Before you can gain an appreciation for the role that video can play in boosting your online presence, you need know that, to stay competitive, you MUST have an online presence. After you’ve accepted that then you need to know how information is consumed and shared.

We already know that, when given a choice, the majority of consumers of towing services choose who to use based on referrals from others. Due to varying factors many prefer to seek advice rather than rolling the dice. And whether it’s from a repair shop, a friend, or law enforcement, people refer towers they trust.

And when on line, it’s a fact that most people would rather watch a short video than read a 1200 word post. In an article written by Jena Kehoe on OneIMS.com she quotes researching firms Simply Measured and M Booth who say; “videos on Facebook are shared 12 times more than links and text posts—combined.” So it would be in your best interest to put some videos on your site.

But before you do, it’s also important to understand what Google does and why they do it.

Google is the largest search engine on the planet with YouTube coming in second. Of course Google owns YouTube so it’s not really a competition. But Google isn’t just a search engine they’re really a gigantic media outlet. And all media outlets, Google included, make money by selling advertising.

Television and radio stations create and promote content you’ll want to watch and listen to so they can sell ads. If you’re not interested in what’s on their stations, then their customers (the advertisers) don’t make sales. Google is similar—in that, if the results of their users’ searches don’t bring about the desired results their users will look elsewhere, which decreases advertising opportunities.

For example when someone needs towing services, most likely, they’ll enter “Towing” or “Tow Truck” into the search bar. When they do, Google wants to be 100% assured that what shows up in the search results are towing companies located as close as possible to the user, not information on how to tow a horse trailer or a towing company 2 states away. If Google’s users don’t find what they’re looking for then eventually they’ll start to see Google as less than reliable. And if that happens, less and less people will choose Google when searching online, and eventually they’ll lose advertisers.

What this means to you is—when you have content on your site that corresponds with what your customers are looking for then Google wants to help promote you, it’s in their best interest to do so.

The only problem is there are a bunch of companies vying for Google’s attention.
That’s where video comes in. Video is very powerful. When your website has video and other content that’s relative to the search terms people are using, Google likes it a lot. In other words if you have what your customers are looking for and it’s in the form of an easily consumed video, Google will send more customers your way.

Now for the good part. Google ranks websites in many different ways, by the incoming links, by relevant content and by the numbers of people who gravitate to your site. But Google doesn’t just count the number of people who visit your site, they also look at the amount of time they stay. The way Google sees it is; if people are staying on your site for a while there must be something good there. And, if so, they’ll want to rank your page higher than those without good stuff.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

If you have a 2 minute video that’s compelling then there’s a higher chance your visitors will spend more time on your site. Rather than landing on your page, searching for your phone number, and clicking the X to leave, your video gives them more of a reason to stay. And when they stay longer Google notices and will send more people your way.

And…If one video makes them stay a bit longer why not post a second and a third?

But know this, if you’re embedding video on your site you must also have supporting content in the form of text. Video’s great but Google’s spiders can’t index video content, yet, without text in the title and the description. And indexing, as far as Google is concerned, is the act of searching or crawling your site and placing what they find into categories for the purposes of delivering it to their users when a relevant search is conducted. So for every video you embed be sure to include a short article and a relevant title describing what it’s about.