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.
For internet marketers, online video is a buzz topic right now and the reason is that it is one of the most effective ways to convey your marketing message and brand. However, because online video marketing is such a new phenomena, there are many aspects that are not well understood. Content producers and marketers are clamoring to produce videos for online use, but many do not understand what it takes to get traffic to their videos. The first step in gaining exposure for your online video content is in making certain that it is discoverable. That is where Video search engine optimization, also known as Video SEO comes in.
In order to leverage the power of online video with search, one must first answer the question, “what is video SEO, or video search engine optimization?” Simply stated, it is the art and process of creating online video content in such a way that it is easily discovered and indexed by search engines. Doing this will help to drive maximum exposure to your video content. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 separate and distinct strategies for optimizing video online.
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.
With posted video SEO, it is important that you pay close attention to the keywords that you include in fields entered upon upload like the title, tags, descriptions, etc… We recommend utilizing tools and services that help you to automatically upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Although it is not impossible to do so, the major downfall with this strategy falls into place when your goal is purely to drive traffic back to your 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
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) Be sure to include relevant, on-page text with your video web page.
2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.
3) Keep your videos within a common directory and publish each video to a unique URL
4) Publish a video sitemap or MRSS feed to help guide the search engines to your video content.
5) Create inbound links to your video pages and encourage linking and sharing of your video content.
Whether your strategy is to drive visits to your video or to your website in general, video SEO is an effective way to leverage the power of online video. If you are interested in learning more advanced tips and techniques for either “posted” or “hosted” video content, ReelSEO is the website to visit. They are the only site completely focused on providing resources and information for Video SEO.
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.
