You’ve taken the time to optimise the written content on your site, but what about your video content? While traditional SEO is different from video SEO, it’s vital to optimise your video content. With the growth of video over the past several years, you can’t neglect SEO video content optimisation in your marketing strategy.
According to the team over at Hubspot, 83% of video marketers say that video has helped them generate more leads for their business. Although SEO video content itself can draw in more consumers, having it properly optimised for search is the real game-changer for your business.
As a business, what can you do to optimise your video content for SEO? In this blog, we’ll cover six video optimisation strategies for SEO that you can implement into your marketing.
Choose the Proper Platforms
Before you post your videos on any platform, the first thing you need to consider is the goal behind your videos and what key performance indicators (KPI’s) are important to you. For example, do you want to generate more leads for your website, or do you want to focus on brand awareness? Once you know the KPIs of your video strategy, then you can choose a platform that will best help you reach your goals.
If your business decides to focus on an awareness campaign to expand your brand through SEO video content, YouTube and Vimeo are two great options to consider. After your video is uploaded to the site and indexed, most of the traffic will go to the platform you’ve chosen rather than your website. One important aspect to consider with YouTube and Vimeo is that you will be directly competing with other businesses. Suggested videos will appear after your SEO video content is complete, which could lead someone to watch a competitor’s video, too.
If you’d like to focus on lead generation and conversions, having your videos on-site or through a hosting platform is your best option. Wistia is one platform that can help with this. A major benefit of using Wistia is that they automatically insert SEO metadata to improve a video’s likelihood of being indexed. In turn, this can enhance your SEO video content and increase your search ranking.
Keep in mind that you don’t need to choose one goal or another. Having a strategy that uses a combination of both brand awareness and lead generation is essential for businesses of all types. On the other hand, you do need to evaluate your goals at set time increments to make sure you’re on track to hit your goals. If you notice you’re struggling to hit a certain goal, consider adjusting your goal to something more attainable but that still requires work. Remember, there are no specific rules for your marketing. If something isn’t working, don’t continue down that path. Be proactive and make changes as necessary.
If you’re just starting out with creating or optimising SEO video content, our team at Higher Ranking is always here to help.
Utilise Video Transcripts and Captions
The use of captions is becoming more important each day. As a business, you want your video content to be accessible to all types of people. When you use captions (otherwise known as a video transcript), you allow more people to watch, listen and read alongside your videos – thus, maintaining SEO video content. While having captions is ideal for consumers, it also helps your video be more searchable because of the additional text.
When you add a video transcript on the page, it allows search engines to better rank your content. The text makes your video (and page) more indexable (this is especially true for video content that lives on your website). When you have long videos, adding a video transcript is even more crucial to the video SEO optimisation process. Having this additional content will truly help your business rank better in online searches.
Bonus Tip: While it does take some time to write out a transcript, consider creating a script before shooting the video, so you can cut down on some time writing out the transcript. For on-screen captions, some platforms, like YouTube and Facebook, help by creating captions for you. Most times, you just need to watch through the video and make sure the platform recognizes the words correctly and adjust the captions if the alignment doesn’t match.
Create an Engaging Title and Description
When you’re scrolling through the search results page or a website, content that is engaging and fun is what catches your eye, right? As a business, you need to step into a consumer’s shoes when creating a title and description for your SEO video content. However, you also need to consider how the title and description affect your search ranking.
While it can be challenging to create SEO video content that appeases both consumers and search engines, it is possible! A great tool that you can use at your disposal is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer. This free tool allows you to create video titles while looking at word balance, sentiment, skimmability, clarity and much more.
For video descriptions, a great tactic is to ask a question relating to the video and then a quick line that makes a consumer want to click. A great example would be, “How much do you truly know about video SEO? Check out our video for 3 tips you should start utilising.” Using the word “you” also helps appeal to the consumer as it helps them think and question their knowledge of the topic.
Remember, you never want to keyword stuff your titles and descriptions. Of course, keywords are important to ranking in searches, but you should focus on if the title and description are interesting and clickable. Don’t go overboard in either direction, though. Find a middle line and stick with it. Consistency is key when creating titles and branding your business videos.
