Branding in Business | Tips for Video to Increase SEO

Update 2015: Since the writing of this post, the Google Keyword Search Tool isn’t available to use in this way. All of the other information in this post is still accurate.

Many business owners, authors, speakers and entrepreneurs are simply stumped about how to rank well in search engines so that potential clients and customers can find their services and products. The answer, for most, can be creating video content that informs, engages and attracts clients while building your business credibility.

Shifting your thinking from how to rank to what to rank for can be a valuable exercise in creating a solid digital marketing strategy.

Five Simple Steps for Determining Video Content

1. Content Tools: Use the Google Keyword Search Tool to find out how clients and website visitors are currently landing on your site.  While this tool allows you to search keywords and find out how many people are searching for those terms, you can also enter your own professional website URL in the “Find Keywords” feature at the top of the page and Google will show you the keywords others have entered before your site was recommended to them.

2.  Research Technique: Using a spreadsheet or a word doc, keep track of the phrases or keywords that have local monthly searches of 2,000 or more and where the competition for those searches is medium or low.  The reason for staying away from high volume, high competition words is that an entrepreneur or small business will most likely not have the financial resources to rank highly in these areas during their building phase. But if you were to rank on the first page of Google for a relevant keyword with lower competition and convert some of those searches into clients or buyers, without advertising, activities that caused this would be worth the investment of your time, right?

3.  What to Search: I searched my own website URL and found that 18,100 monthly searches are being entered for the phrase “Tools for Twitter,” and Google tells me that the competition for this is “low.”  Now Twitter marketing and Twitter Tools are right in my business sweet spot.  I lecture on Twitter Tools and write about them often.  So I will put “Tools for Twitter” onto my list of videos I may want to create for my website and my YouTube Channel.

4.  How To Interpret the Results: Next, click on the link within the Google Keyword Tool and Google will show you a search page with the number of entries for that term in gray at the top of the page.  In this test case, “Tools for Twitter” has 1,560,000 results.  That’s a heck of a lot of competition for me to go up against in landing on the first page of searches for this term.  But I’m considering using video to demonstrate my expertise in this area, so now, I’ll go to the left hand side of the Google results page for this search and click videos.  Instantly, I see that the competition for this term in videos is significantly less, 180,000, but still steep.

5.  Claiming Your Spot on Top: Next, I’ll scroll down the page and see the dates when each of the ranking videos on the first two pages were created.  I can see that for this term, not all the ranking content is fresh.  This encourages me and I’ll place this “Tools for Twitter” title on my To Create list for videos.  I may create several and roll them out as a series.  Google values fresh or new content above other content and so I have a better chance of ranking for this phrase because not all of the content on page one or two of Google (for this phrase) is new.

That’s it.  I’ve used this strategy to rank on page one for many terms including a video I created for parents about “Facebook and Kids” where I rank in the #1 spot for this phrase.

I’d love to hear about your searches and the titles of videos that you’ll create.  Please share your findings and I’ll be glad to watch your videos and comment, which can also help ranking.  Remember to always give viewers a clear call to action, which may simply be “Please let me know what you thought of this video.”