Optimizing video for search is easy to overlook and incredibly important.
This step-by-step guide will provide you with 8 quick tips to get your video SEO strategy off to a terrific start.
SEO Tips for Video: Choose the Right Place to Host Your Content
When it comes to hosting video, you have two choices: You can host it on your own site or host it on a third-party site, such as YouTube. The correct choice depends on your goals.
If you want to maximize total video views and you generate value from the views themselves (because, for example, your product is featured in your video), then use a third-party site such as YouTube because it will have the biggest built-in traffic.
However, if your goal is to use video to bring potential customer into your site or to increase the volume of your site's search referrals, then it is best to host your video yourself. Typically, this is done by embedding the video streamed from a video service into a page on your site.
SEO Tips for Video: Pick a Good Title and Description
This really isn't much different from picking a good title and description for a web page for SEO purposes. You want to be verbose, include your most important keywords, but to do it in a way that is user friendly and not simply cramming in the highest possible number of keywords.
For example, if this article were in video form, I would use a title like:
SEO for Video Content: 8 great tips to maximize the SEO benefit of video content
instead of
SEO Video, Best SEO tips, youtube video SEO, traffic from video, www.wpromote.com
Sadly, we still see way too many of these types of titles these days.
SEO Tips for Video: Use a Transcription Service
Since Google cannot look at a video and understand its content per se, associating a text transcript with your videos is a great tool to let the search engines – and video sites such as YouTube – get a better read of your video content. You can manually type up a transcript and upload it to a video service along with your video, or you can use one of a number of automatic transcription services that do it for you. Associating transcripts with your video is a key step in unlocking the content otherwise stuck inside of your great video content.
SEO Tips for Video: Consider Mass-Upload Services
There are very convenient resources such as TubeMogul.com that automate the process of submitting your video to all major (and even some minor) video sharing sites in one fell swoop.
Though these services are simple to use, it is still important that you think before you act; this relates back to the question of whether you are seeking to promote video to enhance search referrals to your site or you simply want to read the widest audience possible.
If you just are going for views, using these convenient services is a no-brainer. However, if you are looking to rank for the keywords related to the video, and you give up this content to the major video sites, most likely their pages will rank higher than your pages on Google, since their sites most likely already have far more site authority than your site has. If your goal is to improve your site's ranking by driving links and traffic to the page on your site, you may want to use mass-upload services sparingly or not at all.
SEO Tips for Video: Include Video in Your Sitemaps
If you are choosing to host video on your site, then it is critical to make sure the search engines know to index the pages that contain the videos as well as information about the videos themselves. You can accomplish this by creating a video sitemap.
A sitemap is a document that tells search engines about pages on your site so they have a better chance of being indexed (in Google's case, these are managed by using Google's "Webmaster Tools.") A video sitemap is a type of sitemap used to specifically identify and tag videos on your site. A good video sitemap will include the video file, a thumbnail image, and title and description information. If your site does not have a video sitemap, the search engines will be unable to include your video directly in related search results (though they could still index the page on which the video lives.)
SEO Tips for Video: Optimize Your Video URLs
Consider this SEO 101: Optimize the URLs of pages on your site by including in them information about the page itself (In other words www.store.com/maytag-dishwashers.html is a better URL than www.store.com/product12345.html.)
The same logic should be applied to the page that contains your video:
www.mysite.com/video/seo-tips.html is a stronger URL than www.mysite.com/seo-tips.html
SEO Tips for Video: Keep It Short
As brilliant as you think your video is, you should not expect anyone to watch a video that runs longer than 10 minutes. Personally, I consider 10 minutes to be a bit too long, as I am prone to tune out after more than 3 minutes unless the content I'm watching is truly awesome.
If you have 30 minutes of content and you just can't cut it down, then make it into a series of smaller videos. This has the benefit of keeping users' attention more engaged through each video. it also allows you to multiply the number of videos that you can optimize, tag, drive traffic to, and rank highly on Google for.
SEO Tips for Video: Spread the Word
Once you have created content worth sharing, tagged it, and submitted and uploaded it, it's time to get the word out. Videos attract an incredible number of in-bound links, which is key because in-bound links have a disproportionate effect on boosting your SEO rankings.
To spread the word, post a link to your video on your Facebook and Twitter accounts, allow and encourage commenting on your video, and make it easy for users to share your video on their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube accounts and personal blogs. E-mail your mailing list and link to the video. Encourage your employees, colleagues, friends, and family to help get the word out, too.
If your video is a bit more commercial and less likely to go viral, an inexpensive advertising campaign on YouTube or Google is always an option, and can often provide the much-needed spark to help a video gain an audience.
The bottom line is that online video is far more than a good way to kill time; it is an amazing medium to educate your customers, expand your reach, drive traffic to your site, and increase sales. With some unique content and a basic understanding of how to handle the SEO for that content, you can tap into this exciting and dynamic opportunity.
SEO Tips for Video: Additional Resources
Check out Google Video Sitemaps
SpeakerText offers a quick and reliable video transcription service.
TubeMogul.com is a good tool for mass-video uploading.
Check out Mashable's list of the top 10 video sharing sites.
