5 ways to optimize your video SEO
So you’ve just poured all of this money in video content and realize it’s not getting the type of views or ranking that you hoped for. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us and it can be very frustrating. That’s why we have researched to find out ways to increase a video’s SEO and have complied them in a list below. By applying these few simple practices, your video will be on its way to get the kind of exposure it deserves.
choose the right video hosting platform
With so many video hosting platforms that exist, it can be overwhelming and sometimes counterintuitive. That’s why it’s important to consider the type of content you are creating. General brand awareness videos are more likely to gain traction on Social and Youtube or Vimeo Channels but can miss the mark when it comes to leading people to your site. If your video is used as a tool to gain more on-site traffic, then it may be best to embed it in the site completely or work with a video hosting platform that supports this. We recommend checking out this Podcast by WireBuzz and Wistia’s CEO, Chris Savage: Choosing the Right Video Hosting Platform For Your Goals, Part 1 (Ep. 17)
captions
Ever see the captions or transcription on a video when you are scrolling through FB? Yeah it’s a thing and it’s a thing for a good reason. Studies have shown that people are 80 percent more likely to watch a video until the end when closed captions were available. According to 7 Facts About Video Transcription by rev.com, video transcription highly improves your SEO.
“Google and other search engines can’t “crawl” video, meaning they cannot “read” a video to know its content. When you transcribe audio from your online video, however, Google can search and index that text. This gives it a better idea of how to rank you in its search engine results. A transcription allows your video to be searchable, both across the over Internet and in your own website and video archives.When your online video content is searchable, it can help you rank for any valuable keywords the video transcription may contain. This can help your video appear higher on the list of search engine results, making it more likely for Internet users to click on it and watch it.” — Rev.com
create relevant titles and descriptions
This is probably one of the most important steps to optimizing your video in search results. The search results rely on text-based metadata (like titles, descriptions, and tags) to understand what videos are about and how to rank them. A title is usually the first thing a viewer will see and will be one of the main reasons why they watch your video or not. Creating a title that is clear and “click-worthy” will generate more viewers. Same goes for the description.We love this article by Wave.Video which has great tips for writing video titles.
use engaging thumbnail images
This one kind of goes without saying but you’d be surprised at how many videos are uploaded and shared with images that are not engaging or even relevant to the content that it’s portraying. The thumbnail is essentially the video’s “movie poster” so the better the thumbnail, the more likely a viewer will be interested enough to click on your video. Vidyard lists some very important things to consider when creating a thumbnail:
Hint at the premise of the content
Compel viewers to click to discover more
It can feature your branding
The play button should be prominent
It can indicate the length of the video
It should look awesome on any device screen size
And if you’re still unsure on how to create good thumbnails, keep reading their blog here to learn more.
where the video lands matters
It’s important that your video is embedded on pages that are relevant to the video and optimized for SEO. How many times have you been to an outdated website and didn’t even bother watching a video or scrolling to view more content because it just kind of felt off? That happens all of the time. Another rule of thumb is to make the video the focus of the page. People are more likely going to watch it because of its visibility which will result in more hits and search crawlers indexing the video.
TLDR; Put yourself in the viewers shoes and post what you’d want to see and where it’d make sense.
arcpoint studios is a commercial film production company
based in dallas-fort worth offering branded storytelling and content creation
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