Answer Engines vs Google | Why SEO Became Questions and Answers (Recorded 2021)

What is the technique that is working right now?

Making videos that answer people's questions, so those questions rank in main Google. Hi, it is Simon from s.media, and I wanted to show you one of the techniques that is working incredibly well for us on Google and YouTube SEO at the moment.

This is not a secret. This is something that every SEO agency out there in the world should be getting hold of and using as a tactic. Over the last couple of months we have been putting together videos that answer people's questions. Why? So that we can rank those questions in main Google.

The challenge has always been for SEO agencies to get video and organic rankings quickly to the top of search. A lot of people will have heard me say this before: many SEO agencies really do not know what they are doing in terms of SEO. This is a technique that lets you rank at the top of Google within a couple of weeks, and here is the proof of how we have done it.

What does a video built this way actually look like?

It carries subtitles, a long and detailed description, and time codes that mark each question. If I search on YouTube for "YouTube marketing tutorial", because I know we come up for it and it is one of the phrases we have been trying to rank for, you can see the video that comes up is us. There is me, there is my ugly mug, there is Andy my business partner, and there is Vince who we work with. A lot of credit goes to Vince for showing me some of the ways to rank these videos as well. If any of you need advice from Vince, let me know.

That video ranks at the top of YouTube for "YouTube marketing tutorial". Go into the video and look at the description and you can see we have added subtitles, which is really important, and we have written a really long and detailed description.

More importantly, we have written a lot of time codes into the video, and those time codes contain questions. For example, at 29 minutes 55 seconds, if I click that it takes me to the question "should I use a specialist YouTube ads agency?". It is not a massively searched question, but it is a question that is relevant to our business. Press 29 minutes 55 and it comes straight to that question. That is what Google is picking up on. It is picking up on the quality answers people make.

Why is Google pushing video to the top of search so fast?

Because Google is worried about answer engines, and it sees video as the bridge to voice. If you think about it, the only thing that could ever put Google out of business is that. A lot of people would say Google cannot go out of business, but Google is worried, and it is worried about Alexa. Jeff is sat there with Alexa, you have got Siri, Cortana, Bixby, loads of answer engines.

Google is worried about the point in five or ten years when people are searching with their voice, asking questions and not bothering to type them into a search engine. At that point Google becomes one of five, one of six or even more. It has gone from its absolute dominance of search today to, well, not nowhere, but it is no longer the search engine of choice, and it risks losing all of that to Alexa. That is its main threat.

So what Google is doing is allowing video to rank really quickly at the top of search. Google sees video as the bridge between text based organic search as we have it today and voice based search. It is using video to test how you and I engage with video content, because within those videos live the answers to the questions people are asking.

Why do two people get different videos for the same question?

Because Google wants to test how different cohorts react to the content they are served. If I am looking for the answer to a question, the answer will be different for me than for somebody else searching the same thing. If we both search that question on main Google at the moment, the chances are we get the same answer. If two of us search for the same question on YouTube, we get different videos served to us.

That is the reason you can rank videos at the top of Google pretty much within 24 or 48 hours. It is getting to the point where Google will serve video straight to the top of search almost straight away.

What results has this produced?

Our rankings have gone up 736 places in the last couple of months since we started to make these videos. If I search again for "should I use a specialist YouTube ads agency" and put that into Google, you can see that is s.media, that is our business, and we are in as the featured snippet. Here is the video that references that question.

That video was only posted a month ago and it now dominates search. Out of 4.7 million results, we are number one, within a month, and we have the top video.

I am not saying we rank for every single question that we put up. What we are doing is building a knowledge base of questions around the topic that we want to be seen as the experts for. That is what I would suggest all businesses do now, because within those questions you build trust and engagement. Your client comes to your website knowing that you have got the answer, which means they are far more likely to buy from you.

How do the question rankings support your main search terms?

They surround the main term with everything the customer is actually asking. If I go back to our ranking tool, and this is a tool I use called Agency Analytics, one of the pretty much standard tools out there, you can see we have started getting a list of these questions coming to the top of search. That then supports our main search terms, such as "YouTube ad agency". That is what we do. That is our main reason for being in business. We run ads mainly for big clients on YouTube.

