It is predicted that in 2019, 80% of all internet traffic will come from
videos.
That might seem like a big leap, but video content is already proving it can
grab and hold audiences’ attention as well as
create meaningful engagement. In fact, one third of all time spent online is
already accounted for by watching videos.
With the number of people consuming videos growing, there is
another correlation happening – videos are taking over search engine rankings. Forrester
estimates that the chances of getting a page one spot on Google increases
by 53 times with video. Video has also been seen
to boost traffic from organic
listings by as much as 157%.
YouTube Will Continue
to Thrive
YouTube is already the second most popular website in the
world – receiving 30 million visits per day.
Its formatting also lends it to being a very sticky website. Visitors often spend
more than 8 minutes on YouTube per day, and each visit typically results in an
average of over 4 pages.
Not only does YouTube get a lot of traffic from people
searching on Google, but it also ranked third for search share with 3.71% of
searches. That puts YouTube under Google, but ahead of Yahoo, Bing and Facebook
for searches – making it one of the biggest “search engines”.
Google Search and
Video
YouTube may be on its way to becoming a major search engine,
but for now it still gets 16% of its traffic from Google search. In fact,
nearly two out of every hundred clicks on Google’s search results goes to a
YouTube video.
And you can expect that relationship to get even stronger as
video continues to rise.
Google has owned YouTube for more than 10 years, making it
obvious why most of the videos the service displays in search are from YouTube.
Google is also constantly exploring ways for displaying video results in an
increasingly rich and intuitive way.
Alternative Options
& Hosting Videos on Your
Website
You don’t
necessarily need to upload videos to YouTube in order to be ranked in Google’s
search. With the correct on-page markup and sitemaps, videos can be hosted on
your own site and there will be a good chance that Google will index this
content for relevant searches. Of course, these videos will need to be well
optimized with regard to their title, description and thumbnail too. Keep in
mind that even though video can help you rank in search, having quality text on
your webpages is still equally important – for both search engines and visitors
to your website that are looking for quick information.
And if you’re
looking for an alternative to YouTube to host your videos, Vimeo has marked
itself out as a quality high definition alternative to other video platforms.
Wistia is another video hosting platform targeting towards businesses.
There’s also
always the chance that a new platform will come out in the future. More than
likely it will need to cater to a certain niche to survive – similarly to how
Amazon’s Twitch (a live-streaming service) has been for the gaming community.
Social Media and Video
While YouTube
is still number one when it comes to places to watch videos online,
there is a competitor that has been quickly catching up – Facebook.
This was particularly true for Latin American markets
according to a study done by HubSpot back in February.
Facebook recently started favoring videos uploaded straight
into Facebook versus sharing from YouTube. This helps Facebook contain more of
that video share. It’s also started promoting videos more in its own search.
The service is also increasingly keen to promote live video
content, as well as emerging types of rich video content such as 360 and VR
with its Facebook360 arm.
Video Predictions
It’s clear from the trends that video isn’t going anywhere
soon.
As stated in the beginning of this article, it’s predicted
that by 2019, 80% of all
internet traffic will come from videos. Making it a main reason people use the
web.
With social platforms building in video capabilities, and
Google promoting video searches more heavily, video is only predicted to
increase in search. Which means that businesses who aren’t already utilizing
video should really start to think about creative ways that they can promote
their products or services using video, or at least partnering with influencers
who have a strong presence in video dominated spaces, such as YouTube.
However, technologies and behaviors do change. One way that
Google is forced to make non-YouTube video content visible is when users search
for a niche – such as the Live TV game streaming found on Twitch or HD content
found on Vimeo. With new video technologies emerging all the time, you never
truly know what will be the next big thing.
For information on how your business can utilize videos in your
marketing strategy, call Sales & Marketing Technologies at (407) 682-2222
or use the contact form below to schedule a free strategy session.