Today I want to talk about the problems with video blog posts.
Recently on Nick’s Traffic Tricks I have been experimenting with video blog posts and have asked my readers for some feedback.
The following blog post is a collection of thoughts from my readers.
Search engine optimization
One of the first problems with doing video blog posts is that it’s very hard for the search engines to index the contents of that video.
The Google crawler is not going to come along and listen to my videos on my blog, figure out what they are talking about, and index them into the massive Google database.
It’s just not going to happen.
One thing I can do is to write a summary before or after the video with important keywords that I want in the search engines to find.
But it’s just not the same as a 300 word post and I don’t believe it will rank as well.
Scanning the post
We live in a world of information overload and in order to cope with this people have learned to scan or skim information.
People will look over the major highlights, headlines, and headers of your blog post and read only the ones that they feel are important or are of interest to them.
If you have the video as 10 minutes long it’s difficult to skip ahead to the next section. Typically you have to watch the whole video and many people feel like this is a waste of their time.
People at work
Many people read blogs, check the news, and check their e-mail while they’re at work.
They may want to read your blog and see what insightful information you have while they’re taking a five-minute break but they don’t want to have to watch some video which disrupts coworkers and may alert superiors that they are not getting stuff done.
Only posting videos on your blog will cause people who read your blog at work to stop reading.
People with slow Internet connections
You would be amazed at how many people still have slow Internet connections.
It takes these people several minutes to download a single YouTube video.
In the time that it takes for them to download one of your videos they could have skimmed and extracted relevant information from five of your blog posts.
These people are not interested in videos that take forever to download.
Conclusion
I believe that if you want to have videos as part of your blog then you need to strike a balance.
Mix things up a bit. Maybe one video blog post for every four written blog posts.
What do you think?
I would love to hear your opinion. Please leave a comment below.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Even though these are considered as the limitations of videos, it is still suggested that these videos should be used in order to promote a product or a service.
U r spot on which is why video comes up secondarily in search we are still at the dawn of video. Chaptering and other simple features are required to take it to the next level.
Great site this nickstraffictricks.com and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor
brill site this nickstraffictricks.com nice to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor
If you can forgive the link, my approach (which I'm still developing):
1. Provide an intro page (e.g. http://www.citrustechnology.com/solutions/data-co…
2. Make the videos short; I aim for less than 1-2 mins. So they are focused on one idea/principle. Though at times I feel they do become a little rushed
3. On an actual page with a video, I add sufficient supporting text to describe what is in the video (is it relevant, worth playing, provide that skimming opportunity) and some next steps.
The last item also allows some room for SEO.
Still learning as I go here
Opps that link won't work because it has included the closing brace for some reason. Sorry, try: http://www.citrustechnology.com/solutions/data-co…
No worries.
This sounds like a very good approach.
If I might add one suggestion it would be this: make sure you interact the traffic and visitors you are getting. Do you have a way people to ask questions and get answers?
It would be a shame to spend all this effort getting traffic and then not interact with them.