As it stands today we rank eighth for that. We have gone down one from seventh yesterday, but what you typically see are fluctuations in search before you go up and are promoted higher. Other terms we want to rank for include video ads, YouTube ad specialist, and the questions that go around the topic: how much is it for an ad on YouTube, back linking, YouTube SEO, video ad cost, digital media, how much does it cost for advertising on YouTube. These are all questions found by going onto YouTube.

And once you rank, scroll down to people also ask and there are more questions you could answer. Click on those answers and more and more questions appear on a topic.

Does this only work for marketing topics?

No. Search "how do I install a patio door" and there is a video answer straight in at the top of Google. Go back to our own search and click the video tab, and you can see that is us, s.media, that is a page on our website. Second result, that is us, YouTube marketing tutorial and help. Third, s.media, expert YouTube advertising agency.

So we have got the top three positions for relevant search terms for our business within a month. It is the 30th today, and that one went in on the first of March. This one went in on the 11th of February. That video went in on the 26th of December.

Fresh video uploaded, including questions around the topic that people are searching for, creates absolute ranking gold on the top of Google search. It is indisputable. Any SEO agency who know what they are doing should be suggesting this as a tactic to your business. Most of them do not, because they do not want you spending your budget on video rather than on SEO blogging, building metadata, site speed improvements and all of that stuff that should be pretty basic. This should be a basic requisite within any SEO campaign.

What is the formula in practice?

Build videos with questions in them, write a decent description that is actually made for people to understand and read, put in the time codes, and use hashtags. We use Agency Analytics as the tracking tool. Anyone who knows what they are doing should be able to follow this formula and see how to do it. If you need help, send me a DM or an email. My email is simon at s.media.

What has it done to the channel itself?

It has taken us from three or four thousand views a day to peaks of 20,000. Here is the YouTube analytics for the channel. Go into YouTube Studio, click analytics, and over the last 28 days, updating in real time, we have got a total of 3,724 subscribers, and 32,000 views in the last 48 hours. Not bad. Quite impressed with that.

Overall we have had nearly 200,000 views in the last month. Yes, we do support this with advertising as well. We have had 13 and a half thousand watch time hours in total, and we have gone up 400 subscribers.

You can really see where this strategy kicks in. We were pretty much flatlining at the start of March, and once you start seeing these videos ranking it opens your eyes to how good this can be.

How long does a video take to take off?

Roughly a couple of weeks before it gets picked up. This video was published at the start of March 2021 and went live on the first. For the first 15 or 16 days it was alive it had a little blip, gained a bit of traction a couple of weeks in, then it sort of flatlined. Then you can really see the point where it got picked up in YouTube search and started to gain traction. That is when it has gone on to main Google and driven a lot more engagement.

It has got 75,000 views, watch time of nearly ten thousand hours, which is really good, an average view duration of seven and a half minutes, and 127,000 impressions. So we are getting our brand everywhere for the terms we want.

You can do this too. It is just a question of taking your time to build the content around the questions that work for your business, and doing a little bit of research. If you need help doing that, send me a message.

What is the single metric that matters most?

Engagement rate. Impressions to click through rate on this one is really good as well, at 2 per cent, and that is one of the key indicators of how people engage with your content. If you can take one thing away from watching this video, the engagement rate is the key. If you can get people to stick, that is what counts.

You do not want to show your video to the wrong people. You want it to be found by the perfect audience. Once they come, they watch, they find the answers to their questions, and then Google and YouTube will promote that video content for you.

How do the videos connect back to pages on your site?

Each ranking page holds the video content and repeats the pattern. We rank number one here, as explained, and if I click through to our page, the page title is just "how do I build audiences on YouTube", and it is YouTube marketing Q and A. We are trying to rank ultimately for YouTube marketing.

Within the page we have built up quite a lot of those video pieces of content. If I play any of these videos and go to YouTube, you get the same again: more descriptions, time codes of when the questions appear, and engagement from people within the community.

If we start searching for other terms like YouTube marketing, although we are not number one just for YouTube marketing currently, we are number two, number five, number eight or nine, number 10, 11, 12, 13. You can see we have got it covered. A lot of that front page is now built up with our content on it.

It is a massively powerful SEO technique, probably the number one SEO technique that anybody should be talking about right now. Please do like and share and engage with this video. If you found it valuable, give me a shout out in the comments. And if anybody wants further advice, let me know.