SEO

4 Ways To Win With Video

Published

2 years ago

May 16, 2022

Since the emergence of YouTube in 2005, the prevalence and impact of video marketing have skyrocketed.

YouTube changed the game by allowing everyday users to upload, publish, and market their video content directly within the search engine.

Today, over 2.6 billion people use the platform.

And YouTube isn’t the only player in town.

Vimeo, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram all have powerful video marketing capabilities to help businesses get found.

Local businesses can use video marketing to drive traffic, reach more customers, and grow online.

Here are four strategies to build your local video marketing strategy.

The Value Of Video Marketing For Local Businesses

Video is a powerful medium for local businesses.

While many might assume that video marketing is more in the domain of online businesses, there are many benefits of video marketing in the local sector.

Benefits Of Local Video Marketing

Website traffic: Publishing videos online and optimizing for clicks can drive more users directly to your website.
Revenue growth: Video marketing can influence buying decisions and increase revenue for your local business.
Brand awareness: Video exposes your business to more users across a wider range of platforms, helping drive visibility for your business
Trust and authority: Posting valuable content can build trust with your audience and lend authority to your business.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Embedding videos in your web pages and articles can help your site appear in Google organic or image search.
Backlinks: Videos can add value to your content and encourage other websites to link back to your website, which is good for SEO and referral traffic.
Email marketing: Videos make great additions to your email marketing campaigns, driving more engagement and clicks.
Advertising: Many video platforms offer paid advertising opportunities to generate even more clicks and revenue for your business.
Local presence: Publishing videos about your community or local events can help you attract more customers in your area, even if advertising online.
Relevance: Creating relevant and engaging videos can further support your existing marketing campaigns, teach users about your business, and improve your digital footprint.

How To Win With Local Video Marketing

Recent studies show that 70% of viewers have bought from a brand after seeing their video content on YouTube.

The opportunity is ripe for video marketing, even for local businesses.

Here are a few ways to make video work for your local business.

1. Drive Traffic With Educational Videos

Many small businesses struggle to drive organic website traffic due to having limited resources and reach. Your local business can potentially drive more visitors through SEO with educational video content.

Users are actively searching for information online.

If you can publish and market educational content suited to their interests, you can use the power of search engines like Google and YouTube to grow your website traffic.

Tools such as Semrush and TubeBuddy allow you to research the keywords users search for on Google and YouTube.

Based on the terms’ volume and competition level, you can create videos targeting these topics.

Say, for example, you are a small law firm.

You can create educational videos around:

“tips for hiring a divorce lawyer” (260 searches per month).
“divorce mediation tips and tricks” (170 searches per month).
“adoption laws” for your state (390 searches per month).

You’ll want to optimize your video title, description, and tags on YouTube for the target keywords you hope to rank for.

You can then publish your video on YouTube and embed the video on your website.

This can help drive organic traffic to your website and increase your website’s authority within your industry.

2. Build Trust With Product Highlights

Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical of “scams” and false advertising claims.

Educated consumers are more likely to invest in brands they know and trust.

Video marketing can be a great way to build trust in your brand.

Product demos and tutorials allow you to demonstrate the benefits and features of your products.

You can show potential customers how they might enjoy your product, use specific features, and apply it to their everyday lives. Sometimes, showing is better than telling!

Where web page copy or blog articles don’t suffice, adding product highlight videos can encourage customers to buy from you.

So, if someone visits your shop and later checks out your website, a helpful video may be enough to entice them to make a purchase.

Further, if you can find keywords to target in your video, you may be able to rank your video on Google and YouTube.

If you have eCommerce functionality, this can be a good way to drive online sales.

3. Repurpose Video Content Across Social Media

Small, local businesses face unique challenges when it comes to marketing.

Often, the market is smaller and local competition can be fierce.

Add in the fact that many small businesses are tight on marketing resources, and it’s even more important to get the best bang for your buck.

That’s where content repurposing comes in.

You can essentially “reuse” your video content across platforms rather than making unique video assets with repurposing.

