A Good (but Temporary) Reason to Use Video for SEO

I've read in several places now that videos are far more likely than text to get on the first page of Google's search results. This is big news for those trying to get those coveted search results, especially those with scrappy budgets.

Google has been supporting "blended" or "universal" search for over a year now and according to Jupiter Research (now owned by Forrester Research) 60% of searches return a blended result with some media other than text, 28% of them with video.



Due to the current nature of Google's algorithm and because there are far fewer videos than web pages, a video is 53 times more likely to end up on the front page.

This may not get you on the first page with high volume search terms but I suspect it will make a noticeable difference with the mid and long tail.

You'll still need to have good SEO practices with video (e.g. include key words in titles, tags and file names) and you'll still want to make sure your video production values and content support your brand. From what I've read, it's best for SEO purposes to have the videos hosted on Youtube.

As a test, I'm going to include a tagged video in this post (hosted on Blogger) and see how it affects search results for "Scott McComsey" and "Well Rounded Marketer". I'll update with results in a week or so.

Update 3/10: This blog now shows up on the first page for both search terms and it didn't before this post.