Posting Video to Your Google Business Profile Has Known Benefits
Videos facilitate a powerful connection between searchers and businesses by offering engaging visual content that showcases products, services, and brand identity. Digible has a great opportunity to use video as an engaging user experience in the Multifamily industry. Through storytelling, virtual tours, resident testimonials, and community insights, videos establish trust, evoke emotions, and differentiate a property from its competitors. This makes it easier for potential renters to better understand, trust, and choose a property as their next home sweet home.
Digible sees that posting videos on a property’s Google Business Profile (GBP) offers positive impacts. Impacts on an organic campaign can range from improving map rankings and organic search performance to increasing a property’s brand awareness.
How GBP Video Posts Can Impact Organic Performance Metrics
- Google Business Profile Impact: Posting videos on your GBP listing can enhance your business profile and provide potential customers with more engaging content. A well-maintained GBP profile that includes videos, photos, and up-to-date information about a property can positively impact local search rankings and increase your visibility on Google Maps. This can lead to better overall map rankings and increased chances of appearing in the Local Map Pack (the set of local business listings shown prominently on Google search results).
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- Website Organic Search Rankings: While posting videos on your GBP profile can indirectly influence your website’s organic search performance, the direct impact on your website’s organic rankings comes from having a robust and well-performing GBP listing with high authority and trust. An active GBP boosts local SEO, credibility, and user engagement, contributing to enhanced organic website rankings through improved visibility, trust-building, rich snippets, local link attraction, and mobile optimization.
How Does the Frequency of Posting Video on GBP Impact Organic Campaign Metrics?
Consistently posting videos can enhance user engagement, local visibility, and trust, which may indirectly impact certain organic campaign metrics such as website traffic, click-through rates, and possibly search rankings. However, the exact extent of this impact can vary based on your target audience, the quality of your videos, and the overall relevance of your content. While videos on GBP can contribute to a well-rounded online presence, Digible wanted to find out exactly how much video could impact organic campaigns. Digible decided to track answers to the following questions:
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- How does adding video posts to your GBP campaign strategy impact your Google Business Profile metrics
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- How does adding video posts to your GBP campaign strategy impact your organic website metrics
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- Does the frequency of video posts matter to either GBP performance or organic website performance?
Digible tested the timing of post creation to see whether weekly or monthly videos helped boost organic traffic and interactions. Knowing that the use of video can impact an organic campaign in many ways, Digible decided to start the following tests during the non-peak season to try to isolate the impact on video posting factors as much as possible.
Impact of Posting Videos on GBP Once a Month VS Once a Week
Over three months (January 2023 – April 2023) and using 3 test accounts located in Chicago, Digible examined the impact of posting videos once a week vs posting videos once a month on the corresponding Google Business Profile accounts. The breakdown is as follows:
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- Test Property 1 posted a video once per week
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- Test Property 2 posted a video once per month
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- Test Property 3 posted a video once per month
To keep the tests on a level playing field, Digible chose accounts that were running similar SEO campaigns on similar budgets, were in the same metro location, and were similar property types. Digible ran the test in the slow months to ensure that seasonality fluctuations would not impact our findings. We compared the data from this test period (January 2023 – April 2023) to the previous year’s data (January 2022 – April 2022).
In our analysis, our goal was to discover if there was any correlation between a higher frequency of video posts on the GBP compared to the impact on a property’s organic presence both in maps and in organic search.
Topics covered in the video postings:
Test Property 1 (one post /week)
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- Neighborhood
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- Apartment Amenities
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- Community Amenities
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- Floor Plans Available
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- Gallery (Explore life at the property)
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- Pet-Friendly Community
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- Studio Apartments
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- 1 Bedroom Apartments
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- 2 Bedroom Apartments
Test Properties 2 & 3 (one post/month)
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- Overview (location, amenities, available units)
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- Floor Plans Available
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- Community Amenities
Let’s take a closer look at the results.
Google Business Profile (GBP) Metrics
GBP Profile Discovery – all metrics YoY
During the time Digible was posting videos to the GBP for the test properties Digible could see a significant increase in performance in nearly all GBP search-related metrics except for direct searches and search views.
A decline in direct searches on a GBP could stem from reduced brand visibility, shifts in user behavior or preferences, increased competition, negative publicity, including negative Google reviews, SEO challenges, technical issues, seasonal variations, changes in offline promotions, rebranding, and algorithm changes, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a strong online presence, positive customer sentiment, and up-to-date information to counter these factors.
Search views for a business in a GBP could decline due to decreased brand awareness, changes in user behavior, increased competition, negative publicity, SEO issues, or technical glitches, underscoring the need for consistent online engagement and accurate information.
The Results: In this category, the one-post-a-week test property clearly won out in all categories.
