With so many computers connected through fast Internet connections, multimedia is having a major impact on Internet use. The co-founder and CEO of YouTube Chad Hurley announced that three years after its acquisition the video sharing website now hosts over one billion page views per day.
Multimedia enriches the visitor experience
Many people building out their websites become engrossed in getting as many one way inbound links as possible and minimizing outbound links to “trap” page rank . Forgetting that they still cater to an audience, they fail to provide a way for a visitor to get more in-depth information on the subject. Multimedia is now a major channel for information and entertainment and to remain competitive, it is essential to understand how to use it effectively.
I, like many people, prefer to embed links to other relevant content either within a block of text or at the end of an article. The same is true for multimedia. It can break up the page and draw attention to an area where you can strategically place advertising.
Embedding YouTube videos
Embedding YouTube videos has become popular and in some areas, it is almost essential to compete effectively. If you make your own videos, it can provide even more value. Tutorials help users and increase the perceived authority of a website. Encouraging interaction by providing way to comment and forward links to your multimedia content will increase the visibility of your website. Also you can upload the video to YouTube or other hosting websites and by carefully choosing keywords, you can drive more targeted traffic to your website.
Advantages of embedded videos
Videos also retain a visitor and can encourage them to explore your site further, potentially increasing your revenue as they are exposed to more ads and offers. Videos that play automatically when a page is loaded, annoy me and I tend to move onto another website when I see such behavior. I don’t think I am alone in this and so I wouldn’t recommend auto-playing videos. Visitors like to retain control over their web experience.
Some common mistakes with videos include not clearly providing a volume or pause control, having multiple videos in a block and embedding a video that is not relevant to the text around it. Suitable keywords still need to be used in proximity to the video. In the future, audio indexing of keywords seems likely and Google already has a prototype in the works in Google labs.
I have previously talked about Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) and an interesting live domaining experiment.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Barry, good to see you back posting. I agree embedding relevant videos retains visitors, but you have to check they don’t get taken down as a dead video is even more unappealing than a broken link.
Thanks for reminding me of using some videos to attract visitors!