Do you know how to do SEO for your videos? Do you have a video or two on your site but are unsure how to do search engine optimization for them?
You are not alone. For a long time it was difficult to say what would help a video rank well in search engines such as Google, but it has become a lot easier than it used to be.
Here are the top 10 SEO tips for videos:
1- If you plan to upload a video to both your site and video distribution sites like YouTube, be sure to post it to your site first. That way you can get links through the embed codes where possible.
2- Make sure that your site has more content than you give the video distribution sites. For example, your site could include a “part 2” to the video or a textual transcription that can’t be had anywhere else. This can entice people to link to your site rather than the video distribution site.
3- Use your targeted keywords in the video’s file name, title, and in the tags where it is appropriate.
4- Build links to the video both internally and externally. Video, like any other content on the Web, will be judged by the same link standards.
5- Create a video sitemap for any videos on your site to make it easier for search engines to find all the video content.
6- Optimize the URL of the page where the video is located by naming the page with the keywords. Only have one video per URL.
7- Tweeting, bookmarking, and mentioning the video on social media sites are great ways to gather links.
8- Cross link your video to other relevant videos that you have done. This will help all of your videos rank better and be more useful for your visitor, which always leads to more views.
9- Create useful content that your visitors will want to link to. This will help to build natural links and encourage comments which also influence search engine rankings.
10- Use a video distribution service such as TubeMogul or Traffic Geyser to spread the video quickly across the Internet. These services can save you a lot of time.
These tips are primarily SEO related. There are a lot of topics about video that need to be discussed to get the most out of a multimedia campaign, but we shall talk about them in another post. Watch for them to come in the future. In the meantime, start recording!
Bonus tip: YouTube will soon let you connect with your friends easier. They are going to suggest people you know by recommending those you have sent videos to via email. Also, if you have connected your Gmail account with your YouTube account, they will suggest people from your contacts that also have a YouTube account.
The idea is to promote subscriptions between friends. One of the key factors in making all of this work is to be sure that your account settings are correct. If you’re not sure, simply go to the privacy settings within your YouTube account. There is a box there that states, “Let others find my channel on YouTube if they have my email address.” Make sure that the box is checked so you can be found and maybe even increase your subscriptions.
Nice article.
Thank you for sharing this tips for video seo
Number 4 is a critical element that often gets overlooked. Link builing or “promoting the promoters” is a key part of any SEO campaign.
Nice tips. I’ll use them now. Lets see how it goes.
great easy tips for optimizing videos but Google give more importance to content, I rarely see a video ranking in top three positions.
We got a video site and were planning to optimize it. Came across this beautiful article just on time
One more tip for video thumbnails. A video thumbnail is what users see first when they make their decision as to whether or not to view your video or another. Video search engines use the first frame of the video or take the thumbnail from the exact middle of your video. Make sure that the thumbnail display is the right thumbnail that you want users to see and that will grab users attention:)
One thing I’ve heard is that one should optimize keywords differently for videos on your site and videos on free sites like YouTube. Reason being, YouTube will always outrank the video embedded on your site. Obviously important given that your goal for SEO is to drive traffic back to your site. However, #1 may be an alternative.
TubeMogul is grand, but I’ve yet to see that Traffic Geyser offers anything other than a terrible web-page.
How about publishing a transcript of the videos (plenty of opportunity to drop those keywords around)
Absolutely. I would recommend putting the transcript of the video on the same page as the video. By doing that you get your keywords indexed and a better conversion on the page because of the video element.
good article for video seo!
I agree with Mark a video transcript will definitely help with SEO as you will creat text content that can be indexed
great post, i am goin to use some of these tips on my latest project!
point number 4 is an important element wch normally people overlook. and publishing a video transcript will be a great help with SEO.