Ramp.com is a useful content-indexing tool.
This step-by-step guide will provide you with 8 quick tips to get your video SEO strategy off to a terrific start.
SEO Tips for Video: Choose the Right Place to Host Your Content
When it comes to hosting video, you have two choices: You can host it on your own site or host it on a third-party site, such as YouTube. The correct choice depends on your goals.
If you want to maximize total video views and you generate value from the views themselves (because, for example, your product is featured in your video), then use a third-party site such as YouTube because it will have the biggest built-in traffic.
However, if your goal is to use video to bring potential customer into your site or to increase the volume of your site's search referrals, then it is best to host your video yourself. Typically, this is done by embedding the video streamed from a video service into a page on your site.
SEO Tips for Video: Pick a Good Title and Description
This really isn't much different from picking a good title and description for a web page for SEO purposes. You want to be verbose, include your most important keywords, but to do it in a way that is user friendly and not simply cramming in the highest possible number of keywords.
For example, if this article were in video form, I would use a title like:
SEO for Video Content: 8 great tips to maximize the SEO benefit of video content
instead of
SEO Video, Best SEO tips, youtube video SEO, traffic from video, www.wpromote.com
Sadly, we still see way too many of these types of titles these days.
SEO Tips for Video: Use a Transcription Service
Since Google cannot look at a video and understand its content per se, associating a text transcript with your videos is a great tool to let the search engines – and video sites such as YouTube – get a better read of your video content. You can manually type up a transcript and upload it to a video service along with your video, or you can use one of a number of automatic transcription services that do it for you. Associating transcripts with your video is a key step in unlocking the content otherwise stuck inside of your great video content.
SEO Tips for Video: Consider Mass-Upload Services
There are very convenient resources such as TubeMogul.com that automate the process of submitting your video to all major (and even some minor) video sharing sites in one fell swoop.
Though these services are simple to use, it is still important that you think before you act; this relates back to the question of whether you are seeking to promote video to enhance search referrals to your site or you simply want to read the widest audience possible.
If you just are going for views, using these convenient services is a no-brainer. However, if you are looking to rank for the keywords related to the video, and you give up this content to the major video sites, most likely their pages will rank higher than your pages on Google, since their sites most likely already have far more site authority than your site has. If your goal is to improve your site's ranking by driving links and traffic to the page on your site, you may want to use mass-upload services sparingly or not at all.
SEO Tips for Video: Include Video in Your Sitemaps
If you are choosing to host video on your site, then it is critical to make sure the search engines know to index the pages that contain the videos as well as information about the videos themselves. You can accomplish this by creating a video sitemap.
A sitemap is a document that tells search engines about pages on your site so they have a better chance of being indexed (in Google's case, these are managed by using Google's "Webmaster Tools.") A video sitemap is a type of sitemap used to specifically identify and tag videos on your site. A good video sitemap will include the video file, a thumbnail image, and title and description information. If your site does not have a video sitemap, the search engines will be unable to include your video directly in related search results (though they could still index the page on which the video lives.)
SEO Tips for Video: Optimize Your Video URLs
Consider this SEO 101: Optimize the URLs of pages on your site by including in them information about the page itself (In other words www.store.com/maytag-dishwashers.html is a better URL than www.store.com/product12345.html.)
The same logic should be applied to the page that contains your video:
www.mysite.com/video/seo-tips.html is a stronger URL than www.mysite.com/seo-tips.html
SEO Tips for Video: Keep It Short
As brilliant as you think your video is, you should not expect anyone to watch a video that runs longer than 10 minutes. Personally, I consider 10 minutes to be a bit too long, as I am prone to tune out after more than 3 minutes unless the content I'm watching is truly awesome.
If you have 30 minutes of content and you just can't cut it down, then make it into a series of smaller videos. This has the benefit of keeping users' attention more engaged through each video. it also allows you to multiply the number of videos that you can optimize, tag, drive traffic to, and rank highly on Google for.
SEO Tips for Video: Spread the Word
Once you have created content worth sharing, tagged it, and submitted and uploaded it, it's time to get the word out. Videos attract an incredible number of in-bound links, which is key because in-bound links have a disproportionate effect on boosting your SEO rankings.
To spread the word, post a link to your video on your Facebook and Twitter accounts, allow and encourage commenting on your video, and make it easy for users to share your video on their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube accounts and personal blogs. E-mail your mailing list and link to the video. Encourage your employees, colleagues, friends, and family to help get the word out, too.
If your video is a bit more commercial and less likely to go viral, an inexpensive advertising campaign on YouTube or Google is always an option, and can often provide the much-needed spark to help a video gain an audience.
The bottom line is that online video is far more than a good way to kill time; it is an amazing medium to educate your customers, expand your reach, drive traffic to your site, and increase sales. With some unique content and a basic understanding of how to handle the SEO for that content, you can tap into this exciting and dynamic opportunity.
SEO Tips for Video: Additional Resources
Check out Google Video Sitemaps
SpeakerText offers a quick and reliable video transcription service.
TubeMogul.com is a good tool for mass-video uploading.
Check out Mashable's list of the top 10 video sharing sites.
Ramp.com is a useful content-indexing tool.
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