Does having a video on your website increase your Google ranking?

[dgriff]

A friend of mine told me that having a video on your website increases your Google ranking for your website. I'm not sure about it because I can't find any evidence to back it up. Does anyone have an opinion on it? Thanks.

[jimmyn]

It might help decrease bounce rate if people watch the video.

And some people think a lower bounce rate can help ranking....

But sticking a video on your site won't automatically increase rankings, and in some cases it can slow the site load time.

[Innovins]

Online video is consuming the web as we know it whether you like it or not. Some prefer text content over video in most cases, and that’s ok too. I don’t think text is going anywhere, but demand for video is on the rise from both consumers, and businesses looking to stay on top of their marketing. Just like not all text is great, not all video is great, but when done well, I think you will find that it offers plenty of reward.

[KernelPanic]

No, links increase your ranks. A compelling video of Kate Upton washing a car would probably attract links naturally and this would probably increase your ranks provided the links were relevant and passed authority.

[neilh]

Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion US dollars, and they offer you the code to embed video's in your website, so it can't do any harm. can it?

Unless the video is no good or of no relevance of course.

[JennifferGrey]

I think a website using a combination of different media, including embedded video, would rank higher than those with just plain text. Someone already did this test and it showed that the site would likely to rank in the first page of google.

[Trinath]

video is useless but if the video is fantastic then people will enter in to website through this it increases the traffic

[rickeliason]

As stated, video won't automatically increase rankings but there are other indirect benefits;

* People absorb information in different ways. A video (and other content formats for that matter) can help break up the monotony of text-heavy pages which could keep people on your website longer. As Jimmyn mentioned, these positive behavioral metrics could potentially help

* Video is one of the most shared mediums on social media. Its not links, but these social citations can help

* Lastly (one of my favourites) you can sometimes obtain a rich snippet in the SERPs (a small video thumbnail) which can help CTR regardless of being #1. You just need to construct and upload a Video XML Sitemap.

More information on all of the above in an article I have written: Video SEO - Optimisation, Promotion & Strategy Made Easy | Search Insights

I hope that helps,
Rick

[stuattpoul]

Video on your site will not increase your ranking. it is just for describing your content more deeply...

[seohuntanalytic]

If I'm not mistaken, Google likes different types of content on sites. But the thing is, as always, in relevancy of content and your site niche. The best thing is to use reasonable ratio of content types. And, it goes without saying, the content must be qualitative. IMHO, only the presence of video doesn't play very important role, it rather makes your site to look better in the eyes of Google.

[Alex Coleman]

I have seen many websites which are built newly and having good ranks without internet marketing. I found few reasons after analyzing the sites. These sites were unique in their design, contents and having different features included in it.

Adding video is an added feature which makes your site more attracting. And off course if you use youtube as embedded video Google gives weight age because you indirectly promote their product also.

Off-course as mention buy Jymmin it will help to achieve good bounce rate also

[Lb1878]

IAnd off course if you use youtube as embedded video Google gives weight age because you indirectly promote their product also.

Have you tested this? The only correlation I would mention about adding a video and improving ranks is due to user behavior and how user behavior may have a possible affect on rankings. Time on /sitepage, lower bounce rates, page views, etc.

There have been more and more discussions around the web that user behavior is playing into ranks. If you think about it, anyone who uses Google Analytics provides Google front row access to your site data. Certainly a plausible thought but I don't believe anything has been confirmed by Google. I know there is a strong, compelling argument that content and links drive rankings and I agree. I don't think user behavior is out of the realm of affecting ranks though whether published or not. Unfortunately, I cannot support this but they see every interaction on my website via Google Analytics.

In any event, I do not think that adding a video will simply give you a boost from Google for any reason, including it being a Google product.