Video Vantage: Episode 3 – Unlocking the Power of Video for SEO

Video Vantage: Episode 3 – Transcript

Intro

Mark

Hi, there! I’m your host, Mark O’Connor, and this is episode three of Video Vantage: your insider a guide to video marketing. Last time we spoke briefly about the role that SEO and social media algorithms play in digital media strategies. These terms get thrown around a lot in the world of marketing, but what exactly do they mean, how do they work, and what impact do they have on video production?

This episode is a bit more on the techie side, so to help you navigate it, I’m delighted to be joined by technology and web specialist Alexander McGill. Alex is the strategist and M.D of Guerilla, a digital consultancy and design solutions business. Based in County Kildare, their clients include Ace Enterprise Park, the Institute of Sustainability Studies and Torc Candles. Prior to starting Guerrilla, Alex worked in a number of Irish agencies such as Together Digital and Lucky Beard. Here he worked on projects for organisations such as the RSA and the ESB.

Interview

Mark

Alex, thanks very much for coming on Video Vantage today, it’s great to have you on the show. Can I begin by asking you, and it might seem like, you know, a question that some people are afraid to ask because everyone knows what the term is, but maybe they don’t. What exactly is SEO?

Alex

So SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. There’s quite a lot to it, but it’s obviously a very important part of your website’s strategy. So obviously search engines are the likes of Google and Bing, being you’re kind of key players in this part of the world. But Search Engine Optimisation is making sure that your website is set up and essentially readable by the search engines, to allow them to kind of index your content and to determine whether or not it’s shown to the people who are searching for things online.

Mark

And when people say good SEO, like, what is that? I suppose for context then, what’s bad SEO?

Alex

So there’s a lot of kind of best practice that’s out there. And the thing about SEO is that it is constantly evolving and it constantly changes, and it’s also one of the kind of best kept secrets within the likes of Google and Microsoft. They don’t want you to kind of know exactly how their algorithms work. And there’s constant updates that are happening, to the things.

Mark

And when you say it’s been updated, like from what – like what would it be on, say, week two of a [month] for example?

Alex

So it would be more kind of every couple of months, the search engines would bring out updates and changes to their algorithms, which will have an impact in terms of what sort of content ranks. So, for example, over the last couple of months there has been a surge in AI generated content online. And to ensure that the results and the content that is being delivered to people who search for things online is, you know, relevant and it’s good quality, there will be tweaks and changes around what they rank and consider as ‘good’ content.

Mark

Okay. And how can one, you know, make their content rank well, like what’s a good SEO practice?

Alex

So from a kind of bare minimum or standard is to make sure that there’s correct titles and description set up, on each of your web pages on your website. Making sure that the content on the page is correctly tagged. So, there are these things called Heading Tags on websites. And they rank from H1 to H6 based on kind of order of priority of content on the page. So making sure that your headings aren’t using H1 tags throughout the whole page, but that your content is kind of broken down in it. And then of course, making sure that your site is searchable by the robots, or the ‘bots’ that they use or the search engine ‘spiders’ is what they use to be called as well… Making sure that your site is accessible and readable to those too.

Mark

And so captioning is very important and we touched on captioning in the previous episode. One example given was having, Instagram is now reading for longer captions or longer titles for content. Is there a danger of maybe saturating that with keywords for the sake of it, or is that something… Would that be good or bad practice?

Alex

In terms of keywords?

Mark

Keyword spam I guess!

Alex

Yeah, I mean the quality of the content is important, whether it is on a social media platform or on a website. So again, just kind of hammering in a specific keyword, such as ‘web design’ into a page isn’t really going to, you know, get you any sort of brownie points with search engines. But having some relevant content and also thinking about long tail search queries, which means rather than just people searching specifically for ‘web design’, someone might be searching for ‘web designers in South Dublin’ or, you know, ‘how do I get my website ranking well in search engines?’ So looking at those longer queries and kind of working your content towards those.

Mark

And if the search engines can only read keywords then how do they read imagery or videos or that type material?

Alex

So one of the challenges and you know, search engines are starting to get a little bit better at this, through a thing called OCR, which is Optical Character Recognition. So that’s where it can pick up text content within images and videos. But it’s always best to assume that, you know, the search engines and algorithms as a whole can’t read any content that’s kept within an image or a video.

