Do Explainer Videos Help SEO?

[WickVideo]

My company makes explainer videos. I often come across a lot of (seemingly) inflated & unprovable stats, pertaining to explainer videos, from other companies.

This article claims that "Having an explainer video on your web page makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results"

Is there any real data to back up such a claim? Do explainer videos really help SEO? How?

[WickVideo]

That makes a lot of sense - it's kind of what I figured: videos don't help you rank better by themselves.

I feel like the claim, "Having an explainer video on your web page makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results" is definitely misleading. As an explainer video company, we want to understand these things and provide more clarity to our clients up-front regarding Video + SEO.

[WickVideo]

Thanks for the resources! Very helpful.

[WickVideo]

Thanks for the answer and the advice! We've recently been focusing on SEO and marketing tactics for our clients, as they use their explainer videos that we made for them. We strive to make effective videos, not just "good" videos.

[WickVideo]

I definitely understand the purpose and usefulness of an explainer video. As I mentioned, that's what my company, Wick Video, does

Not to stray off topic, but I think "going viral" is something you can't really plan for - and not really the purpose of an explainer video - the main purpose is to convert more leads.

[Chris.Menke]

Jeremy,

I'm going to answer "yes", but only because I tweaked your question a bit to "Can SEO help explainer videos reach more people?" As Moosa pointed out, (explainer) videos are just another form of content that search engines and other sites can make readily available to people at a moment when they might be most likely to consume it. As an obvious example, if Google determines that a certain video is among the best answers to a searcher's query, it will list that video more highly in their results and the searcher can click through to experience it.

A difference between video and other content, especially web page content, is that video has places in addition to traditional search engines like Google and Bing, where a searcher may go to find it--places such as youtube, vimeo, facebook, etc. As mentioned in the article you referred to, people spend a lot of time at these sites and spend substantial amounts of time watching videos.

But videos do take some amount of written content and meta data associated with them in order for search engines to associate their message with particular searches. And for even broader reach, videos need to have a reason for people to share them with others.  These are the SEO-type factors that many webmasters overlook and the factors that sources such as your article seem to take for granted.will happen.  The truth is that (understandably) most webmasters don't have a clue of how to associate their video with proper content/meta data and most explainer videos have little to no "share it others" value--either because tools provided by the video creation platform don't make it possible or because the creator just isn't very good at making sharable videos.

As there are now many, many companies that make explainer videos easily available today, a differentiator between those companies would be if they also promoted a service that maximizes the video's visibility for the client.  Such a service would delve into the heart and soul of the question that the video is meant to answer to ensure that it is, in fact, answering the right question for the right audience; it would ensure that the right vocabulary is utilized in associated copy and meta data; it would ensure that it is uploaded to theme-appropriate location on the web; and might even provide outreach to webmasters who might be willing to repost or link to the video--all the the SEO-type things that actually make it possible for a video to reach an audience beyond those who might otherwise just have come across it by accident.

[IPIM]

Lets look at it a different way.

DOES YOUR SITE NEED OR BENEFIT FROM A VIDEO

if the answer is yes, then create one, if no, then don't.

Don't just create content for the sake of it, that way, when you do create a video and it actually serves a purpose then it has much more chance of going viral.

As the name suggests, explainer videos are a great way of presenting a difficult process, or helping people visualise a journey.  Take a look at your support emails or FAQ's, what are the common pitfalls for your customers?  could you merge all your FAQ's into an explainer video?  Chances are, your competitors will have the same issues and so will their customers, if you solve your problems with an explainer video, you also solve theirs....viola your video is going viral.

Some reading:

• http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/03/13/explainer-videos
• http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/explainer-video-ht
• http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/08/13/how-to-create-an-explainer-video-that-converts/

[sachin-sv]

Yes, I also agree with MoosaHemani.

Additionally, would like to mention few resources which you may find helpful- 10 Video SEO Tips That Can Truly Impact Your Rankings

Can a YouTube Video Help Your Google Ranking?

[MoosaHemani]

Forget explainer videos, does having a video on the website directly increases the chances to get better visibility in search engines? And the straight answer to that question is, NO!

There are lots of BUT attach with it though!

For instance, that video goes viral and you get lots of link back to the website and that page and as a result you get better rankings. Yes it all happened because of that video but directly that video didn’t really help the page get better rankings.

Another idea could be, people (bloggers within your industry) uses that video and as a credit gives you a link back that as a results help you get better rankings.

What I mean to say is that video itself alone cannot help you get better rankings but its just a content of the website that when go viral can produces links back to the website that have a direct impact on rankings.

Hope this helps!