When it comes to content marketing there are three driving factors that give online video content a seemingly unfair advantage in ranking on search results pages:

1. Blended Search Results in Google’s Algorithm
2. Relatively Low Keyword Competition for Online Video Content
3. Your Competition’s Failure to Properly Optimize Video Content

These create three invisible hands working together to lift your online video marketing content onto page one of the Google search engine results.

Get Found Online

When it comes to online marketing, there’s one strategic goal that trumps all others.

First, you must Get Found Online.

All of the great, expert content you have to share means nothing if your target market never has a chance to experience it. And let’s face it, access to Page One of Google is not getting any less competitive for the keywords that bring profit to your business or practice.

Online video content is your secret marketing weapon.

According to Forrester Research, properly optimized video content increases the likelihood of a front-page Google search result by 96%.

Remember, your number one goal is to get found online. If you’re not on page one for the most critical keywords for your business or practice, then you’re invisible to your ideal client, customer, or patient when they go online searching for help with the problem you can solve for them.

So, let’s briefly explore these three invisible forces that will help you get found when you tap into the power of online video marketing.

Blended Search

Google is forever evolving it’s search algorithms, but their goal is really quite simple. Google wants to deliver to the searching public the highest quality content the web has to offer.

That said, it’s worth emphasizing that there is NO alternative for creating great, original content. Why bother getting bad content onto page one? You might be able to fool the algorithm (doubtful), but you’ll never win over the human being who ultimately has to consume your information and decide to take action (or NOT).

In an effort to give people what they want, Google clearly understands that the web is made up of numerous different types of content:

• Web Pages
• News Articles
• Blog Posts
• Images
• Videos
• Shopping/Retail

So, in response to any given search phrase, Google seeks to return a blended mix of content on each Search Engine Results Page.

Google’s desire to blend media formats on the search results page gives online video marketing a huge advantage over text. Without exception, your primary keywords will be tied to far more web page results than video results. But Google is pulling for video, trying to get that video content onto each and every search page.

So there you have invisible hand number one lifting your online video marketing content ahead of a the vast majority of the text-based web content.

Decreased Level of Competition

Because of Google’s efforts to serve blended search results, the competition for visibility gets split. Text-based pages are up against other text-based pages. Video content is up against other video content. But note that video is not really competing against text!

There’s an old joke among hikers. You don’t need to run faster than the bear. You only need to run faster than your hiking partner!

In this case, you don’t have to worry about beating all the text-based content. As long as you’re beating out the video competition, your odds of landing on the top search pages are very good.

Video content producers are working within a much smaller pool of competition in order to achieve a page one rank relative to almost any other content optimization efforts on the web.

Even in a well-defined niche and using a long tail keyword you’re competing against a minimum of thousands to tens of thousands of text page results, but only tens to hundreds of videos. In fact, for many keyword phrases in many professional niches, you may find NO video content showing up in the search results.

If that is an important keyword to your target audience, you should break out your video camera and break out into a great big smile. You’re about to leap ahead of all your competition!

Focus on offering great online video content and you’ll feel this second invisible hand lifting your online video marketing efforts to the top of the search pile.

Failure to Optimize

When it comes to the text that makes up the majority of the content on the Internet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has achieved a level of maturity and development that makes the competition for a slot on top search results pages fierce.

And, thankfully, Google has achieved a high level of sophistication in weeding out the underhanded strategies that have been used to manipulate search results. As a result, the Internet has evolved into the most open, useful source of information in the world.

The point is that if you’re producing written web content only, you had best be highly proficient in your SEO skills (or hiring someone who is) AND you had best produce content that is of the absolute highest quality if you hope to be found on the web.

But when it comes to video content, the number of people who have achieved a high level of SEO sophistication is far smaller. So you not only have less competition when you work with video, your competition is not doing as good a job in their efforts to show up ahead of you on search results pages.

In another article, I’ll go into much greater detail about HOW to best optimize your video content to get the greatest return on your investment in its creation. But proper attention to the use of keywords in titles, tags, descriptions, combined with proper site mapping, search engine submissions, and syndicated distribution of your video content will allow you to crush the competition.

So, if you learn how to properly optimize your online video marketing content (or hire an expert to do it for you), a third invisible hand will pull your video content to the top of the page.

Conclusion

There are three powerful forces at work, lifting video content ahead of your competition for one of the prized slots on page one of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages. Given that getting found online is the primary outcome you need to achieve in your online marketing efforts, NOT using online video marketing is like tying one hand behind your back.

Your ideal clients, customers, and patients are going online to search for solutions to the problems they’re experiencing – the problems you are highly qualified to solve with your products and services. And Google has clearly understood that a great many people prefer to watch rather than read. So, while content is king, video is the king of content.

If you use online video marketing, you immediately benefit from:

• Preferential Treatment by Google
• A Lower Level of Competition
• A Less Sophisticated Group of Competitors

The only question is, why are you NOT grabbing your video camera and getting busy crushing it with your Online Video Marketing!