So, you know, using things like, you know, meta descriptions on other individual videos that are embedded onto a page and using that content to basically get it readable by a machine.

Mark

From the sounds of it, it’s tricky enough to get videos and photos to be readable to a search engine. Is it worthwhile having? Like, what’s the point of having that type of content then?

Alex

Well when it comes to any sort of digital creation, we’re not doing it for the robots or the machines. We’re doing it for people because they’re ultimately our target audience and whilst obviously algorithms and, you know, ranking metrics can change, people remain largely the same over time. So in terms of that, you know, storytelling is a huge and important part of any sort of content strategy, whether it’s, you know, through a social media channel or through a website.

And then that’s why you should, you know, use video and kind of leverage the power of that to convey that story through any kind of medium that you’re working with.

Mark

So with all that in mind then, what’s a good practice for video content on a website?

Alex

So when it comes to video, it depends entirely on kind of what sort of business you have. If you have, let’s say, a very specialised or highly technical product or service, using video to explain something that’s, you know, highly technical or highly specialised, is a good way to engage with your website visitors in a efficient and concise way.

You know, people aren’t going to sit there and read lots and lots of text content on a page. So being able to convey your ideas and show the benefits and advantages of your product or service through video is a highly effective tool.

Mark

So as a web developer yourself, would you recommend your clients invest in video production as part of their broader marketing strategy, not just for a website, but in general?

Alex

Yeah, it’s as important as text content on a website. You know, having video as part of your overall content strategy on a website is hugely beneficial.

Mark

So not only does it help the customer experience in terms of how they can learn more about the company that they’re looking at on their website, how does it help the website itself in terms of performance and searchability?

Alex

So for your, let’s say, one of the metrics that you might measure on your website is bounce rates. A bounce rate is, you know, how many people click on to another page on your website. So low bounce rates mean that a large portion of people will, you know, engage with the content and click to explore another part of your website. Whereas a high bounce rate would mean someone has closed your website or moved off it.

Mark

They’ve moved on. They’re no longer interested.

Alex

Yeah, exactly. So using, you know, a medium such as video to kind of captivate and engage will encourage people to find out more about your product or service.

Mark

So I guess the more videos, the better then on a website. Is there a particular type of video in terms of promotional video, explainer video that tends to perform well on websites? I know it’s going to vary from business to business, but in your experience working for different clients, what tends to perform well?

Alex

The likes of client testimonials and, you know, kind of profile videos of people in the business tend to do well because, obviously service based B2B businesses are very much built on relationships and trust. So if people are able to get a sense of kind of who you are and how you work and what your clients have to say about you, then that’s obviously very beneficial for your brand.

Another good piece of video content is educational or instructional content. So using video as a way to kind of record yourself either giving kind of a lesson or going into a specific topic, can be a great use of video on a website too.

Mark

So kind of ‘tutorial’ type information?

Alex

Yeah, tutorial type information. If you have any specific classes or modules that you’re delivering, to, you know, condense the information from either text based documents or slides into, you know, an engaging video.

Mark

And I guess down the line, then you could actually build up a library of educational content behind a paywall of sorts. People could become subscribers and access the lessons there as well. So it would be a good passive form of income in that sense, after the investment of the initial video shoot itself. That could all live on a website that people could access and could be part of another product offering.

Alex

Yeah, exactly. So thinking about how to, you know, make better use of your own time rather than kind of repeating the same information over and over again to a live audience. It is good to invest in video and to kind of bring that content together into an educational library.

Mark

Yeah. And even if you are hosting in-person lessons, for example, or whatever it may be, a workshop, having a pre-recorded video that you can send to the attendees after a fact with like a summary of the points, just helps the overall customer experience.

Alex

Yeah, of course, the likes of webinars, you know, having the recorded video saved afterwards, can be beneficial for some people who can’t join for whatever reason for the live session as a way of generating leads. You can put a recording of that live session, you know, behind a form that captures someone’s name and email address and they can go back and revisit that content.

Alex

So, you know, a live session or a live recorded session can, you know, become three months worth of content?

