We all know how popular search is for internet users. However, did you know that as of October 2008, video surpassed search on the major 5 search engines in terms of becoming the most popular online activity? According to research covered on ReelSEO, online video is now the most popular online activity worldwide.
Because online video is so popular right now, it presents a unique opportunity for online marketers to leverage video content as an effective means for marketing brands, products, and services. Because online video marketing is in the nascent stages, there is much that is not well understood. For content producers as well as internet marketers, it is important to learn how to produce and publish video content in a way that users can easily discover your video content on the search engines. For this, one must learn and understand video search engine optimization, or SEO for video content.
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.
„Posted“ video SEO is one strategy whereby the goal is to get as many viewers as possible to your video content. „Posted“ video is basically when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video sharing websites. The benefit with this strategy is that you can leverage the massive viewing audiences that already exist at these major video destinations like Youtube and metacafe. Additionally, by uploading videos to these video sharing websites, you can leverage the pre-established page rank and authority that these sites have in order to assist you in ranking well within 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.
In addition to „Posted“ video search optimization, there are many techniques and strategies for „hosted“ video SEO, or „website“ video SEO. With this, the goal is to optimize video content that is placed on your own website. With universal search on the rise, it is possible to utilize video content to increase your own website’s chances of ranking in the major search engines as well as the video search engines. The main benefit in this strategy is that you can expose potential viewers to your other business assets, products and services.
With „hosted“ video SEO, it is most important that you follow best practices in general for search engine optimization. Because search engines can not yet read within video content, it is important that you optimize the HTML pages that contain your video content much in the same way that you would with regular SEO. Although there are many detailed tips and techniques for „hosted“ video SEO, most can be summed up with the following tips:
1) Make sure that the page with your video on it includes a good amount of relevant on-page text to guide the search engines. Include your keywords in your meta tags, URL string, descriptions, etc…
2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.
3) Keep your videos in one main directory with one video per 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) Be sure to generate off-site links to your video pages by encouraging users to share and link to your videos.
Whether you choose „posted“ or „hosted“ video SEO, ReelSEO is a great reference and resource for your to learn more tips and guidelines for video search engine optimization and marketing. ReelSEO is the only website available today that is completely focused on providing expert advice when it comes to video search engine optimization. If you want to learn more, ReelSEO is the most authoritative site in existence.
Good luck and much success to you and your video optimization efforts.