Here’s one example of how this works:

You conduct a Facebook Live video session via your local business’s Facebook page.
You then download the Facebook Live video to your computer to later upload to YouTube.
You edit your video and publish it to YouTube while also saving individual video clips on social media.
You re-share these video clips on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Once live, you embed your YouTube video in your latest blog article.
You then link your blog article to your email marketing campaign.

In this case, you are turning a single video into multiple pieces of content to use across seven different platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, website, and email).

You can see how this is a significant time (and money) saver in your video marketing efforts.

4. Increase Connection With Company Bios And Testimonials

Customers often want to feel a close connection with the brand they hope to buy from.

This may be particularly true for local businesses closer to their local community.

Video content can help nurture this connection.

There are a few types of video ideas to build relationships with your customers:

Team Bios

Have your business’s team members share interesting facts about their passions, experience, and hobbies to build a connection between users and your company.

Testimonials

Ask existing customers if they’d like to offer video testimonials reviewing your products or services. This can help build trust with potential customers.

Interviews

Host an “ask a [profressional]” session so prospective customers can learn more about your industry, offerings, and/or company.

Tutorials

Show your service or product in action with expert-led walkthroughs (can be live or pre-recorded)

Event recap

If there’s a popular event in your local area, consider recording your experience and adding your commentary for a post-event recap. The event may be searchable on Google or YouTube depending on its popularity.

Community engagement

Does your business host volunteering events, scholarships, or otherwise get involved in your local community? Show your team in action by recording your work and showcasing it on your Community Initiatives page on your website.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live offers the real-time engagement you can’t get on many other platforms. This allows users to comment, ask questions, and engage with you in a live, digital setting.

Video content adds a personal touch to your marketing.

Nurture that connection with prospective customers and it may inspire a visit to your local business or online shop.

Use Video Marketing To Reach More Local Customers

Video marketing isn’t just the domain of online businesses.

Local businesses can also benefit from the video in unique ways.

While the goal may not be online sales, video marketing can nurture connection, trust, and engagement with prospective customers.

There are many creative ways to use video marketing in your local business.

Whether through educational videos, team bios, Facebook Live, or another medium, video is a great way to bolster your online and local presence.

More resources:

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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SEO

Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%

Published

6 hours ago

April 26, 2024

Max

Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced its first quarter 2024 financial results today.

While Google reported double-digit growth in key revenue areas, the focus was on its AI developments, dubbed the “Gemini era” by CEO Sundar Pichai.

The Numbers: 15% Revenue Growth, Operating Margins Expand

Alphabet reported Q1 revenues of $80.5 billion, a 15% increase year-over-year, exceeding Wall Street’s projections.

Net income was $23.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Operating margins expanded to 32%, up from 25% in the prior year.

Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s President and CFO, stated:

“Our strong financial results reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base.”

Google’s core advertising units, such as Search and YouTube, drove growth. Google advertising revenues hit $61.7 billion for the quarter.

The Cloud division also maintained momentum, with revenues of $9.6 billion, up 28% year-over-year.

Pichai highlighted that YouTube and Cloud are expected to exit 2024 at a combined $100 billion annual revenue run rate.

Generative AI Integration in Search

Google experimented with AI-powered features in Search Labs before recently introducing AI overviews into the main search results page.

Regarding the gradual rollout, Pichai states:

“We are being measured in how we do this, focusing on areas where gen AI can improve the Search experience, while also prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants.”

Pichai reports that Google’s generative AI features have answered over a billion queries already:

“We’ve already served billions of queries with our generative AI features. It’s enabling people to access new information, to ask questions in new ways, and to ask more complex questions.”

Google reports increased Search usage and user satisfaction among those interacting with the new AI overview results.

The company also highlighted its “Circle to Search” feature on Android, which allows users to circle objects on their screen or in videos to get instant AI-powered answers via Google Lens.

