How YouTube Videos Outperform Traditional SEO for Contractors

0:00 YouTube Beats Traditional SEO for Contractors
Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashurn with Push Leads and we help small businesses get more leads without struggle or frustration. And u we’re all in on AI SEO or whatever we’re going to call it. Um generative engine optimization uh showing up for an AI when um being recommended by an AI, right? There’s so many ways to call it, but one of the most interesting things that I was surprised on um from the research we’re doing was how the importance of a YouTube video and how a YouTube video can actually um beat a $5,000, you know, dollar SEO campaign just by using YouTube. Be watching this video on YouTube because, hey, I take my own advice. But Hrefs did a study of

0:44 Ahrefs Study YouTube as Top AI Citation Signal
5,000 brands and they found something totally wild that YouTube mentions are like the number one signal for AI visibility. Stronger than back links, stronger than domain reputation, your domain authority. And so we’re going to look at how contractors can use simple videos to get recommended by H by AI such as Chatty, Google, you know, etc. Um, and uh, so let’s jump into it. Um, going to try to keep this short to two or three minutes potentially. So, YouTube is now the strongest AI citation signal according to the study. Most contractors think that YouTube is nice to have, but HRFS really flipped the strip when they did the study. And they basically said that a plumbing company with 40 YouTube videos showing walkthroughs, showing things on the job, things like that were actually as effective or even more effective than than [clears throat] has like it has a stronger AI signal than a than like a plumbing website with 200 back links, a perfectly optimized website, but no YouTube video. And that’s not a small edge. So, YouTube outperformed traditional SEO again and again in this test, which is insane. And so, why does

1:56 Why AI Systems Trust YouTube Content
AI trust YouTube so much? Well, first of all, YouTubes are hard to fake, right? I mean, of course, we’ve got Cling AI and all these other um um Sora, other um AI generating tools. Um and you could potentially try to fake those things, but reality is that’s a lot of time and a lot of effort. And the mo the average person isn’t going to do isn’t going to try to do that, right? So AI systems are AI systems trust YouTube because it’s hard to fake. Um and also Google owns YouTube, right? So Google Gemini reads text, images, and video all at once. And YouTube is like the first party data source for AI overviews. And then also entity recognition. The more places that AI finds your business. So a website, right, with multiple inner pages and guides, etc., you’ve got your Google re you got reviews for your go local business and you also have YouTube so when an AI and also social media just as

2:52 Four Video Types That Drive AI Citations
a whole right so I always say that AI is ignore your business unless you’re doing social media and we have to really uh lump YouTube into that so the more places that AI finds your business the more confident it’s going to recommend you over a competitor or if you’re an SEO person it’s going to recommend your clients so what are the four types of videos that actually get these recommendations from YouTube or these AI signals. I guess the technical term is AI citation. So the first type is a job walkthrough like a real service call from diagnosis to finish repair. The location is going to mention where where it’s [clears throat] at. This is a customer’s house blah blah blah. They’re in this area. also diagnostic explainers pick a system and explain the causes and then say when to call a pro maps directly to what the homeowners are asking AI um and so that is a direct connection there um before and after videos set 60-second visual proofs of the jobs being done this gets shared in multiple places as well and it also generates brand mentions and AI tracks right so that’s super important and then also homeowner education right how to read your water meter kind of searches or howto videos builds long-term trust and that trust is what AI is looking for. So how to optimize your videos for

4:14 Optimizing Titles Descriptions and Transcripts
citations the the video the AI is looking at much more than just the video. It’s looking at the metadata which includes the title, description and the transcript of the video and that’s what makes your content legible to the AI. So you want to have titles with a questionbased format plus city name, right? So, how can HVAC how can you find a HVAC company in Asheville, North Carolina that’s that does good work, right? Would be a great title there. And of course, I’m based out of Asheville, so I brought Asheville into the name there. You need to have a description with at least 300 to 500 words. In fact, you can actually put the entire transcription of the video in there. And make sure you have the business name, service area, and different website links in the description. And then the transcripts, you need to have corrected captions. And so, um, you can upload captions to videos as well. And honestly, AI will now do captions. So, it doesn’t take hardly any time to do that. And so, let’s let’s talk about the text layer that matters more than what you think. And what they’re talking about here is how important um paying attention to the transcription, to the title, and um uploading the transcript. So, if you’re uploading videos, make sure you have a great title, make sure you have a great description, and make sure you upload the transcript. And this guy, Ross

