New Google Video Initiative Makes Your Responsive Design Website Obsolete?
If you fall into the average of most websites online then 65% or more of your traffic originates from a mobile device. With Google’s ongoing algorithm changes, having a responsive design website became a requirement in 2015 if you wanted to be found organically in search engines.
Now it seems that responsive design has been trumped once again by Google to a new requirement, mobile-first (video+) responsive design websites. What this means for searches done on mobile devices (in the eyes of Google), is that mobile-first websites are going to get preferential visibility in organic ranking over responsive design websites and especially over sites that are not responsive design.
What is the Mobile First (+Video)?
Google just announced a new program for video called AMP, which stands for accelerated mobile program and is designed specifically for videos. AMP is a mobile-friendly landing page format for showcasing videos. If you have AMP(ed) web pages for your videos then theoretically, you will show up higher in a search on mobile devices.
One more statistic to consider is that by 2017, 70% of our time on line will be spent watching videos. This leads one to believe that if you don’t implement a video marketing strategy in 2016, your business will be negatively impacted very soon.
One of the biggest misnomers with videos is that they need to be commercial grade and/or studio quality before you publish them online. After all, it’s your brand and you would not want anything such as a low quality video to tarnish your brand…or do you?
When you think of how many easy ways there are to create videos using your smartphone, your computer, other people’s computers and cameras, why would you limit yourself to video quality done in studios?
Don’t Forget About Live Events, Podcast and Webinars
Videos are such a great tool that you need to think about expanding any limitations you might have on your brand and consider how many creative ways you can utilize video to promote your business and your brand online.
There’s nothing better and simpler than recording a live event on an industry specific topic by simply interviewing a business partner, industry expert or even a customer about trends, issues and/or solutions that your prospects can relate to. And it doesn’t need to be a masterpiece because rough cut videos are considered more genuine and real and pass the bull$&*! sniff test that is an innate instinct in all of us.
We look forward to watching commercials about one time a year, for the Super Bowl. We don’t want to be sold. Videos that are genuinely real and have stories that talk about:
- what you do as a business
- what you do for the community that you live in
- and what you do as a human being to have fun when you’re not working
…are all great video concepts. We also know that people are over 60% more likely to buy your product or service after watching a video.
Here are some great resources and tools for doing video broadcasts (recorded and/or live):
– Periscope (Twitter tool)
– Facebook Live (now integrated into updates)
– Twitter 
