You could have the greatest online store in the world, but what good is it if nobody even knows that it’s out there? SEO reduces this problem by increasing your online visibility and helping customers to find you more easily. The big problem with SEO is that online merchants often just don’t know where to start.
“Should I write a blog? Should I invest in Adwords? Should I collect reviews?”
You’ve probably asked yourself all of these questions and yes, these factors are all important. But if you’re really serious about hitting that top spot on Google’s results page, you need to stand out from your competitors. Your SEO needs to be a cut above the rest – and that’s where ecommerce videos come in.
Ecommerce videos are more than just a pretty face, they actually have a really big impact on SEO. One big factor in search engine algorithms is the authority of your page: the higher your authority, the higher your page will rank. Of course there are too many influences on page authority to discuss in one blog post, so I’m going to choose a couple of factors and explain how ecommerce videos make an impact.
Ecommerce Videos and Link Building
The impact of ecommerce videos
The number of inbound links to your page affects your authority. A great way to build links is to create content that users want to share, because every share is another inbound link to your page. This is where ecommerce videos will give your online shop an edge: according to Simply Measured, videos are shared 1200% more than both text and links combined.1 This means that by integrating an ecommerce video, it’s much more likely that users will share your content, thus the number of inbound links to your page will increase.
Video integration considerations for SEO
There’s an important consideration if you want to maximise link building, and it’s about compatibility. A study by Invodo found that 92% of mobile viewers share video, which means that it’s your responsibility to ensure that your ecommerce video can be played on all devices – especially on mobile. If your video can’t be viewed on mobiles, you’re excluding a large amount of your video sharing audience and you’re not making the most of your link building opportunities.
Ecommerce Videos, Dwell Time and Bounce Rates
The impact of ecommerce videos
DemoUp’s statistics show that the average time that a viewer will spend watching an ecommerce video is between 30 – 120 seconds.2 This means that if you integrate an ecommerce video into your online shop, a video viewer will stay on your page for this amount of time. Why is this relevant? Well, another influence over your page’s authority is dwell time, which is the amount of time that a visitor will stay (or ‘dwell’) on your page. Search engines assume that if a visitor stays on a page for a long time, there is a lot of relevant information to take in thus the page is allocated a higher authority.
Video integration considerations for SEO
Think carefully about where on the page you place your ecommerce video. Most visitors aren’t patient enough to look around your page for a video, so ensure that you position the video above the fold of the page so it’s clear that it’s there. It’s important to do this in order to keep your bounce rate down, because a high bounce rate will counteract all that hard work you put in to improve your dwell time.
Ecommerce Videos and Rich Snippets
The impact of ecommerce videos
If there is a video on your page, it will appear as a thumbnail next to your page description in the search engine results page. This is called a video rich snippet. A rich snippet is something that appears alongside the page description in the results page, for example Google will also display reviews as a rich snippet. Now, according to Reelseo, videos in Google’s universal search receive 41% higher click through rates than plain text results.3 That proves that users love video, enough said.
Video integration considerations for SEO
Don’t host your video on YouTube. Can you see the differences in videos hosted on YouTube and videos actually embedded into your page? The YouTube hosted video will take you to YouTube, the video embedded into your product page will take you to your online shop. Have a look:
Video hosted on YouTube:
Video embedded using an online video platform:
If you’re still not convinced by the power of ecommerce videos then read this one last point to take away: Forrester found that for a keyword search in which Google offers video results, a video in the index is 50 times more likely to end up on Google’s first page of results than a text page in the index.4 Those are some pretty good odds.
1. Simply Measured
2. DemoUp
3. Reelseo
4. Forrester
5. Image 1: Share Button copyright GotCredit
6. Image 2: Time copyright Robert Couse-Baker