5:32 How Often to Post and What It Costs
Simmons from Foundation Marketing said that most contractors who get in get on YouTube focus entirely on the on the YouTube video quality or the video quality itself and they ignore the text layer, the description, the for an AI to site you than the video itself. This is just blowing my mind. I mean, I know YouTube is important, but I honestly stopped posting recently cuz I’m like, "Hey, my videos get about 15 views." So, um, why does it even matter? It matters for AI. Um, your video on YouTube because I’m now posting again. But guess what? I’m also putting this video on LinkedIn. I’m putting it in multiple places. Um, because um, and Reddit, you know, multiple places. So, AI is looking multiple places. You need to be putting your video and you don’t need a film crew. You really just need two to four videos a month on a smartphone. You need two to three hours total per month of, you know, sort of filming and then you don’t have to do any editing. Raw footage is authent authentic. And then you might give yourself an hour for des transcriptions and that kind of thing. So if you did two videos a month, you would have 24 videos in a year. Now there are a lot of things you can do to

6:40 YouTube Compounds with Your Full AI Strategy
speed up this time. You can get your transcriptions done immediately instead of an hour, right? So, there are different tools that can do that. Um, you don’t really have to do any of the editing. You can have AI come up with the descriptions for you of the videos. So, there’s a lot of things you can do to shorten that time. In fact, a lot of times I just use tools like this. This is this is created this PowerPoint was created on Gamma and then and then I use Claude to get the research for this and then I published that as a blog on push leads and I’m going to embed this video on push leads. But, you know, all these things matter. It’s like one not one of these things but all these things add together to the whole process of it happening. So let’s look at how YouTube compounds with your full AI strategy. So as you can imagine YouTube doesn’t work alone page. So link your channel link your channel from your Google business profile and you can also post about new videos on your Google business profile um for freshest signal and you can have each piece you know each little piece is making the whole thing stronger right it’s compounding advantage and so you’re doing YouTube videos you’re doing website content you’re getting more reviews and mentions and you’re paying attention to your Google business profile this is the formula for success so um so let’s do a quick a quick Fire

7:58 Quick FAQ Professional Gear Reviews Embedding
FAQ. Do videos need professional? No, they don’t. Shaky smartphone foot authentic. Focus on the titles, descriptions, and transcripts. How many videos really do you need before it kicks in? You need six to 12 videos in your top sort of your top diagnostic topics. And then what’s the first video for H? What’s the number one first video for HVAC? If you have a HVAC company, you know, why is my AC running but not cooling, right? That’s a great article right there. But you can make our video, but you can make any video from any content or any of the most common questions that your clients ask you if you’re a plumber, HVAC, remodeler, whatever it is. Um, and then should I embed the videos on the site? Yes, absolutely. It’s going to boost on time. Um, it’s going to boost time on page if you have your [clears throat] videos on the site and they could be embedded in YouTube uh or they could be on YouTube embedded in your site or you can have the videos in other places. I’m experimenting with what seems to work the best. A lot of times people say that putting YouTube videos directly on your site helps with SEO, helps with all of it. So, that’s another video that I’ll have to do some research on and find out about. So, your next move is to start filming. Start becoming more like Gen Z and just put everything on c on video. Um, and if you’re Gen Z, you’re probably already watching this video and already doing videos and you’re Tik Tok, you know, queen. Who knows? Six questions that homeowners ask you the most. Secondly, film your next job doing a walkthrough. And then third, upload um the walkthroughs and also videos answering the each question um to your YouTube channel with a rich title with a great title, a great description, and a transcript. And so this is how a a zero YouTube been can outperform a 5,000 per month SEO strategy. So the contractors who are starting to do this now are building a compounding advantage for anyone else going forward because guess what you know by the end of 26 or 27 like let’s just fast forward to March of 27 right it might go from 1 to 10 or 20 or 50%. Hard to know how fast AI is going to grow but it’s going to be huge. And so if you are ready to build out your own AI optimized YouTube strategy um and want us to help you do that, then we can certainly help. Contact Push Leads um through any one of our channels. Just look us up. And thank you so much for watching this video. I’m Jeremy Ashurn with Push Leads and I’ll talk to you soon. Pex.