Getting traffic to your website is essential for any small business owner.  But if you're operating under what I call the "If You Build It, They Will Come" you will be disappointed with the results.  It's a memorable movie line, but a terrible online marketing strategy.  When a website is built, it needs to incorporate a comprehensive SEO strategy. If any web designer tells you that he doesn't do SEO, you need to look for another designer. Some designers like to focus on the design aspects of a website. If you use this type of designer, you'll end up with a pretty website, but not much traffic.

I'm going to give you one very specific tactic to increase traffic to your site.

There is much more you can do, but use this tactic and "they will come". Read more -->

There are multiple benefits to adding videos to your website.

A few these benefits include:

• Videos on your site will help your pages to get higher rankings with Google.
  • To get the full SEO benefit your YouTube account should be integrated with your Google My Business account. Contact me if you need help setting that up.
• Video on your site will increase traffic to your site from additional sources
• Videos are "sticky". Users engage and stay on your site longer. Increased engagement also helps with SEO.
• Video is very shareable which will expand your reach.

For a sample video to embed, I'm going to use one of  Gary Vaynerchuk's YouTube videos. Keep in mind, you will get much more benefit from creating and uploading your own videos. When you upload your own videos to YouTube, you will need to optimize them. I'll go over that in another blog post.

How to embed a video

1. Click on the Share button under the video.

2. Click the Embed link.

3. Click the Show More link.

   • Select the video size

   • I recommend that you check the box to enable player controls and show  video title and player actions. Do not check the box for show related videos. (There's no telling what could be shown)

4. Copy the provided code.

5. Paste the code on your blog or website. See specific instructions for SiteHatcher and WordPress.

How to paste the embed code on a SiteHatcher website

(If you're adding video to your blog page skip to instructions below)

1. Add a component by clicking on the + sign
   
2. Click Standard/HTML in right column
   (1 in image)
3. Click on the HTML component
   (2 in image)
4. Paste the embed code inside the html component.  

Note: You can also click on the Audio/Video in the right column, select the YouTube component and then paste in either the YouTube link or the embed code. Using the HTML is 1 less click and you can also paste in the embed code from Vimeo, Ustream, and others as well as YouTube.

Adding video to your blog: 

1. Click on the Source button in the edit bar.
2. Paste the embed code.
3. Click button to Apply Changes.

How to paste te embed code on a WordPress website

1. On the edit bar click on Text - see image.
2. Paste the embed code.
3. Click the Update button.

How to set your video to Autoplay

I don't normally recommend setting videos to autoplay, but here is the

1. Paste the code
2. Add &autoplay=1" after ?rel=0
3. Be sure to put the " after the 1.

Example

• Before adding autoplay <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4fsYWXrGGcE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
• After adding code for autoplay <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4fsYWXrGGcE?rel=0&autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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Bonus!

For your inspiration, I embedded the code from above that I used as a demo. Watch Gary Vaynerchuk's 2 minute video below for inspiration to help you to be consistent in posting to you blog and adding videos as well.

1. Put the name of your organization and your logo on the top of each page.
2. Write straightforward and simple headings and page titles that make sense and are SEO friendly.
3. Set up the web page to facilitate scanning by using groupings, subheadings, bullets, bold text, and highlighting so that users can quickly get the gist of the page at a glance.
4. Do what everybody else does! If most big websites do things a certain way then follow their example since your users spend their time on other websites and will expect things to work on your website that they do on other websites. (Don't try to reinvent the wheel)
5. Don't distract or annoy visitors with:
   • distracting animation
   • blinking or scrolling text
   • pop up windows
   • links that go to new windows
   • music that autoplays
   • slow loading pages
6. Focus on creating valuable content.
7. Optimize images before uploading to your website. There are plenty of free online image optimizers. Keep images under 25KB.
   
8. Fonts
   • Use standard font families
   • Limit the number of fonts to 2 or 3 at the most.
   • Use Serif fonts for headlines and Sans Serif fonts for text.
9. Clear and easy navigation. Don't make your users think. Make it easy for people to find what they're looking for.
10. Mind the gaps! Pay attention to consistent spacing between your elements and use white space effectively.

Need help?
Contact the SiteHatcher Support Team for help creating a website that gets results.