Mark

Yeah and all the time building up your database in the meantime of fresh leads and repurposing the content to keep them hooked. So in your experience then, video is obviously a significant part of what the final web package is. For clients interested in getting a new website and obviously having video material on it, generally speaking, what type of a percentage would the video spend be for a web development project?

Alex

Video would obviously make up a of part of your overall content strategy for the website. Typically speaking, in terms of a web development project, content could take around 30% to 35% of the budget for that project. So content should be, you know, one of the most important pillars of any sort of web development project.

Because people are coming onto your website to read your content, to find out more about your business. And if you’re not providing that to them, then you’re kind of missing a big trick when it comes to your website.

Mark

So it’s definitely a worthwhile investment then, because then obviously you can use it on the website, but you can use it on social media then as well.

Alex

So any sort of engagement with the videographer can be done strategically so that you’re getting a lot of material for your website, whether it’s, direct camera shots, testimonials, you know, B-roll footage just to kind of use as a design asset.

Mark

Yeah, a lot of assets can be reused and repurpose for other forms of content down the line. So even though if it’s part of a web development project, if you’re smart about it and the video production company you hire assists with that, you could end up with a lot of content from a single day’s shoot potentially, that could be used across the board.

Alex

Yeah, of course. And you’re also keeping a level of consistency between, you know, what material is on your social media platform and what’s on your website, which is…

Mark

And that ties into the brand establishments as well. It’s an even message across the board. Everything’s consistent, which is very important as well. Nothing worse than having a video that’s shoddy on one platform and great on the other. It doesn’t line up.

Alex

Yeah, of course.

Mark

And would you consult with the video production company of a web project that you’re working on? For the technical aspect, you know, what do you need to work on your side? What should the client be aware of?

Alex

Yeah. So from a web development and web performance perspective, I would have a number of requirements, whether it’s video format and making sure that the content that I’m receiving from a videographer is in the correct format and it’s optimised for web. The other thing too is, obviously, video is a very impressive medium to have in your website and can obviously be very slick and very high quality, but you do need to balance that with load times on your website itself.

Mark

And how would you go about ensuring that?

Alex

So if you have a video on your website, it’s important to make sure that it’s hosted in a location that’s properly optimised for video. So something to keep in mind is, you know, your typical web server isn’t set up and configured to host video content. So it’s important to host your videos on a platform such as Vimeo or YouTube and embed them into your website.

Mark

So you can kind of piggyback on it then.

Alex

Yeah, exactly. So these platforms are obviously fully optimised and set up to host video. So it’ll mean that your page load speeds aren’t going to be impacted by video files loading in the background of your website. Another thing to consider too is, if you have a video file that’s 100MB and it’s hosted on your own server – every time someone loads a page with that video embedded into it, they’re downloading 100 megs worth of data.

Mark

So they’re going to eat through their data very quick!

Alex

Exactly. If you’ve got a hosting package or a server that has limited bandwidth on it, you could, with ten page views, use up a gigabyte worth of bandwidth.

Mark

Yeah. Okay. So it’s a good point to keep in mind then definitely. So we’ve covered a lot of ground there today on the whole web development process and the integration of video material and the benefits of it as well. What would be your key takeaway for someone looking to invest in a similar project?

Alex

I think the key takeaway would be to put as much importance on video content as you would text or any other content on your website. It is a fantastic way to engage your audience and to drive and communicate the benefits of your product or service.

Mark

And speaking of communication, how can someone get in touch with yourself?

Alex

So you can connect with me on LinkedIn, under Alexander McGill. Or visit my website Guerrilla.ie

Mark

Nice Alex, that’s great! Thanks so much for coming on the show today, I really appreciate it!

Alex

Thanks Mark!

Outro

Mark

Over the last few episodes of Video Vantage, we’ve focused on marketing strategy and why it’s important to invest in video as a tool to promote your business. But what about actually presenting to camera and all of the steps that go into producing a video in the first place?

In the next episode, we’ll meet Maureen McCowen, a communication and presentation skills specialist, who helps business professionals and teams unlock her speaking confidence – so make sure to tune in!

If you have any questions about the topics in today’s episode, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via the Media Mill website at www.mediamill.ie

Until then, I’ve been your host, Mark O’Connor, and this has been Video Vantage. I’ll see you in the next episode!