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Videos are becoming increasingly important on the internet as users gain access to faster internet connections. Therefore, businesses should start thinking about video SEO and the strategy behind marketing video content on the internet. Videos are especially important in helping drive traffic to your website. Google and other search engines recognize that videos can offer high quality content, and take time and effort to produce. For this reason, they place a lot of importance on videos and see them as supporting signals for the quality of your site’s content.

Creating video content takes time. So, how we utilize the finished product to make sure it is driving traffic or sales on your site is crucial. The key is in marketing it successfully.

1. Link Building

   Once you have a video created and have shared it on your website or a 3rd party hosting site like YouTube, you will want to share it with the world. Building links back to your videos naturally so you do not incur any penalties with search engines is a great place to start. Sharing on social media channels so that your user base can help you spread the word rally works! Integrating the video into a blog post and promoting through other marketing channels is also key. There are endless possibilities when it comes to sharing your videos.

2. Video XML Sitemaps

   Video XML Sitemaps are very important for helping your video content be found. Video Sitemaps give search engines a definitive list of all the video content on your site in a format that gives them all the information they need in order to properly index all of your content. This is similar to your regular XML sitemap in making sure that all of the videos you have created can be found in their SERPs for the terms you are targeting. Not only will it help you get found in SERPs, it also gives you the opportunity to influence how your video entry will show on the various search result pages.

3. Choosing Keywords

   Just as with any SEO strategy, the keywords you choose are very important. There are a few places that the keywords you choose need to be carefully thought out. The first is the actual filename of the video. The search engines look at the filename and use it to determine what the video is about.

   Use a title that is catchy and easily remembered. In the case of YouTube, this refers to the title field when uploading a video.Certain services also offer keyword fields when uploading a video.

There have been new statistics coming out showing that Facebook is becoming the new go-to place to watch videos instead of YouTube. In fact, Facebook has actually surpassed YouTube in the amount on videos viewed on desktops in homes and businesses.

Facebook has been actively improving and focusing ontheir video capabilities by introducing playlists, video tabs, a featured video module for pages and the ability to embed Facebook videos across the web.

Does this mean you should no longer use YouTube for video marketing needs? The short answer is no! While Facebook is becoming increasingly popular, YouTube still has over 1 billion users. Most importantly, YouTube is still the world’s second largest search engine behind Google. So if your goal is to gain new customers or interest via a search, then YouTube still allows for great organic growth. Using keywords and making your video accessible via YouTube is still a very productive marketing tool to attract new interest.

It would be wise to continue to use YouTube, yet educate yourself on the new features that Facebook is offering and keep utilizing Facebook advertising. Without a doubt, Facebook video advertising is on the rise and more and more companies are using it as an advertising platform with positive results. Facebook offers a larger opportunity for engagement and shares, which is why more and more advertisers are turning to the social network for their video campaigns.

A happy blend of both platforms is the best path to take.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s unpaid results—often referred to as “natural,” “organic,” or “earned” results.

SEO plays a major role in the online success of a business, contributing to high rankings in the search results as well as helping with the branding of a company as well.

Considering that the majority of business and advertising is done online, the results that SEO can bring you are unmatched in the modern business world.

Here are some examples why investing in your SEO is a good idea.

1. It still works – First and foremost, the techniques employed to improve SEO still work. There are actually SEO case studies performed and they show time and time again that as long as you are focusing on optimal user experience while performing methodic SEO strategies, you will be rewarded with higher positioning and organic traffic.

2. It is cost-effective – Compared to the costs associated with other forms of online marketing such as PPC advertising, social media marketing, or purchasing leads for an email marketing program that may or may not be fruitful, SEO provides good ROI. While PPC may drive more revenue and social media may be more important for your image, your organic SEO in many ways remains a foundation of your online presence.

3. It is not going to stop working any time soon – Based on the way search engines appear to be developing, it is not likely that SEO will cease to be effective any time in the foreseeable future. On some level, even audio and video searches ultimately depend on keywords the same as traditional text-based content; this link ensures the continued success of SEO techniques as long as it exists. People no longer pick up the Yellow Pages to find a business anymore. The majority of information is found by entering a key word into a search engine, this includes reading reviews about companies, finding services offered and contact information.

4. Search engines grabbing more market share – Somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase. Do you want your business to be easily located online?Without organic SEO in place, people will have a very hard time finding you and will instead find your competitors. This equals a loss of revenue for you and increased revenue for your competition. Business can be tough and SEO gives you an edge. This leads us directly into point 5.

5. Your competitors are doing it – SEO is a never-ending process. If you’re not moving forward and improving yourposition, you’re losing important ground. That’s a simplefact of how the process works. Don’t let your competitors out maneuver you by ignoring the valuable tool that SEO is.

6. Rise of mobile bandwidth and local search optimization – Later this year, the amount of traffic delivered to mobile devices is expected to exceed that delivered to traditional desktop devices. Face it, we are a society that lives on our phones! With this dramatic explosion in mobile usage, a whole new world of effective SEO techniques have opened up for companies, such as local search optimization.

7. Not having a healthy content profile is damaging – With each and every update to its search algorithm, Google and other engines change the way they look at websites. Things which didn’t exist a few years ago, such as social media indicators, are now given fairly high importance in terms of their impact on your rankings. Not building a healthy content profile spread out months and years is potentially damaging to your business, as it is one of the factors Google evaluates when looking at your site.

Investing in organic SEO is more important now than ever before. Your business definitely needs to have an SEO strategy in place if you are interested in succeeding in terms of online marketing; it remains one of the single most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence.

Lack of website traffic is one of the most common challenges business owners can face. Many report having lost a significant percentage of their search traffic over the past year or two, and are continuously looking for new ways to drive relevant traffic to their site.

Here is a list of strategies that Forbes recommend that could help!

1. Focus on long-tail keywords – The days of focusing on a single keyword for each page are long gone. Make sure your posts include all the relevant terms and phrases related to your topic.
2. Start a forum on your website – An active forum can quickly begin ranking for long-tail keywords. They’re also great for decreasing your site’s bounce rate, increasing time-on-site, as well as building a community.
3. “Start a Facebook group that drives traffic to your site – Start a niche-specific group where members can ask questions and get support (and don’t forget to point them back to your site’s content where relevant).
4. Promote your blog posts to your email list – This doesn’t have to be the main focus of all your emails, but including a link or two back to your blog posts can considerably increase traffic, leads, and sales.
5. Answer a HARO query – Answering a pitch only take a few minutes, and can result in great PR, high-quality inbound links and referral traffic to your site.
6. Work on your headlines – Your headlines are what will get people in the door, particularly when you share your blog posts via social media; make sure they pique interest and clearly articulate the benefit to your readers.
7. Optimize your existing posts – Comb through your old posts to make sure they have unique and relevant title tags, URLS and meta descriptions.
8. Demote irrelevant Google sitelinks – While Google sitelinks are automatically generated, you can demote URLS you don’t want to show; this may increase the chances that the URLS you do want listed show up. You can do this from within Google Webmaster Tools.
9. Make the most of Facebook links – Be sure to include links back to your site in your About page, in your photo descriptions, in the comments of your posts (where relevant), and in your milestones.
10. Get on YouTube – YouTube drives the most engaged traffic out of all social media sites, with an average of 2.99 pages per visit.
11. Add text to your blog post images – Try including your post title and URL in your blog post images for optimal effect when pinned or shared.
12. Become a member of industry Facebook and LinkedIn groups – Offer valuable advice and info to build relationships and drive traffic to your site.
13. Arrange an advertising swap – Trade banner ads with a complimentary site in your niche.