Create Video Magic on Your Publishing Site

Introduction

Videos are a valuable asset for any publishing business. And the rapid user acceptance suggests that this is the right time to capitalize on this trend. But is it really meant for all businesses? And how effective are they on different websites? Given that there are various ways to present videos, how do you choose the best one for your business?

These and the answers to many such questions can help you decide what’s the best way to position videos to help with traffic. And once you strategically place your videos, pick the best monetizing video strategies for your business.

But first, let’s look at the benefits of using videos in a publishing business.

Benefits of Videos in a Publishing Business

Keeps people longer on your site: Websites using good SEO practices keep people on it for a longer time. Video piques the viewer’s curiosity with the audio-video elements leading them to other related web pages. This adds to an excellent UX keeping the visitor on your website longer.

Increases Engagement: Videos are easy to consume with interactive elements that attract different learning styles, increasing engagement. It also helps scale language barriers with captions, making it ideal if your business has a global audience.

Monetize Content: Because people stick around for a longer time, increasing engagement, there’s the additional opportunity to show ads and monetize your content with videos.

How Effective are Videos on Websites?

According to a report from the Aberdeen Group, video users get 41% more web traffic from search than non-users. It leads users to your website searching for the appropriate video, creating a suitable match and leading to a great user experience. Using videos can boost your website ranking, build credibility and attract quality backlinks.

Regularly publish video content geared towards your product or service. So, when visitors land on your websites, videos can help educate and inspire your audience to learn and take action. Hubspot suggests that 84% of people prefer video to learn about a product or service, leading them to purchase. Video mimics the actual product or service experience, making cold leads warm and leading to better conversions.

A publishing business that creates high volume tailored video content opens multiple opportunities to connect with your audience, build authority and monetize video content. You can experiment with different video types on your website.

Depending on your niche, go for product videos, explainer videos, or promotional videos. Try out what works and do more of what attracts a positive user response. Then when you decide to publish, pick the best way to present videos on your website.

When creating videos you can take a look at the different writing styles, to gain interest from your viewers quickly. One of them is the Inverted Pyramid Style of writing, used by journalists to gain attention quickly.

What’s the best way to present videos on your website?

In-content: Placing videos contextually within the content makes users curious to know more about it. It’s not intrusive and avoids bypassing the content. This can lead to a better response rate for the videos. For example, if you often use “how to do” something, consider videos rather than text.

Niche-specific benefit: For visually-driven niches like travel, fashion, cooking, etc., videos can help draw more engagement than plain text. It allows viewers to “see” and draw on their own experiences, thus simulating the product or service delivery. This way, you get a competitive edge over other non-video businesses, giving you the leeway to provide tailored video content that moves people towards purchase.

Sidebar or floating video embeds: These videos are ROS (Run of Site) that appear across all pages in a website or a website category. These are generally ‘top tips related to the category’ or on content that appeals to anyone browsing the topic pages. If a seamless UX is your priority, consider a floating video that does not interrupt work or browse the web.

Does Video help with Traffic?

Because Google now emphasizes user experience and engagement, videos can help with this. It also gives you other SEO related benefits like:

Positive Impact across all customer touchpoints: Video positively impacts all touchpoints from organic search to high traffic, more viewing time, better engagement, good social referral traffic, and stronger trust signals, leading to more conversions.

Quality Backlinks: With higher trust signals across your video, other publishing sites will prefer providing quality backlinks. It also encourages happy customers to refer to your service providing referral customers.

Rich Snippets: Video thumbnails work as rich snippets with higher CTRs than standard snippets. This makes it ideal when you’re optimizing your content for search. When working on rich snippets, position your top products or service videos on high-ranking pages. This way, the organic traffic directly moves into the funnel as they browse through your free content.

If you are selling any product or service, using ROS video testimonials could also help with conversions. You can also use these videos for social media management and build better social referral traffic.

Monetizing videos

Once videos are positioned to attract sufficient traffic, then monetize them. You can use affiliate marketing to earn from videos. Another way is to generate leads for other businesses through your website. This way, your videos showcase your quality of work for different clients and bring in potential customers who find value in your work.

For medium-sized publishers (100K page views a month), you can check out ad networks like AdThrive or Mediavine. Large publishers can hire their ad sales teams to fill ad inventory.

Wrapping it Up

If you’re thinking about the best way to use videos in your publishing business, then keep in mind the benefits of using videos. Consider the pros and effectiveness of videos and present videos in multiple formats, from in-content to sidebar videos. Factor in the video as per your niche and put a plan to pull traffic via video.

And if you sell products or services, use ROS video testimonials for conversions. Remember to position your videos strategically to create a great user experience via search and social referral and benefit monetarily from the investment in videos. And rely on ad networks or ad sales teams depending on the scale of your business to help you earn recurring revenue from videos.