If a picture is worth a thousand words, I have only one question, ‘What is a video worth?’
Internet marketers have been telling us for years that content is king, well in my view the king of content is video. Not any and all video, but really well produced, engaging video content. A well produced video can tell your potential clients about your product and service and if it’s good enough, set you apart from your competitors.
In Ireland YouTube registered 2.4 million unique visits in January of 2012. A unique visitor, a common measure of website traffic, is based on a computer’s IP address, not on individual people, and is determined by cookies. YouTube has changed the media landscape forever. Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 and in 2010 YouTube became the second biggest search engine in the USA, according to comScore. Google’s long term plans for Google TV is to integrate YouTube into every television, via the internet, not surprising given that YouTube gets 4 billion video views per day. Apple has similar plans for AppleTV.
Google is featuring more video content in its search engine results pages (SERP’s)and getting your video thumbnail in those search results could be really valuable and here’s why. A recent eye-tracking study came back with some very interesting results. The study tracked subjects’ eye movements on the SERPs to produce a heat map. The search term “How to make pizza” produced video thumbnails in position #2 and #3 in the Google organic search engine results page. The heat map showed subjects focussed on the first video thumbnail, possibly at the expense of the number 1 organic search result. In general, where the eye focuses is where the click happens. Getting your video thumbnail in the SERPs could result in more clicks than a number 1 organic listing.
Integrating video into your website has multiple benefits; it gets your message to your potential customers in a dynamic, engaging way. Great videos means you can feature on the second biggest search engine in the USA, YouTube and getting your video thumbnail into the organic search results on Google could means more clicks, more traffic and ultimately more business.