Website video – the history.
The internet is now a massive part of everyday life, and popularly referred to as the fourth utility, after gas, electricity and water.
In the early years the internet soon became a useful information sharing tool, then came those searchers who wanted to spend their relaxing hours simply browsing (Often referred to as “Internet Idlers”). Advertisers and marketers quickly saw an opportunity to gain impulse sales from carefully targeted advertising on their favourite sites. One such website that gained early popularity with these idlers is YouTube.
Google now states that six out of ten people prefer video platforms to live TV (Source: Google Data Global Q4 2015). Today YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the internet next to Google. And a popular source of videos for websites.
YouTube is one of the greatest success stories of the internet. The very first video uploaded to YouTube on 23rd April 2005 and was titled “Me at the zoo”. It features the co-founder Jawed Karin at the San Diego Zoo. This video can still be viewed on YouTube.
Within 18 months of this first video being uploaded YouTube was receiving 20m visits per month, having entered into a marketing partnership with NBC in June 2006.
On the 9th Oct 2006 YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65billion in shares. An astonishing success story and proof of the massive demand for video.
In the early Google years Larry Page, co-founder of Google made the following prediction:
“By 2009 every business will need a website …
in 2014 every business will need a video …
and by 2019 every business will need its own online TV channel”
How important is video to a website ranking on Google?
Video content on a website is now more important than ever. Just placing short explainer videos on a website can increase conversion rates by +80%. Video will increase the visitor time on page and this can have a positive impact on your search engine ranking; Google will see the page is more relevant to the search term and increase the ranking accordingly.
Producing a high-quality video, even with a mobile phone, is simple these days with free, user-friendly software available to download. Though to maximise the success of your video marketing efforts you may consider approaching a professional video marketing company to manage the creation and distribution of your video content.
What is a YouTube Vanity Channel?
One great way to show off your company video is YouTube’s vanity channel (A channel with a chosen keyword or the company name embedded in the URL). To qualify the channel must have more than 500 subscribers and have been showing videos online for longer than 30 days. Nothing is free, so it will take some work to achieve these requirements, but after jumping these barriers a channel that can boast a vanity URL will look much more professional.
You will need to target those keywords that have true commercial intent. Do your keyword research then use the results to influence your subject choice and your video tags.
Naturally, you will want to link visitors to your YouTube channel through to your own website. Having more links to your website means more credibility, increased search engine trust and improved rankings.
YouTube is not the only video sharing website available. Also take a look at; Vimeo, Dailymotion, Facebook and many more.
The importance of having control over all your digital content (Video /PDF’s / White Papers / MP3 files / Presentations etc.) is becoming paramount for businesses of all sizes. The need to guide the viewer through their digital journey and keep them on your content is more important than ever.
Professional digital marketing agencies like ours can advise on how to streamline the hosting, uploading and distribution of all your video and digital marketing communications, generating reach and engagement to your target audience with measurable results.
A platform is now available that uniquely integrates all forms of digital media, be it video, images, text, PDF’s, galleries and even live streaming. This management platform can be embedded directly into an existing website effectively giving the business their very own YouTube or TV channel.
This platform has a built-in video newsletter and social media integration, a paywall facility to monetise your traffic and comprehensive data capture for deep analysis. It can also be ideal for e-learning and training programs. For example a PowerPoint presentation can run simultaneously next to an on-demand or live stream broadcast.
Google reports that over 50% of search traffic is now for video, and predicts this will rise to over 90% by 2018.
Create quality video with valuable content for your website, and then manage the distribution of this video content professionally across the internet for your web business to grow from strength to strength.
