Video SEO is not the same as ordinary SEO. Video search optimization has also changed dramatically over the past few years. Internet video hosting and analysis company Wistia’s video search optimization expert Phil Nottingham shares his video search optimization recommendations.
1. Choose the right video hosting platform
According to Phil, when choosing a video hosting platform, you need to consider the purpose of video marketing. Do you want to optimize your video to get website traffic and new leads? Or is your goal to increase brand awareness?
If you don’t care much about the traffic on your site and focus on increasing brand awareness, you can choose platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. If once your video is uploaded to these platforms, most of the traffic will flow to their website instead of your own. This can cause your potential website visitors to get lost in huge traffic.
Phil said: “If you are more focused on getting traffic to drive conversions, then you need to find a hosting platform that supports this feature.”
2. Insert subtitles in the video
When you’re browsing the Facebook page, you’ll see a lot of videos with subtitles so you don’t bother your roommate while watching the video. The text paired with the video is called a video subtitle.
Video captioning not only allows your videos to reach more audiences, but because there are other text on the page, it also makes your videos more detectable by search robots.
3. Make sure the thumbnail image is interactive with the video.
A video thumbnail is what the searcher will see when the video is indexed, so it plays an important role when the user browses the web. Video thumbnails are as important to the video as the cover of the book and the front page of the site. These figures need to be eye-catching!
4. Pay attention to the title and description of the video
Just like blog posts, titles and descriptions also play a role in video rankings. Take the time to make an attractive video title and description, do keyword research, and make sure you can target the keywords people search for.
5. To ensure that the rest of the page is related to the video
You can’t just rely on optimized videos to improve the ranking on the SERP (search engine results page). The page itself also needs to be optimized for SEO.
Phil said: “If your video doesn’t have a name, it’s probably because your page is too bad.”
If you can continue to produce high quality videos and ensure that the technical components of SEO are in place, then the rankings are just around the corner.
6. Embed the video you want to be on the homepage
Phil said: “Google usually only indexes one video per page. If you upload multiple videos on a single page, make sure the most important videos are in the first place.”
7. Make the video the focus of the page
Many websites hide or place videos below the site, and users must constantly pull down until they find the video. This naturally leads to low playback rates.
The best way to increase your video exposure is to make it the focus of your web page.
8. Do not embed the same video in multiple places
It’s important to avoid embedding the same video in multiple places, because it doesn’t make sense to compete with yourself.
9. Don’t just hope to promote video in SEO
Keep in mind that SEO is not that reliable. Google is constantly changing its algorithms, and video is growing at an alarming rate. Relying on search robots to rank videos is not a long-term solution to ensure video attention.
“SEO is hard to control and constantly changing, so if you really want to get more traffic, using paid video ads is a viable option,” says Phil.