Video SEO
You’ve invested a lot of time and money into planning, producing, and editing your video, but it’s still not ranking. What exactly is going on?
To begin with, video SEO is not the same as traditional SEO. In the past few years, video SEO has evolved dramatically.
What is Video SEO?
Simply said, video SEO is the process of optimising your video so that it can be indexed and ranked for relevant keyword searches in search engines. This article will go through some optimization tactics for giving your videos a better chance of ranking.
How has video SEO changed?
Video marketing has been increasingly popular among organizations in recent years. Without a degree in videography, it became easier to produce movies and post them online (thanks to YouTube) as marketers began to get their hands on DSLR cameras in the late 2000s.
We can’t go on the internet these days without seeing a video, and we all have cell phones in our pockets capable of shooting pretty high-quality videos anywhere. With the rise of video, ranking in universal search results has become much more difficult.
The authority of your website, how video-focused it is, and how it ranks for video-related searches all play a role in how well your video ranks in universal search. It is advised to put less attention on the general search and instead, aim for greater rankings in video search.
How to optimize your video for search Engines:
#1: Select the Most Appropriate Video Hosting Platform
When picking a video hosting site, you should think about why you want your videos to rank. Do you use video to drive traffic to your website and develop new leads? Is it more about thought leadership and brand recognition for you?
YouTube and Vimeo may be worth looking into if you’re less concerned with driving traffic to your website and more concerned with raising broad brand awareness. The problem with these sites is that after your video is indexed, the majority of traffic will go to them rather than your website. This can cause potential site visitors to become disoriented in a world full of competition.
#2: Add a Transcript to a Video
You’ll probably notice several videos with captions alongside them as you scroll through your Facebook feed, allowing you to watch them without disturbing your housemates. A video transcript is a piece of text that is shown alongside your video.
Because there is more language on the page, video transcripts not only make your movies more accessible to a wider audience but also make them more crawlable by search bots. Transcripts are used to create page copy. Because there is more indexable text, you can rank for more queries.
When the video is lengthier and the major focus of the page, it’s a good idea to pay more attention to the transcripts because they’ll have a bigger impact on rankings.
#3: Ensure Your Thumbnail Image Is Appealing
The video thumbnail is the first thing a searcher sees when your video is indexed, it has a significant impact on whether or not they click. Think of your thumbnail images as a book cover or the front page of your website. It has to be interesting, contemporary, and visually appealing!
Click-through rates and other video SEO metrics can be greatly influenced by using appealing thumbnail pictures. It has been discovered that videos with personalized human thumbnails have a 30% greater watch rate than videos without.
The thumbnail of your video is more significant than the title since it influences whether or not viewers will click on it. Make sure it’s also relevant to the keyword you’re aiming for.
#4: Pay attention to your video’s title and description.
The title and meta description, just like they do for a blog post, play a role in video ranking. Spend some time coming up with a catchy title and description for your video. Make sure you’re targeting terms that people are truly looking for by conducting keyword research.
The most efficient technique to achieve increased visibility in search is to ensure that video titles and descriptions are highly optimized.
Don’t just put keywords into the title and description. Ask yourself, “Do you find it intriguing?”Â
#5: Make sure the rest of your page is SEO-friendly and related to the video.
To get your video to appear in the SERPs, you can’t rely exclusively on optimising it. It’s still just as crucial, if not more so, that the page is SEO-friendly, or the search engines won’t bother crawling it in the first place.
Pages with videos must also be relevant and well-optimized to rank as high as possible in search results.
While getting your website ranked organically can be difficult, if you keep creating high-quality content and make sure the technical SEO components are in place, rankings will come.
The other part is to make sure the video is appropriate for the page where you’re embedding it. Ask yourself if this page is related to the video in question or is it general. The chances of the video ranking are slim if the page is generic and the video is just slapped on there.
#6: Embed the Video You Want to Be Listed First on the Page
Google usually only indexes one video per page. If you’re putting numerous videos on a website, make sure the first one is the most important.
After that first video, search engine crawlers usually stop looking for more. If you’re attempting to optimise for a single video, having many videos on the website is not the greatest idea. Maintaining the page’s emphasis on the video will guarantee that it gets the attention it deserves.
#7: Make the Video the Focus of the Page
It happens time and time again on websites where the video is hidden or below the fold, forcing viewers to scroll endlessly until they reach the video. Because consumers don’t want to go out of their way to find the video, this naturally leads to poor play counts and rates. A hidden video is also unlikely to be indexed by search crawlers who go out of their way to find it.
Your chances of being rated quickly reduce if the video is hidden or placed well below the fold. Making your video the main focus of the website is the greatest method to improve its crawlability.
#8: Don’t Rely Solely on SEO to Promote Your Video
Finally, keep in mind that SEO isn’t always accurate. Google’s algorithms are always changing, video is expanding at ridiculous speeds, and depending on search bots to rank your videos is not a reliable technique for ensuring that your videos are seen.
Because SEO is difficult to control and always changing, investing in paid video advertising is a strategic approach to take if you want to obtain more hits and eyes on your video.
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