Want to supercharge your blog traffic? According to Forrester Research, you are 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results if you have video embedded on your website.

Video plays a huge role in not only how Google ranks your content, but also in how Google perceives it’s value. According to Google, the presence of video is evidence of quality content. As the popularity of online video continues to rise, Google is expected to continue increasing the ranking factor of blogs and websites that utilize video.

Video results currently make up 70% of the top 100 searches on Google results, yet only 9% of small businesses in the US use Youtube. Yikes! Are you one of those businesses?

Here are 3 Ways to Supercharge Your Blog Traffic with Youtube

Embed A Youtube Video In Your Blog

According to Wistia, those who create videos on Youtube have a HUGE advantage in Google search over those who create videos on other platforms.

Google favors content produced and shared across their platforms, so if you’re not creating Youtube videos and embedding them within your blog, you’re missing out on a TON of traffic.

Image via Wistia.com

And this isn’t just with Google, websites utilizing video are seeing boosts across all search engines.

Search engines, and especially Google, like mixed media. They want to see images, videos, PDFS, links and all different types of content within your blog post. Mixed media is so important, search engines like Google are prioritizing quality content over keywords.

When you create a blog, you don’t want to just stick any ol’ video in your blog posts. You want to make sure the video you’re embedding from Youtube is optimized with similar or the same keywords seen in your blog.

And you can double the ranking factor of your blog post and video if you transcribe the video by not only adding captions to your video, but also summarizing the video in your blog post.

By infusing keywords and descriptions in your videos, you allow yourself to double dip in Google’s rankings.

Google is known to not only rank your blog, but they will also rank the video on your blog and thus you’re able to rank a blog page under Google’s Main Search AND their video search. Aha!

Are you missing out on this huge opportunity to supercharge your blog traffic with youtube?

Include Content Upgrades with Your Videos and Give A Call To Action

Studies show that 50% of people who watch a “quality” video will take whatever action that video asks them to do [marketingzen.com/].

Studies also show that viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video.

So if you want to supercharge your blog traffic and convert viewers into website visitors or students of your next course, you may want to consider adding call-to-actions in your Youtube videos.

The best way to infuse a call-to-action in your video is that after you have given the hook or pitch in your video, include the call-to-action relevant to your video, before proceeding with the beef of the content. Lastly, you want to make sure you have a link in your description with your call-to-action and content upgrade.

For example, if I were to do a video on my Favorite Books for Writers, I would spend the first 7 seconds of my video letting my audience know that I will be giving them the best books I currently own to improve my writing skills that I know will also help them improve theirs.

Then immediately after that, I would tell my audience that in the description link, I have an epic list of 150 Hashtags for Writers to Build A Brand on Social Media.

Although the video is essentially about writing fiction, the goal of most writers is to release their book to the public. By providing a verbal prompt letting my audience know that not only am I helping them write good fiction but I’m also providing resources to help them get their writing out to the world, I’m able to get a ton of email signups because I know what my audiences goals are. (And btw, when I did this I got 40 email sign ups on a video with only 112 views at the time–pretty spectacular!)

There are three mistakes I see people constantly make when they put their call-to-action in a video.

1. They don’t mention the call-to-action within the first 15-30 seconds of the video. It’s important that if you have a content upgrade or bonus to at least mention the content upgrade before you begin the meat of the video. There are various tips and tricks you can use in storytelling to drag out actually telling people where to find the link (and thus increase watch time), but I’ve found that if your video content itself is what people want to see, even if you put your content upgrade at the front of your video, people will download the bonus, then continue to watch the video.

2. They don’t actually tell people to check it out. The verbal cue is the most important part yet people often times just stick the link in their descriptions. Well guess what? How can you highlight the importance of something amazing and valuable to your audience if you don’t actually talk about it?

3. They don’t remind their audience to take action. It’s not enough to just mention your content upgrade one time. Sometimes, a member of your target audience wants to watch the video in it’s entirety before downloading the content upgrade. What you don’t want them to do, however, is click off the video before signing up for your email list to download it or visiting your blog post that contains more valuable information related to your video topic. To prevent this from happening at the end of your video (or somewhere sprinkled in the middle), you should remind your audience to check out that content upgrade!

Include a Link Back to Your Website (In Every Video)

If you missed the memo, Google loves Google. So you should be using Youtube to provide powerful backlinks to your website AND share that video with said backlink to Google +.

Quality, high authority back links are vital to Google Ranking.

A back link is when one page links to another. It is estimated that backlinks make up 80% of the weight that search engine ranking algorithms give websites so the more incoming quality backlinks you have, the more popular your site will be.

Google views content created on it’s platform as high quality and high authority, so by including a link to your website in your Youtube video’s description, you’re providing a High Quality PR backlink to your website. And if 80% of search ranking is based on high authority back links, the more, the merrier. So go ahead and link multiple blogs posts in your Youtube video that are relevant to the videos topic and encourage your viewers to check it out.

If you’re thinking about getting started on Youtube, incorporating video content into your brand’s strategy or just don’t know where to start, come hang out with me for a FREE 5 Day Course I’m giving on How to Get Paid to Be Yourself — an Introductory to Personal Branding + Getting Started on Youtube. The girls signing up for this training will receiving help with setting up and branding their Youtube channels, as well as tips and tricks to help build confidence in filming and creating video content.