Video is an excellent way of getting your message across to your intended audience. Even videos shot on a mobile phone can create credibility, and if you are marketing online, credibility is crucial to your success.
Many marketing people are scared of producing videos. They think it is too hard, too expensive, or that they won’t be able to have the high production values that their cashed-up brand name competitors enjoy.
The truth is that in many cases those shaky little videos that people put on their web sites work exactly because they are a bit rough around the edges and a little gritty.
They look real, they look authentic, they look credible.
Have a look at this web page for a local plastering and painting company (one of our training clients) – http://ideaspp.com.au/testimonials.html .
Their testimonial page is a wall of videos from real people. The people in these videos aren’t film stars, they aren’t fashion models, in fact they look a lot like you and me. They are real clients giving real testimonials.
For SEO these sorts of videos help get better rankings. They help because they keep visitors on the page and if people spend a long time on a page, Google sees this behaviour and tends to rank such pages higher in the search results.
The SEO industry term for this is “engagement object”. An engagement object is just something that keeps people on that page.
It could be a video, some images, a quiz, an infographic or even just several hundred words of well-crafted copy. So long as it “engages” the reader.
Makes sense if you think about it. If you were Google wouldn’t you rank a page that people spend a few minutes on higher than a page where most people click away within a few seconds?
