Videos provide an easy way for your target audience to understand your product. And if well optimized, your videos can work magic for your SERP rankings.
And how can you help them rank in the SERPs?
Enter video SEO.
Videos are insanely popular among both brands and consumers. Nearly 86% of brands already use them to promote themselves online. Additionally, 73% of consumers choose to see videos to learn about a product or service over other forms of content.
But why should you optimize your videos?
Unfortunately, search engines do not understand videos as they would with text, making it hard for crawlers to find relevant video searches. Through video optimization, you help the search engines rank your videos faster and higher.
So how do you utilize video SEO to increase traffic to your videos?
Let’s find out.
5 Ways to Implement Video SEO
Here are the top strategies you need to implement to optimize your videos for better SEO results.
Insert SEO-Related Details
Do you want to make your videos search-friendly? Then you need to walk an extra mile by adding:
An Engaging Title and Description
As mentioned above, the search engine crawlers can only crawl text well. As a result, the title and description of a video become important.
You need to conduct keyword research to find the right set of target keywords for your video and insert them in the title and description.
Apply a balance to this strategy so that you don’t overstuff your description with keywords. Add just enough to make it interesting and clickable. The idea is to improve the overall page experience with the content and the video. This can improve its chances of ranking higher in the SERPs.
Optimize the Rest of the Web Page
First off, make sure the page is relevant to the video. Generic pages won’t cut it.
Secondly, don’t overly rely on the video alone. You need to optimize it by creating content around it to make it a cohesive webpage that serves as a valuable resource for your audience.
How do you do this?
Start by making engaging videos. Next, conduct keyword research using primary terms related to the video to find a target keyword. Based on that, write content related to the video and add the keyword to it.
Select the Best Video Hosting Platform
Choosing the right video hosting platform is a crucial step in making sure your video attains the viewership you desire.
And why is that?
Your video needs to load — and it needs to load fast. For this, your video hosting platform needs to be robust enough.
There are several free and paid programs in the market today for hosting videos. The free platforms include YouTube, Google Drive, and social sites like Facebook and Instagram, while the paid platforms include Wistia, SproutVideo, and Brightcove.
Evaluate each of these platforms carefully and decide which one is the best option for you. The features you should look for include:
- Quick loading
- Ease of use
- Ease of embedding on your website
- Closed captions
- Video quality settings, etc.
Add a Video Transcript
A video transcript is text that showcases what’s spoken in the video.
A vast number of people watch videos without turning the sound on in both private and public spaces.
This underscores the importance of including video transcripts or captions to capture more consumers today. After all, they help them watch the video even without the audio.
Apart from helping improve the viewing experience of the video, captions and transcripts have even more advantages for video SEO.
A video transcript is a text that comes loaded with keywords and is easily indexable. Simply put, the search bots can crawl through the text and help match the video with relevant search queries.
Additionally, video transcripts can help retain your audience’s attention enough to understand the entire explainer video without having to watch it all.
Incorporate an Enticing Thumbnail
A thumbnail is the face of the video. It’s the only image that your prospective viewers would see before deciding to click on it and open the video. Think of it as you would for a book cover or product package — it needs to make a good first impression.
Your video thumbnail should catch the attention of your prospects and compel them to click on your video to watch it.
The idea here is to stand out from the other videos that searchers see — both on platforms like YouTube and in the SERPs.
A good tip is to include text in your thumbnails along with graphics like the ones below.
Here are key pointers to help you design thumbnails that will improve your SEO and bring more traffic:
- Use bold text to show the reader what the video is all about
- Utilize colors that pop to attract viewers and brighten dark backgrounds
- Convey emotion through clear close-up faces
Evaluate Video Performance
To know whether your videos are fully optimized for SEO and driving results, you need to consistently measure their performance. Depending on the type of videos you make, there are different metrics you can use for evaluation such as:
- Number of views
- Average time viewers spent watching the video
- Where did most drop-offs take place
- Play rate
- Average watch time
- Engagement rate
- CTA success rate
You don’t necessarily have to stick to these as well. For instance, if you plan to generate leads through your videos, you’d need to check the number of leads generated as compared to the number of video views.
You can do this by checking the number of forms filled using the analytics features in your form creator.
The key metrics you analyze will provide data on the areas that are meeting the set targets and the areas that require changes. Based on these, you can modify your SEO strategy to drive better results from your videos.
Conclusion
Video SEO plays a key role in optimizing your videos for better results both on platforms like YouTube and in the SERPs.
You need to start by conducting keyword research and then inserting these keywords into your titles and descriptions. Adding transcripts and choosing a good video hosting platform will also help in improving your SEO further.
Finally, incorporating powerful thumbnails and analyzing your video performance can help you further optimize your videos.
Got any questions about video SEO? Ask them in the comments.
About the author
Gaurav Sharma
Gaurav Sharma is the founder and CEO of Attrock, a results-driven digital marketing company. Grew an agency from 5-figure to 7-figure revenue in just two years | 10X leads | 2.8X conversions | 300K organic monthly traffic. He also contributes to top publications like HuffPost, Adweek, Business 2 Community, TechCrunch, and more.
