How Website Videos Become an SEO & SEM Lever and What It Has to Do with Bounce Rate

To address these questions, we caught up with Timon Hartung before SMX in March 2025. Timon is the founder and CEO of the technology consulting firm WOXOW. He has been active in online marketing since 2003 and focuses intensively on SEO.

Let's get started. Nice to talk to you, Timon. Let's move on to the first question:

#1 "Why are videos so important for SEO?"

In my opinion, videos are highly underrated. Many businesses still do not use videos on their websites. However, videos are an incredibly powerful element to quickly and effectively captivate visitors for a product or service. A video can convey the essentials in just a few seconds and highlight the benefits succinctly.

If we look at the history of the internet, it all started with plain text. Later, images were added, which significantly improved the user experience. Now, we are in the era of video. A video often conveys complex topics more understandably and quickly than long text deserts, thus significantly increasing interest in a product or service.

In short: Videos reduce the barrier to perception, which positively impacts the conversion rate.

#2 "What role does the bounce rate play?"

The bounce rate is a strong signal to search engines about whether a user was satisfied or not. If someone comes from a search results page, lands briefly on a website, and clicks away quickly, Google interprets it as the content not being a good fit. This leads to poorer rankings.

Here is where videos play their full strength: They engage visitors longer because they spark curiosity and offer more opportunities for interaction.

For this, videos must be integrated in a way that they are well received by the visitors. It doesn't matter whether it's a short video on a homepage stage or a long video embedded in content. The video must load quickly, start playing immediately, be high quality, and should play with one click. This isn't easy because we can't just place many large MP4 files on the website. We encounter visitors in various situations, on computers, smartphones, at home, or on the go. The hurdle to solve all this technically is high.

This brings us to your topic. Videos behind cookie banners are just as ineffective as the large MP4 file on the stage. The experience is disrupted. If a video can be played without cookies and is instantly available, most people simply stay longer on the page. This longer dwell time automatically has a positive effect on the bounce rate and thus on the ranking.

#3 "How do you optimize videos for search engines? Are large video portals useful for one's own website?"

If you want to optimally prepare videos for Google & Co., you should always choose the right platform and integration. There are two essential questions:

How is the video displayed on your website, and should it also be uploaded to platforms like YouTube?

For conversion-relevant videos – i.e., those intended to lead the user to take action (e.g., purchase, contact, or newsletter sign-up) – it is often advisable not to rely on platforms like YouTube. While YouTube can provide reach, it also easily invites users to leave.

The standard integration includes many outbound links to YouTube and additional video recommendations. YouTube does everything it can to ensure that your visitors are on YouTube and not on your site. In such cases, it is better to use your player or a specialized hosting service to ensure that users do not leave the site.

However, for content, tutorials or podcast videos, YouTube is also okay because it can help you reach new audiences and be discovered by YouTube itself. In both cases, it is important to give the video a clear title, a meaningful description and subtitles (transcripts) so that search engines can easily understand what the video is about.

In the end, there is nothing wrong with doing both. That is, embedding the videos directly on your website and also uploading them to YouTube to make them discoverable there. It's just not smart to scarify your video reach on your website because you use YouTube.

#4 "What are the biggest challenges with video optimization?"

In practice, it's harder than expected to properly host videos and use them for SEO. There are few specialized service providers. Many companies tend to upload their content to YouTube or Vimeo and then embed those videos. They don't realize that this can quickly drive users away.

Solving this problem on your own, without compromising the usual SEO KPIs, is not so easy. There are technical and legal barriers. You can't just put plenty of large MP4 files on your site, you have to stream them adaptively or your SEO scores can drop. You need to pay close attention to data protection (GDPR) and UX with external providers. From the summer, there will also be the European Accessibility Act (EAA) with requirements for the player and the video. Then there are transcripts and the associated metadata. If these are missing, Google often can't fully understand the content of the video.

It's an effort. A lot of businesses overlook the amount of money spent on video production itself. Ignoring optimization afterwards is just bad math. Yet it is precisely this that determines whether a video is watched and brings sustainable success.

"Final question: Is the video effort worth it for SEO?"

Yes. Done correctly, it can have an impact on key KPIs such as bounce rate and time spent on the site. But it has to be done right, or you could end up with the opposite effect.

I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but that's what Ignite is here for. A simple solution, without unnecessary hurdles, with good performance. For those of you who don't know you yet, you should give it a try or meet you at SMX in Munich.

Thank you very much!

Thanks for your time, Timon! And thanks for the praise at the end, I am happy to accept it.

Anyone interested in learning more about Timon and his work in SEO, AI & Data can visit his website at woxow.com. There, you can also find the Marketing Meets Technology podcast, which discusses many exciting tech topics related to online marketing.