Online Video Marketing Your Time Has Come

A couple of months ago we wrote about Google Ranking Factors to watch for 2011.  One aspect of modern search marketing that I meant to mention but didn’t really was video.  Video SEO has been “The Next Big Thing” in SEO and online marketing for several years now.  In that time, some have used it very effectively and others have expended large amounts of time and money for little return.  Today, I’m going to look at some of the factors that are moving in favour of online video marketing.

Growth and Sheer Volume of Video Consumed

2010 saw an average of 179 million Americans watching video each month.  Frequency increased too, with more than 88.6 million people watching video on an average day in 2010 (up 32%).  Video is big and continuing to get bigger.
source: Comscore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review

The Long Tail of Video Traffic is Huge

It used to be that video search meant finding YouTube videos and YouTube is still massive.  In 2009 they streamed more than 13 billion videos a month, more than 40% of individual streams.  Last year, Erick Schonfeld wrote a really interesting article on Techcrunch that surprised me (The Long Tail of Video Sites Captures Half of all Viewing Minutes).  In looking at time spent watching video in 2009, he points out that YouTube accounts for 26% of viewing minutes.  Less than their 40% share of individual streams but still massive.  The rest of the top 25 sites account for a further 22% of viewing minutes.  The point is though, that video traffic is no longer anywhere near as concentrated in the top properties as we used to think it was.  The long tail of video sites accounted for 52% of all time spent viewing video online. 

We are talking about a massive source of traffic here that is fragmented and being picked up by a variety of smaller properties.  There is opportunity in the long tail of video search.

Blended Search and More Video in the Results

We mentioned in the Ranking Factors article that changes in the user interface at Google could have a big impact on your SEO strategy.  For the last number of years Google have been working at blending results from their vertical search tools into the main web results.  You will have seen more and more videos offered as results over that time.  I think it is safe to assume that this trend will continue.

Device Types and Shifts in Content Consumption

The web is no longer an environment accessed by PCs with large screens that sit in an office on a desk.  Those PCs are still there but smart phones, tablets, televisions and who knows what else have come into the mix.  This will change the things that people use the web for, the time they spend on it and the types of content they consume.  Video seems to suit many of these devices.

People Like Sharing Videos

The growth and success of social media and specifically Facebook is the big Internet story of the last couple of years.  Social sharing is important as a means of spreading your message and potentially as a means of improving your SEO.  Video is a content format that people like to share.

Google’s Work on Audio Transcription

Over the last couple of years Google has been working on transcription of audio both through Google Voice and YouTube.  It’s always interesting to watch Google developing technologies in its peripheral products and think how they might be applied to search.  In this case, the answer is obvious.  If Google can accurately transcribe the speech from videos then it can get much much closer to understanding the content and its relevance to particular search queries.  If Google can provide better video results it will be confident in providing more video results.

So, in summary, online video is huge and growing at a phenomenal rate.  Looking at the changes in the devices that people use and the types of content they access, that growth is likely to continue. 

Online Video Marketing, your time has come.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2011 at 11:23 am and is filed under Online Marketing Strategy, Video SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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