All have heard about the online video phenomenon that is hitting the internet. Viewers by the millions are going online to upload and watch online video content each day. Often, videos are a more effective way to convey an advertiser’s message than typical offline advertising. And because video is becoming so mainstream, the cost to create online video content is extremely low and affordable for almost anyone. Online video has seen massive improvements in the past 2 years with regard to broadband connectivity, streaming, etc… Keeping in mind the vast popularity of online video as a method of internet marketing, it is important to learn the techniques most effective for optimizing your video for search engines.
1) All SEO specialists know that the search engines are built to index and rank text. Being that it is more difficult for the search engines to understand the content within a video (though they are working on it), it is a good idea to include as much text surrounding the video itself if possible. One excellent way to do this is to include a text transcript of your video alongside your video with keyword rich title and descriptions.
2) Keep in mind that when users search for videos on search engines, often time they use the word “video” in their search. For example, “car racing video.” Therefore, in addition to the keywords that you are targeting, also be sure to include the word “video” or “videos” in your description, text, title, meta data, etc…
3) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.
4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.
5) When hosting video content on your own, keep in mind that flash is next to impossible for search engines to read and understand. Try to work with a format that is not flash. However, the simplest way to enable video on your site is via the popular flash players. That being said, do your best to take advantage of the other tips for SEO so that search engines can easily understand what it is your video is about.
6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.
7) Various video search engines use to capture thumbnails of your in different manner. Some of them take the first frame of your video, while others try to take from the middle or end. It is better to experiment with each site individually to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. A video thumbnail is always crucial when it comes to decide for a viewer which video to watch.
Try to keep one video per page and put all video pages into the same directory or folder.
Beside the above mentioned points there are few more points relevant for the optimization:
9) With any SEO that you do online, choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating.
10) Enable ratings, reviews, comments, and feedback on your videos. Research shows that allowing users to provide feedback results in greater views for your video in addition to the fact that users who provide feedback tend to be those users that act.
If you’re interested in learning more about online video marketing and SEO, we suggest that you visit ReelSEO. They are is focused on providing expert tips, tutorials, and advice onOptimizing Videos for Search Engines. For a list of articles and resources about VSEO, visit ReelSEO.com
