Local Video Gets Play at SES San Jose

Today at SES Steve Espinosa, director of product development for eLocal Listing, stressed the importance of video to gain better search rankings and conversions in local search results.

Specifically, SMB videos on eLocal Listing have seen a 3.34 X increase in clickthrough rates. This is a combination of pages getting higher rankings because of the presence of video (universal search), and the human factor of video thumbnails attracting the eye and the curiosity of searchers.

Beyond the click, listings with video are also seeing higher conversions, measured by eLocal Listing via call tracking. This jibes with many of the SMB video benefits we’ve argued in the past, involving the ability for video to more effectively sell the personality of a business. It also sometimes acts as a proxy for a business’ success – it’s on top of its advertising game and therefore likely to be on top of other things.

On a nuts-and-bolts level, SMBs should also associate the video on their landing page or Web site with the same video on YouTube by adding the same tags and surrounding content on the page. Google will recognize this and associate the two videos, which can generate link juice between the two pages.

Many of his recommendations to get better search rankings in local results, even outside video, shared this concept. Among his list of to-dos was to populate landing pages, including Google local listings, with as much information as possible — and link to your Web site to create link juice between the two.

Or you can just have Steve do it for you …