Did you know that the majority of shoppers search for your brand or product name online prior to buying from you?

Have you ever wondered whether they will still want to deal with you after researching you on Google?

The thing is, lots of reputation and branded search problems can be fixed via implementing a well-optimized video creation and optimization strategy.

What is Branded Search?

Branded search is any search that relates to your brand. Your current customers may be searching your brand name to find your URL and buy from you again, or they may be searching for a specific way to navigate your site to find their order. Your future customers may be searching your product name to read reviews or decide if you are trustworthy enough to deal with you.

Branded search is important for a few reasons, including the following:

• Most importantly, you want to control as many of those branded search results as possible to ensure that your potential customers will want to buy from you after seeing those branded SERPs
• You want to know which struggles your current and future customers are having with your site to fix those usability issues

What Does Video Have to Do with It?

Recognizing the growing demand for video content, Google gives more and more visibility to videos inside search results. For many branded queries out there, you’ll see nothing but video carousels that stand out in SERPs leaving all other search elements quite unnoticeable:

A video carousel is all you see on top of these branded SERP. Note that none of those videos comes from the official Salesforce account.

In mobile SERPs, videos take even more real estate leaving other results little chance to ever get clicked:

Needless to say that videos play an important role in managing customers’ expectations and setting the online sentiment which can make or break a successful sale.

That being said, video assets are important for your branded search results, for at least two reasons:

• Videos take a lot of SERP real estate, and hence can impact buying decisions
• Videos may drive additional clicks and leads by allowing you to control yet another search element within branded SERP. Obviously, the more branded search results we can control, the more secure our brand image is and the more clicks we ultimately generate and convert.

So how to use videos to accomplish both of these important goals: more clicks from and more control over branded search results?

Here are the steps:

1. Research Your Branded Queries

This step is no different than any keyword research, only you need to pay less attention to search volume than you regularly would. Any searchable keyword that includes your brand or product name may bring a valuable sale and a loyal customer. All of them matter.

To create the full list of your branded queries, run your brand name through:

• Your preferred keyword research tool (I have listed my favorite ones here)
• Question research tools (the more the better)

You may want to repeat the exercise for your CEO’s name and each of your primary product names.

2. Plan Your Video Optimization and Creation Strategy

This is where you put your keyword research into practice. If you already have a channel, chances are you may be able to use some of your existing videos while optimizing them better for some of the queries.

I use a spreadsheet where I import all my keywords and note whether I may be able to use an existing video or will need a new one:

This is where I put together a detailed plan on optimizing each one of my branded queries. Here are the steps I follow:

• Identify my primary keywords (the one with the highest search volume) and secondary keywords (those that are very close to each primary keyword in meaning), so I may be able to target a group of keywords with each asset
• Note the search volume
• Include an action required (whether you need to create or optimize an asset)
• Note search intent, i.e.:
  • High intent (searchers are likely to be willing to buy right away)
  • Competitive (searchers are comparing my brand/product to a competitor)
  • Navigational (searchers are lost on my site)

If a new video needs to be created for any query, I use Wave.video which lets me put together videos quickly and efficiently.

For both new and existing videos, you need to follow fundamental SEO steps when uploading those to YouTube and/or a public Facebook page. After all, the ultimate goal of this strategy is to get more videos ranked for more of your important branded queries.

In order to rank better, your video page must:

• Include your target keyword in the video title and description
• Have a detailed video description
• Contain relevant tags and hashtags

To help you out, here’s the checklist to follow:

To create a better-optimized video description, use Text Optimizer, an intent optimization platform that helps you create content that includes more related queries and thus meet Google’s and its users’ expectations:

It is also a good idea to create an outline of your video using YouTube timestamps: Those will help drive viewers into the video and improve your engagement.

3. Monitor Your Progress

The first step in analyzing your progress is looking at your analytics. After all, traffic (as well as how it converts) is the first sign of any strategy doing well.

Finteza is an easy-to-use, yet in-depth web analytics platform that allows you to see how much traffic you are getting from a particular source (in this case, YouTube):

Not only it shows you how well that traffic source works in terms of sending engaged traffic but also how those users are following your sales funnel.

In this case, more than 80% of YouTube traffic is proceeding down the sales funnel which is great!

For better-performing videos, you may also want to set up a rank monitoring routine using any tool of your preferences. There are quite a few options  – many of which actually integrate with your WordPress site – to choose from.

Takeaways:

• Branded search queries are those containing your brand or product name. Branded search is an important marketing asset because it may be impacting your customers’ decisions.
• Producing and optimizing videos can be an effective brand management tactic, especially when it comes to better controlling your branded search results.
• Turn as much reputation management content (reviews, testimonials, case studies, etc.) in a video format to publish online.
• You need to search-optimize every video page to increase its chances to rank for your branded search queries.

The good news is, this branded video strategy will result in lots of benefits, including more brand-driven content and a stronger online reputation. Good luck!