How Do You Rank Number 1 on Google Using Video? The 2021 Method (Archive)

Recorded in April 2021 during Simon's s.media agency era and published as part of a dated historical record. It reflects how search worked then, not current advice — and it repeats, on camera, the answer-engine argument Simon had been making since 2019.

What is the technique?

Thanks for letting me send you this brief video. I'm going to show you how we are pretty much guaranteeing number one rankings on Google using video — a completely white-hat technique. I've had people come back to me and say "people who guarantee things on SEO, it's normally a scam". I've been in SEO for 20 years, and this is literally the most exciting thing I've ever seen in it. If you're using an SEO agency and they're not using this tactic, I would get rid — because this is what they need to be doing, and it's working now.

Let's jump straight in. I've gone to YouTube and typed in "youtube marketing tutorial" — and there's a video of me and my business partner Andy at number one on YouTube. Test it: search that exact phrase.

Why is Google pushing video to the top?

The reason YouTube is now so powerful for Google — obviously Google owns YouTube — is that they are actively serving video straight to the top of YouTube and then promoting it into Google. And here's why: Google is afraid. The only thing that can put Google out of business is Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Bixby — the answer engines. In five or ten years' time we may well all be searching with our voices more than typing into a search engine.

What Google is doing, actively, is using video as the bridge between traditional text-based search and voice. That's their advantage, or that's how they see it — because in five or ten years they don't want to be Google Home versus Siri versus Alexa, one of three. They want to keep the position they've got today. So they're serving video to the top of the search engines — and moreover, they want to see people answering questions.

How do the time-coded questions work?

Look at the description we've added to that video: links to our site, a very long description — a bit like the good old days with keywords — and, within the video, questions. We've time-coded them. For example, "Can I set up a YouTube marketing campaign myself?" — you can jump to 32 minutes and it takes you straight to the right answer.

Google wants those answers, and it wants them in question form. If you've got products or services you're advertising and you want to come to the top of Google, this is how you do it. Don't spend months and months trying to do SEO for terms without great search volume — go for the questions.

What does the proof look like?

Take "can you advertise a product on YouTube" over to main Google. There's Creator Academy, there's "people also ask" — and a little extra tip: keep clicking on "people also ask" and you get loads of different questions around your topic. And there at number one on main Google: advertising a product on YouTube, s.media. Switch to the video tab and there's our video — which only went up on 14 February this year. A Valentine's Day special, apparently. Click it and it goes to a page where we've hosted that video, and clicking the question takes you straight to the answer within it.

It's not a complicated tactic. What you need are great videos around your topic, and then you need to know how to promote them: build the content, rank the video, keep it at the top of search — and after four to six weeks in YouTube, it gets promoted into main Google.