Does embedding a video in a page increase rankings?
 by Casey Markee

Does embedding a video in a page increase rankings?

  • I've noticed on several occasions that when I embed a video on a site page, that page received a search engine boost.. Does embedding a video directly into the page correlate to higher rankings? If so, why?

Answer: While it's not guaranteed to work, embedding videos in your site pages is a great way to increase the stickiness factor of your pages, which can increase both traffic and search rankings for a specific page. As you may be aware, Google and most search engines use a variety of factors to determine the ranking importance a specific page online.

These factors can range from on-page optimization around specific search queries to the incoming links that page has achieved to the overall average visitor session lengths recorded for a page.

It's this last point—average visitor session length on a page (also known as a page's stickiness), that you can really increase by simply embedding videos directly into site content. Videos and other active media (surveys, animated clips, games, etc.) work to keep the interest of a site visitor by providing a visually interactive experience which results in that page generating noticeably longer average site visits.

These longer site visits may be interpreted by Google that the page has increased value and in turn may be given a bump that translates into higher search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, not every video placed in a page is going to be successful in generating the stickiness factor that will be necessary to boost a page in the search rankings. But here are some suggestions we believe should increase your chances of success:

  • Choose a video that is themed to your content.

  • Choose something informative, entertaining or instructive.

  • Make sure the video is placed above the fold on the page for increased visibility.

Adding videos into existing content is a great way to drive increased traffic to a new page or bump up existing traffic on older pages. Just make sure that you choose a video that follows the suggested tenants described abo...

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