Use Appropriate Thumbnails
Videos take a lot of time to create, direct, edit and publish. When it comes time to create a thumbnail for your video, you may want to take a shortcut and use a still-shot from the video. However, you want to avoid this at all costs. A thumbnail can be a deal-breaker for some consumers. If your video thumbnail is not interesting or engaging, a consumer is likely to skip over your video, even if it is great SEO video content.
A thumbnail is the equivalent of the art on a book cover or the main image on your website’s homepage. You wouldn’t skimp on those items, right? A thumbnail plays an important part in your video and the optimisation process. Ultimately, your thumbnail needs to be relevant to the video while also being compelling and appealing to the consumer.
The team over at Wistia found that videos received a 30% higher play rate when a human was included in the thumbnail. When it comes time to shoot your video, take a few minutes to snap a few photos before or after the shoot. You can then use these photos to create a custom thumbnail rather than pulling a still-shot from the SEO video content. If you’re in a pinch, or you forgot to take photos, try to include a human in your thumbnail to make the video stand out to consumers.
Make Sure Other Content Is Relevant
As we mentioned earlier in the transcript section, the additional content on the page is an important part of helping videos rank in search results. However, you have to make sure that the additional content is also optimized for SEO video content. Also, whether you’re using videos on product pages, in blogs or by themselves, any content you include must be relevant to the video.
If you randomly place videos on your website in an effort to optimise for SEO, it will likely hurt you more than help you. Not only will irrelevant content cause a disconnect to website visitors, but it will also confuse search engines. If you notice that your SEO video content isn’t ranking well, it’s likely that the content on your page could use some sprucing up and optimisation.
Another aspect to note is that improving your search ranking, whether it’s written content or video content, takes time. You can’t expect to organically rank overnight. SEO is a major component of having your content rank. If you don’t have the time to allocate to improving your SEO video content, consider utilising an agency such as Higher Ranking to guide you toward online success. You can learn all about our SEO services here.
Embed the Video You Want to Rank
The last tip we have is relating to embedding your videos. Typically, Google will only index the first video on the page. If you are using multiple videos on the page, make sure that the video you want to rank appears first and is an embedded component on your page.
If you’re trying to optimise one specific video, it’s best to make sure it’s the only video on the page and that it’s relevant to the surrounding content. For example, a video that focuses on food delivery would not make sense to be placed on a restaurant’s about page. Instead, place the food delivery video on a delivery or menu page.
Keep in mind that you should not embed the same video in multiple places. Essentially, you’ll be competing with yourself. If the content on your page is relevant to the SEO video content, there’s no reason you should be placing the video elsewhere. Instead of embedding the SEO video content on multiple pages, you can always hyperlink keywords or phrases to other pages that are relevant. This tactic not only leads consumers to discover more pages on your website, but it helps with your link building strategy. You’ll see this tactic in many blogs or articles as businesses will try to lead readers to other sections of their sites.
Get Help With Your SEO Optimisation Strategy
Video optimisation for SEO is vital. When you use our tips to optimise your SEO video content, you’ll start seeing your ranking and site visits improve each day. Remember, before you start doing anything with video, make sure you set your goals and choose your platforms appropriately. After that, you can dive into posting and optimising your SEO video content.
With video becoming more and more important to marketing strategies, you can’t overlook the benefits that SEO video content has to offer. According to Social Media Week, viewers retain 95% more information when delivered via video vs. another content form. If you want to learn more or check out some of their other video statistics, click here. Any way you look at it, video is the latest marketing trend you’ll want to be a part of.
However, you can’t half-heartedly include video in your strategy. Video marketing and optimisation take time and dedication to create and perfect. And with SEO changing every day, it can be tough to keep up with all the updates pushed out while tending to every other part of your business.
There is good news — You don’t have to handle all of your marketing needs on your own! At Higher Ranking, we employ the knowledge experts your business can rely on to put you on the digital map. From SEO video content to mobile advertising and everything in between, our team is standing by to help. Check out some of our case studies to see for yourself what our team can do for your business. When you’re ready, contact us to start improving your online presence.
