April 1

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Video & SEO

By Jason Khoo

April 1, 2020


Transcript

Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of SEO Talk and Tea

Today's conversation is how video and SEO work together. The reason why this is a very important conversation is because video is becoming a giant of marketing. More and more companies and businesses are using video for their marketing because it's so easy to make videos, whether it's through a phone, camera, DSLR or your webcam. It's very much easier, and even this right here is a video. So it's really beneficial, I think, for viewers and our fans to kind of understand how video and SEO work together.

So again, let's jump into the tea first because this is SEO Talk and Tea. We have a chrysanthemum tea. I want to show it to you guys but it's going to fall out. I don't even think you can see it, but it's a chrysanthemum tea. It's a [inaudible 00:00:46]. That's a chrysanthemum flower that's dried and then you can pour hot water and enjoy it. Great, because there's no caffeine in it, and also it's a kind of sweet, even though there's no real sugar in it. But this has a sweet, flowery taste to it.

But let's go ahead. I'm already starting this brewing process, so let's get this show on the road and start talking about video and SEO. The reason why this conversation is important is because I think there's this belief that video inherently helps SEO, and if you've watched my video about SEO and social media, it's very much similar in that a lot of assumptions are made that are just unfounded. There are a lot of articles out there that talk about how video and SEO work well together, that video will really help your SEO. But there's not much said on how, and I feel like a lot of people run with the idea that video inherently helps SEO because if a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth 10,000 words. I don't know, whatever you want to say.

The point is, though, video is difficult in that Google and technology are still learning how to better understand different types of media, and so the easiest media for us to understand is written text. And Google and Yahoo and all the companies have been functioning with written text for a very long time. Now, where video is different is that yes, Google can live transcribe a video, but they can't understand the facial reactions, the general sound, the general lighting, the general, every essence and nuance of this video they can't understand just yet. So what a lot of people think, though, is that oh, because video takes so much more media, bandwidth time, it's just so much more richer a level of content, we must get a benefit from SEO. And that's not really the case because there's three factors.

One, like I said, the technology just isn't there for them to understand. Two, remember, videos are uploaded on the websites. So something I want to focus on is when you upload a video, it's probably going to be on YouTube or Vimeo and if not those two, some private business hosting platform. But let's just say YouTube or Vimeo for ease of conversation. If you upload on YouTube or Vimeo, then you will have to share and embed that video onto your site. That's where the issue is. First, it's an embed code. If you've ever seen an embed code, it's a long line of code. It isn't some massive line of code with a video. Therefore, it's not like your site is benefiting from this massive amount of text or code or anything for the SEO. Second, it's an embed. That means that you are sharing a YouTube video onto your site. The video is hosted on YouTube.

That means YouTube gets the benefit of having that video, not you. What an embed does, it tells Google, "I am sharing this media or information from another website and I give credit to them." So even if the video is uploaded on your own channel, because on YouTube your site doesn't get the value of that video that YouTube does.

That's one factor that influences how video helps through SEO where it actually doesn't, and that's why it's because of the mean. The third, video will actually slow down your web site. Not only is the video not hosted on your web site, third, it will slow down your site. It takes so much more extra bandwidth to play a video on your site, even if you embed from YouTube or Vimeo, it still will slow down the site. Slow site speed does affect negatively your SEO.

It's not to say that video is bad for SEO. I'm just saying I want to clear up some assumptions. Where video can help SEO is in its execution. Video is a great tool in the tool belt, but you have to know how to use the tool. Where video is great is that video packs a huge content punch. And what I mean by that is that a five minute video I believe is about 750 words. Five minutes of talking is 750 words. Do you know how long it takes someone typically to write 750 words on a keyboard? It generally takes people about 30 minutes to an hour. Five minutes can get you that same thing. Video is great because it can help you scale written content much faster, just like we do with these videos. We film these videos, transcribe them, and put them on the website.

Even though the video is hosted on YouTube, YouTube can have that, fine. We take the transcription of the written text, publish that on our website with YouTube embedded. Therefore, our site gets the value of that written text added to our SEO value. Therefore, Google [inaudible 00:05:21] can read that text, give us some benefit because it's written content that is relevant to our business. It's a relevant topic to SEO because we're an SEO company and if you are filming a video for your business, you're probably talking about a lot of topics, keywords you're trying to make. All that will help. Video is great and it helps scale content. But video in itself does not just inherently give you SEO value.

Those are things that I would hope help clarify it. So again, video in its own self does not help SEO, but utilizing it in the right strategies with the right tools and right execution can, in the sense that if you transcribe them, you interlink it on your website, it will help your SEO.

I hope that does clarify a little bit how video and SEO do work together and they don't work together. If you want to learn more information, feel free to reach out. This topic in its own right deserves its own line of logging and videos and we can kind of go into more detail. Or if you have any specific questions, please feel free to reach out.

But if you liked this video, please like and subscribe and I'm going to go ahead and pour this tea because I totally forgot I did earlier. I'm going to go ahead and enjoy some tea. Again, thank you guys for joining us today. I hope you find it valuable and I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks.

Jason Khoo

About the author

Jason is founder and CEO of Zupo, which is an Orange County based SEO consulting agency helping construct powerful long term SEO strategies for our clients. Jason also enjoys multiple cups of tea a day, hiding away on weekends catching up on reading and rewatching The Simpsons for the 20th time.

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