Visual-led content marketing is gradually taking up the stage as more marketers are beginning to realize the impact of videos on post engagement and conversions.

A report from HubSpot showed that 54% of consumers prefer video content from their favorite brand.

Moreover, over 79% of the respondents from Wyzowl’s study claimed videos had influenced their purchasing decision.

But besides increasing your website’s engagement rate and even sales, videos can enhance your blog posts’ visibility on search engine ranking pages. And we are going to discuss how it does that below.

1.   Creates Link Building Opportunities

Link building is one of the top SEO strategies marketers use to boost a website’s authority and increase traffic.

During link building, another website owner references your web resource.

An example could be a video interview with a detailed transcript of their articles or even case studies.

Search engines like Google audit your website frequently and review these backlinks.

Since quality backlinks are a vital ranking factor, the more you get, the more your page’s position on SERPs gets a boost while your content receives more exposure.

So while videos and other animated visuals are not ranking signals, they can create opportunities for link-building when you embed them in your blog posts. And that helps your SEO.

Here are some actionable tips to follow when using videos to build backlinks:

●      Use a unique video piece

Your video should be unique and valuable for someone to want to link to your blog post. This is one of the strategies HubSpot and Ahrefs use.

They create textual content, build a relevant video that details the main topic, add it to the final post, and publish it together.

Other SEO marketers can then reference this video and link to the original post.

To create a unique video worth using by others, you must first assess your authority on the topic you want to address.

For example, it’s highly unlikely and irrelevant for a CRM company like HubSpot to suddenly create a video review of a beauty product and expect others to use it on their website.

The reason is that HubSpot is not a beauty brand and has fewer interactions with beauty products. So their opinions are negligible.

However, if Nivea or Colgate creates a video piece for their blog post, the results will be overwhelming, and they are likely to get more backlinks than HubSpot will.

Likewise, you should create video content on topics you know about or have experience using.

When creating videos, you should also prioritize what video type will fit best.

For example, video reviews on products usually receive more attention since your audience is highly interested in what other people have to say before making their purchase decision.

●      Your blog post can be the transcript.

Note that your video doesn’t always have to be the supporting content.

You can create video interviews with subject experts, business owners, and top decision-makers. Then transcribe the video into text.

Once you publish the interview on your blog, your video automatically becomes the main content while the transcript supports it.

This is important because some of your audience might have hearing difficulties, making it difficult to follow your video speech.

Adding a transcript helps them flow through the ideas shared. In turn, they and other SEO marketers can easily reference it for use.

●      Ensure the video is relevant to your post

Lastly, ensure your video content matches your blog text. Except in the cases of video interviews, your textual content makes up the main post.

So when creating a video for it from scratch, be sure you’re not going out of context and addressing other subject matters not in the main post.

And if you’re embedding another person’s video, probably from YouTube, ensure it aligns with your article’s central theme. You can edit your article or look for another video if it doesn’t.

2.   Brings up Your Page on Search

When you use Google’s search engine to look up your queries, the first page that comes back is the result page, also known as Google’s front page.

Below the search bar, you will notice some sub menus named “All, Images, Videos, Books…”.

Anytime your blog post comes up in the search results, Google will also display your video content on the “Video” page.

And most times, your blog post might not appear in the search result, but your embedded video can.

For example, TechTarget is not ranking high on the “All” page, but it tops the bar in the “Videos” section. Check the image below.

So that’s like an additional traffic source for your website, even if your article does not meet the standard SEO mark to rank high.

3.   Improves Blog Engagement Rates and Dwell Time

Adding visuals to your blog post naturally improves engagement and helps to retain your readers.

While Google does not take Dwell time as a ranking signal, other search engines like Bing do.

An improved engagement rate also means your posts get more shares than usual.

And the more your blog posts are shared, the more traffic comes to your website.

Besides increasing dwell time, using videos in blog posts can drastically reduce bounce rates.

People exit most web resources because of the blocks of text they see.

But when there is a video alternative, that can prompt them to keep coming back to your website.

Conclusion

Individual blog posts are a crucial component of your traffic-generating campaigns.

And that’s why you must make them visible on the front page of search engines like Google by adding videos. The higher the rank, the more traffic you get.

When creating your video, ensure you optimize it for link-building opportunities.

Adding an attention-grabbing thumbnail will also go a long way. Finally, keep the length in mind.