Reorganizing For The “Gemini Era”

As part of the AI roadmap, Alphabet is consolidating all teams building AI models under the Google DeepMind umbrella.

Pichai revealed that, through hardware and software improvements, the company has reduced machine costs associated with its generative AI search results by 80% over the past year.

He states:

“Our data centers are some of the most high-performing, secure, reliable and efficient in the world. We’ve developed new AI models and algorithms that are more than one hundred times more efficient than they were 18 months ago.

How Will Google Make Money With AI?

Alphabet sees opportunities to monetize AI through its advertising products, Cloud offerings, and subscription services.

Google is integrating Gemini into ad products like Performance Max. The company’s Cloud division is bringing “the best of Google AI” to enterprise customers worldwide.

Google One, the company’s subscription service, surpassed 100 million paid subscribers in Q1 and introduced a new premium plan featuring advanced generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini models.

Future Outlook

Pichai outlined six key advantages positioning Alphabet to lead the “next wave of AI innovation”:

Research leadership in AI breakthroughs like the multimodal Gemini model
Robust AI infrastructure and custom TPU chips
Integrating generative AI into Search to enhance the user experience
A global product footprint reaching billions
Streamlined teams and improved execution velocity
Multiple revenue streams to monetize AI through advertising and cloud

With upcoming events like Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, the company is expected to share further updates on its AI initiatives and product roadmap.

Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock

SEO

brightonSEO Live Blog

Published

23 hours ago

April 25, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of ~~sun~~, sea, and SEO!

Being the introvert I am, my idea of fun isn’t hanging around our booth all day explaining we’ve run out of t-shirts (seriously, you need to be fast if you want swag!). So I decided to do something useful and live-blog the event instead.

Follow below for talk takeaways and (very) mildly humorous commentary.

SEO

Google Further Postpones Third-Party Cookie Deprecation In Chrome

Published

1 day ago

April 25, 2024

Max

Close-up of a document with a grid and a red stamp that reads "delayed" over the word "status" due to Chrome's deprecation of third-party cookies.

Google has again delayed its plan to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser. The latest postponement comes after ongoing challenges in reconciling feedback from industry stakeholders and regulators.

The announcement was made in Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) joint quarterly report on the Privacy Sandbox initiative, scheduled for release on April 26.

Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phaseout Pushed To 2025

Google states it “will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4” this year as planned.

Instead, the tech giant aims to begin deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome “starting early next year,” assuming an agreement can be reached with the CMA and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The statement reads:

“We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June.”

Continued Engagement With Regulators

Google reiterated its commitment to “engaging closely with the CMA and ICO” throughout the process and hopes to conclude discussions this year.

This marks the third delay to Google’s plan to deprecate third-party cookies, initially aiming for a Q3 2023 phaseout before pushing it back to late 2024.

The postponements reflect the challenges in transitioning away from cross-site user tracking while balancing privacy and advertiser interests.

Transition Period & Impact

In January, Chrome began restricting third-party cookie access for 1% of users globally. This percentage was expected to gradually increase until 100% of users were covered by Q3 2024.

However, the latest delay gives websites and services more time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies through Google’s limited “deprecation trials” program.

The trials offer temporary cookie access extensions until December 27, 2024, for non-advertising use cases that can demonstrate direct user impact and functional breakage.

While easing the transition, the trials have strict eligibility rules. Advertising-related services are ineligible, and origins matching known ad-related domains are rejected.

Google states the program aims to address functional issues rather than relieve general data collection inconveniences.

Publisher & Advertiser Implications

The repeated delays highlight the potential disruption for digital publishers and advertisers relying on third-party cookie tracking.

Industry groups have raised concerns that restricting cross-site tracking could push websites toward more opaque privacy-invasive practices.

However, privacy advocates view the phaseout as crucial in preventing covert user profiling across the web.

With the latest postponement, all parties have more time to prepare for the eventual loss of third-party cookies and adopt Google’s proposed Privacy Sandbox APIs as replacements.

Featured Image: Novikov Aleksey/Shutterstock