How to Optimize Video Content for SEO
Video marketing is a crucial part of any campaign today. It does, however, present an SEO problem. Search engines can’t watch videos, so how do you make sure your video is at the top of the search results?
SEO can be worth thousands of dollars for small businesses. With this in mind, how can you harness the power of SEO and video marketing?
There are ways to do both, and we’re here to tell you how.
Are you ready to start combining the power of video marketing and SEO? Do you want to make your business grow? Then read on and find out how you can optimize video content for SEO.
Provide a Transcript
This is probably the easiest way to optimize video content: the script will need to be optimized for SEO itself. You will then provide a transcript for the video on the same page.
By doing this, you are not only optimizing the video’s page for SEO, but you are also providing a service. Deaf viewers and those who cannot watch videos will enjoy reading your transcript.
How many times have you wanted to watch a video, but not had headphones? Have you even bothered to go back and watch that video later? A transcript decreases the bounce rate and lets you access a wider audience as well as improving your video’s SEO optimization.
Choose the Right Platform
You should carefully consider which video platform you upload to. Each one offers different ways to optimize video content.
Youtube is the default, but make sure to do your research. Some providers, particularly those that are aimed at marketers, will add SEO-friendly metadata for you. Good metadata is a huge part of a video’s search engine optimization and determines its place in the search results.
If you’re just trying to build brand awareness, then Youtube and Vimeo are still the best bet.
Optimize Your Metadata
As we mentioned, some platforms will sort out your metadata for you, but it’s better to do it yourself.
You should research keywords before you even make your video. Once you’ve established what keywords you want to use, you need to make sure your video’s metadata is optimized.
The primary keyword should be in the video title. You also need to add them to the description, but avoid keyword stuffing.
Video descriptions should be over 250 words in length. This provides enough room to optimize the video for SEO.
Ensure that you include great tags for your video. Your main keyword should be the first tag, and relevant secondary keywords should follow.
Choose a Great Thumbnail
Your video’s thumbnail should be instantly engaging for the audience. If it’s drab, you won’t get as many clicks and your ranking will decrease.
Choose an engaging, beautiful, and thought-provoking thumbnail. It could be a still from your video or a related image. The main aim is to improve the number of clicks on your video, so let your imagination run wild.
Embed Your Video
Embedding your video on your site can help your video’s ranking improve. However, there are a couple of guidelines to be aware of:
- If you want to optimize video content, you should know that Google typically stops crawling after the first video. If you’re embedding more than one video, use the one you want to promote as the first video on the page.
- Don’t embed the same video on multiple pages. You will end up competing with yourself.
Optimize Video Content By Making It the Centerpiece
Your video should be the center of your web page. The whole page it is on should be built around the video.
Sometimes, you’ll see videos hidden at the bottom of pages, which isn’t the correct placement. You want your audience to watch your video, right?
Search engines are also more likely to crawl your video if it’s visible on the page. Make watching the video an essential part of the page’s experience.
Create an SEO Strategy For Your Videos
Your videos need to be relevant and related. If you’re a culinary business, you shouldn’t be making videos about tech.
Create an SEO strategy for your video content. You should know what topics you want to cover, their ideal length, their release schedule, and how you’ll promote them.
This kind of strategy will keep viewers coming back to your content. A regular release schedule and video length is comforting and lets them incorporate watching your video into their days. This gets you more clicks, which improves your SEO.
Promote Your Videos
Video marketing isn’t as simple as uploading a video and then leaving it alone. You need to promote your videos constantly.
Promoting your videos means that more people will watch your content, more people will subscribe, and people will continue to watch your videos. This will result in better search engine rankings.
Share them via email, social media, and your website. You could even provide your channel with a paid advertising campaign. The end goal is to get more viewers, and promotion will help you achieve that.
Final Thoughts
Knowing how to optimize video content can be difficult. The payoff is well worth the effort, though. Better SEO means more viewers and brand awareness.
This is what you need to be doing in video marketing in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
If you’re not sure what your next steps are, we can help you. Our success stories speak for themselves. We have proven ourselves as a capable and skilled marketing company.
Get in touch with us today and we’ll be able to answer any questions you may have and give you a quote for our services.