In the last few weeks, I found many video results on search engine result pages (without searching videos) for some keywords. I wondered why videos were coming in the results when I hadn’t searched for videos. Videos are taking over search result pages, and are expected to be more than 85% of all web traffic by 2014. Since Google is providing increased, valuable, search engine results to video content, you might want to consider video optimization. Optimizing videos for search is easy to overlook and incredibly important if you are looking to grab attention.
Saying that online videos are now a phenomenon; is a gross understatement because sites like YouTube stream 100 million videos every day. Recent research says that videos are 53 times more likely to generate top rankings on search engines than traditional SEO techniques. According to Search Engine Watch, videos have a 41 percent higher click-through rate than plain text and videos are thus one of the most integral aspects in the success of any internet marketing strategy.
Here are some tips for optimizing videos:
- Host your website on third party websites like YouTube because they generate a lot more traffic.
- Use a good title and description, just like you do for optimizing web pages.
- Associate a text transcript with your video; you can use any one of the automated transcription services available.
- Include video information in sitemap as it will help the search engine to index pages that contain videos as well as the related information. A video sitemap is a type of sitemap used to specifically identify videos on your website.
- Keep the video short. If you have more than 20 minutes of content; make it into a series of small videos. It will not only get users’ attention, but also keep them more engaged through each video.
- Add video information to URLs, for example, www.mysite.com/video/video-optimization.html
- Use social sites to allow and encourage users to comment, like, and share your videos. You can also distribute your video on video sharing sites; this will increase visibility and additional links. You can also embed videos in blog posts and can carry out bookmarking for them.
- Optimize your video clips with a call to action. For example, you can incorporate the message, ‘Subscribe now for more great content!’ or other similar messages into your videos.
Use the tips given above and make sure your videos make it to higher ranks on search engine result pages. This is likely to attract favourable attentions of your targeted customers and boost your internet marketing gains.
Are videos integral to your digital marketing strategy? Do you usually optimize videos? Did you find these tips useful? Would you prefer doing video optimization on your own or hire a social media agency for the same? Do share your thoughts and views in the ‘comments’ section!