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One of the best ways to get exposure to your web site is to have video rank a page of yours and lists that ranked result with a video thumbnail.
The video image thumbnails standout in the Google results and typically result in a higher click through rate.
But is it always a good thing?
A WebmasterWorld thread says not always. One SEO said:
We recently put a few videos on our site that play from our server. Google liked those and moved the positions a couple of spots higher but replaced the normal results with a video link.The problem is the clicks dropped 50%. Our niche is for buying people who look for certain products but they are not interested in videos.
Another one backed this user up and offered advice, saying
Same thing happened to me too. I had to move them to dedicated video pages.Create separate pages with videos that auto-play (just like a youtube page), add video-meta-tags to those pages, and create a video-sitemaps for them.
Add links to video pages from content pages (or Google might not index them). Use javascript to invoke a lightbox to play videos within the content page.
Do you find this to be an issue for you?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Jonathon
09/09/2011 01:18 pm
Separate pages with link to the videos is exactly what we have to do as well, to avoid the video result replacing the intended landing page, resulting in a noticeable decline in CTR. In B2B circumstances, this seems to be the trend.
Nick Stamoulis
09/09/2011 02:44 pm
It hasn't been an issue for my site, but I think creating the dedicated pages is a good solution for sites that are having this issue. You still get the value of the video on your site, but you keep your landing pages and click through rates intact.
Particia
09/09/2011 10:48 pm
This is actually interesting to take note of. I was told that you should have videos on your blog for more traffic. I guess it depend who your target market is and search market too.
Mae Loraine Jacobs
09/10/2011 01:12 pm
I agree with Patricia. Everyone who's into Internet marketing, specifically video marketing, should take note of this information. It hasn't happened to me yet or any of our business's clients, so this is a good heads-up. I think the best solution is to create a separate page for videos, if not find an excellent video platform (YouTube is still the best for me), and just provide links pointing to your channel.
Amelia Stevenson
09/10/2011 02:36 pm
Videos should be used properly. It's fine to place videos to garner more clicks. However, regarding sales and marketing, sometimes a video does not fit into the scheme of things. If a video is not needed, then don't use one.
Syed Khaled Hussaini
09/23/2011 08:27 pm
When you see the search keyword/phrase, you can almost immediately know what kind of information people are looking for. If it is simply research info/ guide/ etc then try using videos but if the query is advanced stage sales related, video probably is not a good idea, as they have already done their research and just want to look at specific product related info - pic, price, etc. In some industries it actually makes sense to use videos even on sales landing pages and so using on the purchase related terms won't be a bad idea then.