Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO), in a nutshell, is optimizing your video to be indexed on search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific and relevant keyword searches. In simple terms, think of SEO for video how you would think of SEO in any other page on your website.
What Do I Need to Focus on to Increase My Video’s Rank?
There are at least 7 things you need to keep in mind when optimizing video to rank high in SERPs:
1. Choosing the Right Video Platform
That may be YouTube or Vimeo, depending on what the end goal for your video is. Each platform has their pros and cons (running ads on video or not for example), but depending on if you want to increase traffic or push for completed views may dictate where.
2. Adding a Transcript
Videos with transcripts (or captions) make your videos accessible to larger audiences and more searchable by bots since there is additional text on the page. Not to mention, transcripts of your video helps put your brand at the forefront of ADA compliance.
3. Picking the Right Thumbnail
Let’s face it. We all judge books by their covers – and the same is said for which videos we choose to watch. Picking a thumbnail that is relevant, engaging and beautiful can help boost your video SEO ranking since more people may be inclined to click and watch your video.
4. Be Thoughtful When Writing Your Video Title (and Description)
Title and meta description information affect rank for videos, too.Be thoughtful in choosing how to describe your video. Research and think about what people may search in order to reach your video, and then write content around those phrases.
5. Don’t Forget About Traditional SEO
The rest of your page matters, too! Create high-quality content and ensure technical SEO is made (reach out to us if you need help!) so search engines can continue to crawl your entire site and rank your page appropriately in the SERPs.
6. Pick One Video to Focus on Per Page.
According to Wordstream, Google typically indexes only one video per page. So, if you’re embedding video on your page, make sure the first video is the video you’d like to rank for.
NOTE: Do not embed the same video in multiple places. You’re just setting yourself up for competition within your site.
7. SEO Is Great, But You Probably Need Paid Efforts, Too.
If you rely solely on video SEO to get your video to rank, you likely won’t see the results you want. While paid efforts don’t have a direct correlation to SEO, the more people are engaged with your video, the better.
In the end, SEO (traditional and video) is a long game that requires thoughtful and intentional work to be done often. But, if you follow the seven steps that were outlined, coupled with paid media placements with your videos, and you’ll be off to the races.
Not sure where to start? Reach out to a member of the Snapshot team. We’ll walk you through where we’d start, and how we can help.
