Please read the full article on Google Retail Marketing Blog. There are also some very interesting findings on Mobile shoppers.

The five ways are the following:

- Create engaging content.

- Incorporate relevant keywords into your videos.

- Share your clips on many video sites.

- Take advantage of YouTube’s analytics tools.

- Make a call-to-action in your videos.

I’m happy to see that focus on online video’s ability to improve SEO is getting more attention. However there is one crucial element that concerns me. In the article they advocate for using YouTube as the main video platform. I think it is crucial to explain that they are talking about optimizing a single video to be better found in search engines. When using YouTube as a starting point you will direct the traffic towards YouTube. So even though you will generate attention on you video, it is damn hard to drive traffic from YouTube to your own site afterwards. Hopefully before they see a related video and surfs on…

If you want to optimize any page on your own website and max your SEO efforts you should chose an independent video platform in order to benefit from all the major advantages mention in the post. And DO NOT forget to add all the meta-data in a video sitemap!

At eTRADEVIDEO we see more and more evidence that online video really benefits SEO purposes, so it seems like there must be something about it.

Our client Telia now starts to benefit from the work we have done together integrating video marketing into their online marketing mix. Slowly Telia’s videos have started to appear in Google’s search results giving them premium exposure compared to the competing results without video.

What link will you click in the below result?

Normally you will expect the 1. position to attract 18% of the clicks, the 2. position to attract 10% and the 3. position to attract some 7% and so forth. With a video indexed with a thumbnail in the search results you can dramatically increase the amount of clicks to your site. Studies shows a 41% higher CTR on search results with a video thumbnail compared to plain text results. On top of that it seems like all positions in a search result benefits from the highly increased CTR – especially the lower positions.

At the webinar today I saw numbers saying that a search result with indexed videos half way down the page attracts as much attention as the first position (without video).

Another indication that video is really powerful in relation to SEO is this result from a search on the brand name “Telia”.

The first result is their main page www.telia.dk, nothing surprising in that. But the second result is the video result for their product page about broadband TV. Up until now this page has not been the second best ranking page not even in top 5 and it is by far not the page with most backlinks.

There might be other explanations but to me it is quite an indication that Google really gives priority to landing pages with video.

So to sum it all up:
1. After you implemented your videos correct on your webpages and notified the search engines you will benefit from better placements in the search result.
2. Not only do you benefit from better rankings the position you have will also attract more attention and increase the number of clicks with 41% in average.

Because of that we need to reconsider how to spend resources best when working with search engine visibility for our website. Online video definitely offers some low hanging fruit and right now it’s an open space with almost non-existing competition.

The reason she asks is that the Chinese mobile market is booming and surpasses the US in amount of smartphones distributed – 24 million units shipped to China in Q3!! This will create massive opportunities in terms of apps, m-commerce according to her.

Here at eTRADEVIDEO we are primarily working with E-commerce. And the China angle is definitely also present here.In this weeks Economist an article says suggests that China will become the world’s most valuable market for e-commerce. And it will happen sooner that we imagine.

US have 170 mio online shoppers. China is a little behind with 145 mio. But the growth rate in China is astonishing adding 30 mio customers online every year for the coming years. Also the average spending is growing and in 2015 the Chinese are expect to spend USD 1000 a year app. the same level as America.

(As always) there are huge investments going on. China’s government has invested heavily in internet infrastructure. And the leading ecommerce group Alibaba Group has developed both a good, cheap and trusted way of shipping products + Alipay an Escrow-kind of payment system that locks in a payment at 3. party until the customer releases the payment.

So in addition to Tine’s comment I will add that you should definitely be thinking China also in regards of E-commerce. It looks like online infrastructure, learning curve and the financial resources are just where they should be in order to make the biggest splash.

First of all they hammer out the following (well known) stats:

• Using video demos of items on product pages increased sales for Zappos by between 6% and 30%.
• Shoppers who viewed video on Stacks and Stacks product pages were 144% more likely to add to cart than other shoppers.
• On Ice.com, the conversion rate for shoppers viewing video on product pages increased by 400%, while return rates dropped from 12% to 9%.
• Shoeline.com improved the conversion rate by 44% for product pages containing videos.
• Videos on the simplypiste.com product pages increased conversion rates by 25%, as well as leading to a reduction in the number of returns.

Then Econsultancy goes through the basic SEO gains using www.simplyhike.com as an example. Unfortunately, as a guy points out in the comments, Simplyhike should have their own product page indexed instead of their YouTube page. As Econsultancy shows later in the post and we at eTRADEVIDEO advice our customers to do, it is better to embed videos directly on product pages through an e-commerce video player in order to get the full UX and SEO advantages.

Remember to use a video sitemap if you want your videos to be indexed correctly!

Another important thing I would like to add to the blog post is that beside SEO effects in terms of better rankings and the increased onsite conversion there are also the improved CTR.  As eTRADEVIDEO wrote in a previous post, ComScore points at much better CTR from a search result page on video compared to text. Actually since the implementation of Google Instant clicks on video results has increased 28%.

You’ll see the CTR improvement on newsletters as well. Forrester did a test an saw 2-3 times better performance.

Anyhow please go to the post and see the great tips Econsultancy are providing!

Their numbers are based on a presentation from ComScore which you’ll find here.

Another thing I find very interesting is the SEO effects and the associated effects when the user continues to your page. According to the presentation images and videos are particular good for boosting CTR from search results. I was surprised to see that images are performing so good in relation to CTR from result pages.

But as the next slide shows images ARE amazing – but only sometimes!  When it comes to Fashion and Personalities images performs exceptionally well but when it comes to the products/commerce category they average a CTR on 8% which is below the average of 12% for text based results.

Furthermore users’ post-click interactions are also significantly worse when you compare the two categories as we see above.

A couple of slides later we see the post-click engagement for video which shows very impressive performance.

When all is summed up the users you’ll drive to your pages are so much more engage in your content when it is accommodated with video content. This is very much in line with the results we have seen when people are asked if they like to see products accommodated with videos e.g. 90% of Swimwear Boutique’s users said that video helped them to make a purchase decision.

Thanks to Eli Goodman from ComScore and Eli Feldblum from RankAbove for all the great numbers! I would love to see the performance on CTR and engagement broken down on more categories both for videos and images

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When you look at what type of video the retailers chose to implement you get a rather clear picture that product videos are by far the most demanded.  74% of the top 50 online retailers in the US implemented product videos.

The reason why so many companies chose to implement product videos should be seen as a result of product videos really adding value and show the best ROI up front compared to other types of online video.

Numerous studies have showed significant improvements when implementing product videos on product pages. Our colleagues at Invodo have done a rather large test on 7.314 product pages from 53 customers showing an average increase in conversion rate with 30%.

Based on these experiences the last couple of years eTRADEVIDEO believes that the question is not if product videos add value to e-commerce businesses – they do – but more how to optimize these effects in terms of SEO, choosing the right formats, placement of players etc. Another fundamental question is how to setup a feasible and lean production method in order to scale?