Should You Create a Blog or Vlog?

Content creation is a critical part of search engine optimization — but content doesn’t just mean text-based posts. If you want to drive additional traffic to your website by offering valuable information to your target audience, blogging or vlogging may provide the perfect avenue.

So how do you choose between a blog or a vlog? 

Both allow businesses to share their offerings, opinions, and expertise. And when done right, each has the potential to earn exponential payoffs in the form of organic traffic, ranking, and authority.

Ready to learn the pros and cons of blogging vs. vlogging and how you can use either (or both!) to reach your SEO objectives?

Blog vs. Vlog

A blog is a way to publish content. While blog posts are generally written content, they can also feature images and videos. At Victorious, our blog primarily features written blog posts with useful images.

Similarly, a vlog is a way to publish video content. Vlogs may be hosted on a website or on a video platform like YouTube. Vlog posts are video posts of varying lengths. These may include talking heads, animation, screen shares, or other video techniques to share information.

Blogs have been ubiquitous on the web since the late 90s. With easy-to-share posts of varying lengths, they’ve helped propel the popularity and utility of content on the web. When YouTube launched in 2005, it allowed content creators and businesses to create and share content in a new and exciting way. Now, many brands see video content as a must-have. 

But is that really the case? Is one content form better than the other for SEO? 

Both blogs and vlogs aim to create informative, engaging content that shares information, instructions, or a point of view — though they are equal when it comes to SEO. When deciding whether a blog or vlog is best for your company, first consider the why.

Why Start a Blog or Vlog?

Blogs and vlogs allow you to publish posts and videos that support your marketing objectives. They’re also great tools for SEO. When you combine keyword research and quality content, you can improve your keyword rankings in search engine results pages (SERPS) and drive additional organic traffic to your posts and videos. If done correctly, you’re also simultaneously producing content your target audience wants to engage with. Valuable content helps educate or entertain your audience and showcases your brand’s expertise and trustworthiness. 

Because content plays an important role in a comprehensive SEO strategy, regularly publishing blog posts or videos can help you improve both your topical authority and your search visibility.

Pros & Cons of a Blog

Pros

• Low barrier to entry: Anyone can start blogging for free. All it takes is the time and effort to create content.
• Tested: The effectiveness of blogging as part of an SEO strategy has already been proven. There are plenty of blogging recommendations available to help you get started.
• Indexable: Search engines can easily index blog posts. Just be sure to implement an internal linking strategy.
• Skimmable: When formatted well, a blog post is easy to skim so searchers can find the information they want quickly.

Cons

• Relies on text: Not everyone feels comfortable writing. For many of us, communicating via the written word doesn’t come naturally, and especially when you’re explaining a complex topic, writing and publishing a blog can feel like a heavy lift. 
• Time & Effort: To get the maximum benefit from blogging, you need to regularly publish quality content. 

If you don’t feel confident writing or maintaining a content creation schedule, don’t worry. You can outsource your blog posts to an SEO content writing service.

Pros & Cons of a Vlog

Pros

• Reach a different audience: Some people prefer to watch a video than to read a blog post.
• Easily shareable: Vlog posts are easily shareable on social platforms. A well-produced video blog is a great way to propagate your message quickly and easily across multiple platforms. 

Cons

• Higher barrier to entry: Researching, scripting, recording, editing, uploading, and optimizing a video can take more time than creating a blog post. Plus, the needed resources cost more. While you can get easily get started with a phone or the camera on your laptop, creating professional-looking videos will require more investment.
• Search engines can’t watch videos: If you’re sharing a vlog on your own website, I recommend you embed it in a short blog that provides introductory copy and also includes a transcript of the actual vlog. In addition to making all the keywords you seeded the script with visible to Google, it also has the additive benefit of making the information available for those readers with accessibility issues, such as hearing disability. By the same token, we recommend that vlogs include subtitles or closed captions. Learn more about video SEO here.

From a simple design standpoint, vlogs can serve a dual purpose. Because they’re video-based, they’re a great way to include novel, image-based content to your website (which may otherwise be text-heavy or graphically static). And providing your readers with several different formats to access your content can make for an overall stickier, more engaging user experience.

Do I Have To Choose Between a Blog or Vlog?

No! It’s completely possible—and in certain situations, advisable—to produce both types of content. Providing a rich and robust mix of formats not only gives your audience different formats to choose from but can even help satisfy design and layout goals as well.

On the other hand, it’s certainly not necessary to produce both types. At the end of the day, I recommend you lean into your strengths and always keep your customers’ actual needs and tastes top of mind.

Which Is Better for SEO, a Vlog or Blog?

The answer depends more on your goals than any inherent qualities of vlogging or blogging. If your aim is to rank high in SERPs, perform a simple experiment by Googling the keywords you want to rank for, then see what type of content appears.

If a video SERP feature appears, that indicates video content stands a good chance of ranking. If not, you may have more success focusing your content creation efforts on a blog post or landing page. 

Focus On These 3 Things When Choosing Blogging or Vlogging

1. Your Customers

At the end of the day, one set of people matters more than any other: Your customers. Do they prefer to digest information from blog posts or in a video format?

Also, consider what type of content ranks best for you. If you’ve already built up a strong following for your instructional posts (and you’re unsure about your on-camera skills), playing to your strengths might be a better bet than launching a new vlog series.

On a related note: Check what type of content ranks well for your competitors. You can do a little investigating by googling relevant search terms and seeing what SERP location they occupy. Do you sense an opportunity to siphon off part of their audience, or does it make more sense to stay in your lane and build your own content creation specialty?

2. Your Goals

Just as important as serving your audience, the decision to commit resources towards video blogging or blogging depends on your business goals. If you’re in an audience-building phase, the shareability of vlog content may support your overall ambitions. If providing dense, informational content supports a slower but steadier SEO aim, blogging may be the better choice. Take a moment to factor these considerations in when you’re deciding on an overall strategy, and remember that no single content form promises instant results.

3. Your Resources

Both blogging and vlogging will require content creation resources like keyword and general research, so think about the resources you can commit to blogging or vlogging. Since you’ll want to consistently create new quality content, make sure those resources are ongoing.

Any content strategy you choose will require time and focus, and in my experience, consistency truly is key. If you’ve got the resources to produce high-quality vlog posts, their stickiness and sharability may mesh better with your abilities. On the other hand, if you and your team write like pros and can create a steady flow of high-quality blogs, there’s plenty of proof that this trusted and useful format can help you attract (and keep) an audience, improve your SEO, and support your brand’s authority.

And don’t forget: Just because you start with one doesn’t mean you can phase in the other. Once your blog or vlog is underway, you can start identifying topics that may benefit from having a text or video corollary. 

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