Since the advent of YouTube, video marketing has never been more important, considering it’s FREE! But creating a video about your SME and whipping it up on YouTube won’t get you very far. If your videos aren’t optimised, don’t match your target audience’s needs and wants, your videos will probably just get lost in a sea of other more interesting things to watch.
Keep in mind that after Google, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine. Every minute on YouTube, around 72 hours of content is uploaded. A report by comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, showed in November 2012 that out of a sample of 182 million internet users in America, nearly 40 billion online videos were watched.
Other previous studies have shown that videos are 50 times more likely to rank on Google’s first page over text.
So how can you guarantee that your videos will generate real results? Video SEO (video search engine optimisation) is the key. The simplest way to do video SEO is to consider your target audience. You need to consider what they need, what they want, and what language and imagery best fit them.
We’ve listed 10 Proven Tips for Video SEO so that you too can reach the first page of Google and YouTube. More importantly, these 10 Tips will help you build visibility, brand awareness, and raise the profile of your business in the eyes of your large niche audience.
1. Check Your Content
The best videos on (related to business) are ‘How-To’ or step-by-step videos or videos expressing opinions about useful topics. Your videos should be full of great valuable content, informative, and directly relevant to your audience. If you produce videos that are loosely or don’t have much to do with your brand and services, then you’ve wasted your and the viewer’s time. When creating your videos make them fun, short, memorable and makes the viewer want something more from your business. When using a video production service, make sure to review their portfolio and ask lots of questions.
2. Title Your Video Correctly
Catchy titles that are irresistible to open should contain keywords and phrases that match your service. the best way to come up with the best titles is to do keyword and market research to see what your viewers are searching for. IMPORTANT NOTE: don’t just fill your title with keywords because viewers don’t look for keywords, they look for relevant and catchy titles that draw them in.
3. Get Tagging
Video SEO requires that you use tags to make sure you cover all keywords people are searching for. Make sure to use simple words and words that the average person would use, not complex terminology only you may understand. Think of the audience and the way they may be searching. Name the file of your video also with these terms. Videos that you save on your desktop as “Video1.wmv” don’t help.
4. Description and Annotations Matter
These sections display crucial information which is used to identify the content that’s in your videos. Be accurate with the information you provide (use abundant keywords) and it will make it easier for viewers to find your videos. Optimise and use the “annotations” when you’re uploading to YouTube. You can make these annotations appear when and where you want them to and it lets you add text, links to other videos you have, other channels, playlists and even allows you to create interlinked video narratives. These tactics will guarantee a higher ranking.
5. Virtual Real Estate
Upload your videos to more than one site such as YouTube and Vimeo together. You can also use a service like Traffic Geyser that can spray a vast number of video portals with one click of a button and get you huge exposure for each of your videos. Remember to provide links back to your website or channel.
6. Transcripts Get Indexed
Providing HTML transcripts for your videos allows search engines something more to index and rank you for. If you provide on-page text copy, search engines have more to work with. Check out an example of our Web-TV show called SME Biz TV. Each video comes with a transcript, a written version of the actual show. You don’t have to be as descriptive as we are but make sure the relevant keywords and phrases are there so that you rank higher and your video is found faster.
7. Length Matters (sorry hunks but shorter is better in 2013!)
Countless studies have been done on this topic and the results are in. Although psychologists have confirmed the average sustained attention span of humans is around 20 minutes, in the world of internet video, it’s only about 1 minute. No one likes to sit through a boring video, especially one that sounds like a commercial. If your video has to be long, then consider breaking it into digestible parts and call it Part 1 and Part 2, etc. Remember that having more optimised videos on the internet means you’re eating up more virtual real estate and can be found in more places online.
8. Video Site Mapping
Taking advantage of Google Webmaster Tools when creating a video sitemap will gain you more rankings. When you submit a video sitemap to Google, you should use effective keywords in the anchor text that correctly links to your videos that are in your sitemap. This will guarantee that search engine crawlers can more easily find your videos and index it properly. This is now simply academic and should be part of your routine.
9. Let Others Embed Your Videos
Allowing the option for others to embed your video somewhere else will help your video go viral. Check out this screenshot from YouTube’s sharing options. Consider that there are millions of bloggers and review sites out there who may be interested in sharing your video and discussing topics around them.
10. Always Syndicate
When your videos are online, ensure that you submit them to RSS Feeds which can syndicate your videos to drive even further exposure across various other online platforms. Check out this Google Webmaster Tools section on How To Use mRSS Feeds as a Sitemap. It’s a video obviously!
Video SEO is a fantastic way to garner more viewers and get greater exposure for your videos. With the mass amount of video online, it’s important to follow these key tips on how to optimise your product videos so you get better results on search engines.
I hope this was useful for you. Leave me a comment below. Good luck and have fun with your Video SEO!
I know there are more Video SEO masters out there so if you know any, can you ask them to post a comment on this article’s page and we can learn more tactics to better Video SEO?