During the time videos were posted to the GBP for the test properties, Digible could see a significant increase in performance in nearly every view and action-related metric. The percent change margin was even higher than expected for impact on map views and phone calls. While the one video post a week property did very well with maps views, the one video per month properties won out in all the “action” categories.
If your goal is to enhance the visibility and engagement of your property in online searches and map views, increasing your posting frequency seems to be a strategy that can provide a positive impact. However, if your priority lies in encouraging visitors to take specific actions such as making a call, requesting directions, and visiting your website through your GBP, it appears that posting videos on a monthly basis yields better performance.
Next, let’s look at metrics inside Google Analytics.
Google Analytics Metrics
Google Business Profile Performance Increases YoY – Google Analytics Metrics
Posting videos on the GBP helped contribute to a rise in user engagement and longer session durations on the associated property website, enhancing user interest and encouraging visits (users and sessions). Properties that posted one video a month saw a larger increase in all metrics during the test period.
While posting 1 video a month was the winner in each metric category in this test, there were two metrics that saw the biggest boost: Pages/Sessions and Users. The increase in users and pages per session can more than likely be attributed to the fact that the profile provided users with clearer and more enticing information, resulting in higher user interest and a more thorough exploration of the linked property website. The property profile and website could have shown up in more searches therefore increasing the trustworthiness factor leading to more visits and more page material consumed.
Social Media Metric Impacts
Outside of the pages/session metric for the property doing weekly video posts, posting videos on Facebook can bolster organic user engagement and session data in Google Analytics by driving traffic from social media to the website, increasing overall visit durations and interactions. These numbers are all very positive, telling us that incorporating video into your organic social campaign is a winning combination.
Posting video content on Instagram and Facebook can boost session and page view metrics on the website by capturing user attention, driving click-through traffic to the website, enhancing brand awareness, and fostering engagement through compelling content that encourages users to explore the property website further.
It’s interesting to note, however, that on the Instagram platform itself, static posts (still images and text) still tend to outperform video posts on average. During the same time period engagement on static posts and reach from static posts outperformed video posts.
The increase in session and page view metrics from social media platforms after incorporating video posts is likely due to videos driving click-throughs and engaging users, encouraging them to explore the website. Meanwhile, the better performance of static photo posts on the platform itself could be attributed to platform-specific user preferences and browsing behaviors favoring quick consumption.
Find out more about social media in Digible’s Organic Social Case Study on How Type of Content Impacts Engagement.
Main Takeaways
Posting Videos Monthly to the Google Business Profile has a Direct Impact on Search Views and Maps Views on the Google Business Profile
Posting videos weekly to a GBP has a more pronounced impact on search views and maps views metrics specifically when compared to monthly postings due to the increased frequency of updates. Weekly video updates signal higher activity and freshness to Google’s algorithms, leading to more frequent indexing and improved search rankings. This heightened engagement and visibility make the GBP more likely to appear in search results and on Google Maps, ultimately driving greater views and interactions from users.
Posting Videos on Google Business Profile, Either Weekly or Monthly, Correlates to Increased Session Durations on Website Visits
Posting videos on a GBP can lead to increased session durations on website visits because videos offer a more interactive and visually engaging way to showcase products, services, and the overall brand. These videos can pique users’ interest, encouraging them to learn more by visiting the website, which in turn extends their time spent exploring the business’s online offerings, thus boosting session durations.
Using Monthly instead of Weekly Video Sharing on Facebook & Instagram Significantly Impacted Website Session and Duration Metrics
Employing Videos on Facebook demonstrated a substantial influence on website session and duration metrics when shared on a monthly basis compared to a weekly frequency. This might be attributed to the anticipation and perceived value of less frequent but more substantial content updates, leading to heightened engagement and prolonged interaction with the website.
Digible’s Video Creation Strategy
By thoroughly researching trending keywords and topics within the multifamily industry, Digible identifies high-impact content opportunities for your video content. Digible focuses on producing informative and engaging videos that offer genuine value to viewers, increasing the chances of longer watch times and higher user engagement metrics. This ensures Digible’s video strategy is effective in capturing both search engines’ and audiences’ attention.
It is worth noting that when considering video creation, either on your own or through Digible, having an ample supply of high-quality photo assets significantly enhances the video creation process and end results. A diverse array of engaging photos offers a range of visual elements to work with. These assets can serve as a foundation for storytelling, enabling smoother transitions, dynamic visuals, and a polished overall look. Moreover, they provide flexibility to incorporate relevant images, graphics, and overlays, elevating the video’s visual appeal, meaning it will be less likely that viewers will find themselves tuning out due to image fatigue (seeing the same images over and over in multiple videos). This is most prevalent in weekly video posting with a small set of photo assets. With a broader pool of images to pull from, creators can better align the video’s narrative with the brand’s identity and messaging, resulting in a more engaging and impactful final product.
Need support with your Organic Media Strategy? Drop us a line.
