asking for and about in relation to your products and what they want to learn – and creating content to answer that is definitely a great place to start. You can get that data from keyword research tools, and you can check forums, Quora, Reddit, etc. Start there.

You can use tools like AnswerThePublic and AlsoAsked to find long-form questions that you can answer and give your perspective on through video. That would be a good way to do it.

Should SEOs be creating more video for all different page types on the website?

“You should definitely be putting video on your product pages. A lot of users would be interested in seeing your product in a video. When you go to an e-commerce fashion website, a lot of them are adding a video preview of the product. It shows someone wearing it and walking around with it, and you see how the product would look in real life.

You can even partner with influencers on video content for your products. You can send the product out to them and have them wear it, review it, and post videos that you can put on your product pages. ASOS did something similar with a photo rather than a video a few years ago. A girl had posted pictures of herself wearing an ASOS dress and she had received some cruel comments about it. ASOS took that same photo and used it on the product page on their website.

You also want video on your blog pages as well, and it doesn't need to be the video version of your blog. That can be an SEO hack, or a shortcut, because you can create that video with AI. However, in a perfect world, it should be something related to your blog. If you put it in the right place, you can actually get a video thumbnail in search which helps with CTR.

How do you measure the impact of video?

“There are two parts to it. If the video is on your website, you can check the video indexing report and you can look in Search Console. When you check the performance report in Search Console, you can filter by search appearance and select ‘video’ to see how your videos are doing in search – with impressions, clicks, etc. That's a great place to start.

You can also check how many video thumbnails or snippets you're getting in search. If that number is increasing, then that's also a good sign. It’s not a final business metric, it's just an internal SEO metric that would help you know that you're on the right track.

If we're talking about other platforms like YouTube or TikTok, at a surface level you can obviously look at views. However, if you go to your YouTube Creator Studio, you will have YouTube analytics that can give you some idea of what's happening on your channel and the activity there. That’s definitely a good place to look as well.”

How can you placate the fears of big businesses who might be concerned about adding too much personality to what their brand represents through video?

“Honestly, I would want video creators to have free reign and show more personality, but I know that's not realistic. Ultimately, there are always brand requirements for anything you create – be it a blog post, a newsletter, or whatever. There will always be brand requirements and you need to work around that.

There are going to be ways that you can integrate those brand requirements. Some B2B brands, for example, will let their internal team members make those videos because they understand a lot about the product. However, other B2B brands might not want to have a specific person hosting their videos. In that case, there are ways you can create whiteboard videos, cartoon videos, or other forms of animated videos.

There's always a way to find a balance between creating video and meeting your brand guidelines.”

Do you have any pet hates when it comes to video?

“I prefer short videos, and I think most people do. That's why TikTok is very popular.

I think the biggest issue for me is that it’s not as easy to create as something like a blog post, and that’s a big blocker. You need a plan, and you may need a set-up that you don't already have. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before creating video so not all businesses have this built-in part as part of their usual processes. It's not easy to go and tell a client that you want to create video if they haven't done that before. You need to practice if you want to get better. At the end of the day, your 100th video is always going to be a lot better than your 10th.

In what ways can your video and text content complement one another?

“You don’t always need to create a video based on your blog posts, you can also create blog posts based on your video content. AI can be really helpful there because you can use it to get a transcript of your video that will help you create those posts. That’s a very good approach.

I don't think we're leveraging the transcripts of videos enough. We’ve moved past the time when you would just upload a video on a video page. You need to have text and you need to use the transcript. We're lucky now because there are tons of tools that can help you pull that transcript.

There are also tons of tools that can help you cut those long videos into shorter ones that you can leverage and repurpose elsewhere. Another tool I will give a shout-out to is called Eightify. It's for YouTube, and it actually summarises your videos. You simply upload your video and you can get a summary that you can post into the description.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2024?

“Stop obsessing over backlinks. There's so much more that needs to be done, should be done, and will bring a lot more value than obsessing over backlinks.”

Sara Taher is SEO Manager at Assembly Global, and you can find her over at Sara-Taher.com.