According to the latest research, not only is online video the fastest growing media online, but is has now surpassed search as the most popular activity online. Online video views surpassed searches performed on the top 5 search engines, according to stats released by comScore and covered by ReelSEO in October 2008.
Online video, combined with search, is one of the most effective ways to drive internet users to your videos and market your products and services. However, being that online video marketing is such a new strategy, there are still many aspects of video marketing that are not well understood. For online marketers and video content producers, it is important to learn and practice techniques that increase the likelihood that internet users will discover their content via the major search engines. To do this, one must understand video search optimization, also known as video SEO.
To start off, let’s answer the simple question, “What is Video SEO, or SEO for Video?” Basically, it is the process of creating and publishing a video such that it is easily discovered, indexed, and ranked by search engines. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 distinct strategies and methods to consider.
One strategy for video SEO is that which we call “Posted” video SEO. Essentially, this is when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video websites like Youtube and Yahoo. With “Posted” video SEO, the strategy is to generate as many views as possible for your videos. Uploading your video to these sites allows you to draw upon the massive audience of viewers that these sites already have. In addition, because these websites have a pre-existing authority and page rank with the search engines, this is an effective strategy to leverage these sites to obtain rankings within organic and universal search.
When optimizing your video for uploading (“posted” video SEO), it is very important that you choose your target keywords wisely and include these in your titles, descriptions, tags, comments, etc… There are also many services available on the web that allow you to upload your videos to multiple video sharing websites at once. Although there are a few tactics that can help, for the most part, a “posted” strategy does not assist well with driving traffic back to your own website.
While “Posted” video SEO is a great strategy for getting video views, “Hosted” video SEO is a good strategy when your goal is to drive users to your own website. Essentially, “hosted” video SEO is the practice of optimizing your own website video content. Another benefit to this strategy is that it allows website owners to leverage video content to generate high rankings within the major search engines due to the proliferation of universal search
To optimize video on your website, it is essential to follow common best practices when it some to general search engine optimization tactics for websites. Additionally, because search engines have a difficult time interpreting video content, you want to include relevant on-page text with your video pages to help search engines understand what the video is about. While there are many tips and techniques for website video SEO, the following tips are essential to keep in mind:
1) Be sure to include relevant, on-page text with your video web page.
2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.
3) Publish all your videos within the same directory or subdomain and keep each video on its own unique URL.
4) Create a video sitemap and offer an MRSS feed so that search engines can more easily find and index your video content.
5) Let users share and link to your video in order to increase the off-page linking to your video pages.
Whatever strategy you utilize for optimizing your video content, ReelSEO has a ton of expert tips, guidelines, tutorials, and information for both “posted” and “hosted” video SEO. In addition, ReelSEO is the only website out there today that is 100% focused on video search engine optimization and online video marketing. If you want to learn about online video marketing, ReelSEO is the most authoritative source out there.
Good luck and much success to you and your video optimization efforts.
Before you dive further into online video, be sure to check out the web video marketing experts at ReelSEO, the online video marketer’s guide. Learn more about video marketing, video SEO, video advertising, and general best practices for online video publishing and marketing.