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A Beginner’s Guide to Video SEO

As Google continues to increase the prominence of universal search and provide search results from a wide range of media, more opportunities are opening up for getting a presence on page 1 for what would previously have been unachievable.

The increasing incorporation of images, shopping, news, social and other verticals into search results has given smaller websites the opportunity to challenge for competitive search phrases if they can be one step ahead of the game. Video is one such vertical, and here we give you a rundown of how to optimise your video content for maximum success in the search engines.

Key Elements of Video SEO:

Title
Description
File Name
Category
Tags
Privacy
Promotion

Title

As with standard web pages, the title of your video is very important. Even more so on external video sites like YouTube as that is what will dictate the title tag of the page as well, a crucial on page ranking factor. Do keyword research and optimise the title of your video so it ties in with your SEO goals as well as appealing to the user and gaining click throughs. Incorporating the brand name at the end of the title is also a good idea so you gain some good brand exposure when your video ranks on page 1!

Description

As with all SEO content, your focus should be on the user and providing them with useful and entertaining copy. Don’t stuff your description full of keywords as it will look spammy and most likely to cause users to leave the page, if they find it at all. Include your keywords in the content in a useful, natural way – you can even include a full transcript of the video if that is relevant to your content.

Another key feature of the video description is including your URL at the start so that it shows on the video’s page before a user has to click ‘Read More’. And don’t forget to include the http:// as otherwise it won’t show up as a clickable link!

File Name

Often, when you save a video it will produce a file name like 02826361283987123874.MOV. This tells users and search engines nothing about the video content, so needs changing. Update the file name to include the main key phrase without making it too long. This should be in sync with the title you’ve given the video as well, and together will contribute to telling search engines exactly what the video is about.

Category

Video sharing sites will usually ask you to define which category your video falls into. Do this as accurately as possible so your video is grouped with similar videos. This might not have the most significant effect in search engines, but will help the video get noticed by people already on those sites through things like ‘Related Videos’. These people may well then comment on or ‘like’ the video, all contributing to better rankings. If you park your video in the wrong category, you’re unlikely to get much click through even if your video appears in the related section.

Tags
Tags aren’t to be forgotten either. Again, don’t fill these with hundreds and hundreds of spammy keywords, but add a selection of relevant 1 and 2 word phrases which will help your video get found. Again, more people = more comments/likes/interaction which all help rankings!

Privacy
It might seem like an obvious point, but make sure you set your video to public viewing. If you leave it on Private by mistake then all your optimisation efforts will have been in vain!

Promotion

Possibly the most crucial part of video success, it’s key that once you’ve uploaded your video and it’s live on the web that you promote it. As video sites are essentially social platforms, one of the key ranking factors for search engines is interaction with users, whether that is views, comments or ‘likes’.

Add your video to all the key video outlets – it’s not just about YouTube! These include:

Once you’ve added your video to these platforms, it’s important to promote them on your other profiles. Embed them in your blog posts, link to them on Twitter and Facebook and share them on other social profiles. The more interaction you can encourage on the videos, the more likely your videos are to be successful in search.

Hopefully these tips will help you with your video SEO strategy. If you’d like to discuss any of the points in more detail then drop us a line.