Why Your Website Should Always Include Video Content

It doesn’t take a content marketing specialist to see the value of video content in today’s digital landscape. It does, however, take one to fully understand its benefits and build a well-executed strategy based around it.

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it on video, compared to a mere 10% through written text. This is the kind of surprising statistic that leaves you wondering how any business can pass up on making video content a cornerstone of their marketing strategy.

While many businesses have a surplus of videos on their social media channels and video-sharing platforms, not hosting videos directly on your website is a missed opportunity. Leveraging other sources of traffic is great, but creating video content for your site needs to be a top priority as the benefits speak for themselves.

Enhancing Your Website’s User Experience

Websites have come a long way from the Dark Age of dial-up, but it’s pretty shocking to see just how many of them still feature dated text-heavy layouts that are difficult to follow.

One of the ways video can help with that is by providing visually appealing content that brings the site together in a compelling way. Including a video on your homepage gives users the ability to engage with something outside of text and likely retain their attention for a longer period.

Whether it’s a how-to video or a simple company introduction, your goal is to have the brand or product resonate with the user. Consuming big blocks of text, while potentially informative, can turn the user off to whatever message you’re trying to deliver simply because it’s too dense.

Adding a short video with a clean and concise directive solves that problem. It’s almost like an elevator pitch of sorts. You have a brief moment to make an immediate impact and really establish some kind of connection with the user. If you fail to do that, you’re probably saying goodbye to a potential client as well.

Generate More Search Traffic with Video

Now that we’ve established how video content can enrich the user experience on your site — it’s time to look at how to get them there.

Everyone is out for that coveted Google front page feature and video content is a great way to get noticed. Adding video to your site is 53 times more likely to give you a front page result than not including any video. That alone should have content marketers licking their chops and coming up with new video possibilities.

Another way video can help you stand out is through featured snippets on Google. By adding a video component to your page, you’re helping searchers pinpoint your site with more ease. You’re adding an additional element that Google can add to your featured snippet and even position your site ahead of its top 10 results.

Even if your page isn’t ranking in the top 10, having a video thumbnail appear on your featured snippet immediately makes it more appealing to searchers. There is an image to go with the words and searchers are spending less time reading the text on the snippet — they are clicking because of the thumbnail.

Video is a Conversion Key

Because you’re able to portray a brand or product with far more emotional resonance than text, video can be a vital touch point for bringing users down the sales funnel.

Video has become such a successful conversion tool that 71% of marketers say video conversion rates outperform other marketing content. While we all know YouTube is the second-largest search engine behind Google, companies that are combining their external video content with website-hosted content are the ones seeing the best ROI.

Having a company YouTube page is valuable to a point. It is advantageous for bringing top-of-the-funnel searches that introduce users to your brand or product.

Hosting videos directly on your site, however, generally catches people further down the sales funnel who are already actively researching your brand or product.

Since these prospects are further down the sales funnel, video can serve as a final touch point prior to conversion. It can become a decision-maker for a lot of people who need additional assurance. It is the most powerful way to establish consumer trust.

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Guest article written by: mintent – getmintent.com