It’s no secret that there is a huge growth in video content in content marketing and it has become key in driving brand awareness, telling stories, providing entertainment and promoting products and services to both new and existing customers. Using video best practices for SEO and video optimisation is critical in providing the best possible UX for the users you want to target.

According to Biteable video marketing statistics;

• 60% of businesses use video as a marketing tool
• 50% of marketers who use video have done so for over a year
• 36% of marketers make videos a few times a week, while 14% make videos every day

When it comes to including videos in your website content, there are some things that can go wrong from an SEO perspective such as slow page loading times, not using schema markup, as well as a host of other things. Below are some SEO best practices that will help provide a better user experience for those people visiting your website.

1 – Use your video time wisely

When using video content on your website, it is very important that you only include as much information to get your message and the message that is important to your website visitors, as quickly as possible. This will call for some snappy video editing so that your video doesn’t run on too long and end up boring the people who have to watch it. Make it precise, engaging and to the point. If your video is about the benefits of your product, then create a short video that highlights the benefits in an easy to digest way

2 – Where to host your video?

There are a few different options when it comes to where to host your video.

• Embed a link on your website from YouTube, Vimeo etc.
• Host videos on your website server 
• Hosting videos directly on your website

We recommend either hosting your videos on YouTube (or an alternative platform) and embed a video link on your website or hosting them directly on your website’s server. The reason being is that it reduces the page load time when a person visits that page on your website, thus, improving its user experience. 

If you do choose to host a video directly on your website, please note the below best practices.

• Use an optimal file format i.e. mp4
• 720p resolution is as high as we need a video to be for it to function well as an HTML5 video
• Compress the video file size as much as possible to help improve load time

3 – Provide a video pop-up option for users

People generally don’t “hang out” in the masthead area of a website to watch banner videos go through their loops. Adding a button link that opens up the full video in a lightbox indicates the importance of the video and helps increase user engagement.

4 – Don’t put important information in video format without featuring it elsewhere

Having information in a video only (ie. Text in a video or visuals/imagery only present in a video) isn’t great for accessibility. Consider making a video optional and putting that information that’s in the video on the page in text form for a more accessible experience and additional SEO strength.

So there you have it – some helpful tips when it comes to adding video content to your website. The most important focus when creating a video and implementing it on a website should be the user. What do they want to see in terms of visuals? What information do they want to consume in terms of content? How long does the video need to be? These are some of the questions you need to ask to help provide the best user experience to visitors to your website.