Tuesday, February 8, 2011

How to optimize your video SEO

As more and more of the web is moving towards video, you need to make sure that your video posts are optimized so you can get the maximum impact for the time you spent creating it.  There is nothing worse than creating an informative and helpful video that no one ever sees because no one can ever find it.  Here are a few tips to keep in mind before you post.

Create an optimized title

This is pretty basic and you should be doing this for each of your posts already but make sure you have relevant keywords in your title.  A video that teaches coupon shopping should be called “How to coupon shop” not “My trip to the store” or something equally as useless.

Optimize the description

The description area is very handy and you must be sure to utilize it correctly.  Use it to reiterate your main keywords and provide a better explanation of what you are doing.  In our couponing example, a good description would be “Learn how to use coupons at Kroger, Wal-mart, Albertsons, HEB, or your favorite grocery store.  Save money on every grocery bill!”.  If your video has multiple points, list them here.  This is also the place you want to include a link to your site so people know where to go to find more of your great content!

Use the tags

You need to remember that Google doesn’t actually “watch” any of the videos so it relies on these text fields to figure out what the video is about.  Use a variety of relevant tags to make sure your video is categorized properly.

Can you transcribe your video?

This is something that not a whole lot of people do but I’ve seen some success with the practice on the few sites that do it.  Again, it’s just a matter of giving the Search Engines the maximum number of opportunities to know what your video is about.  It also gives you an opportunity to clear up any places you misspoke or were unclear.

Increase your views

From the stats that I have seen it looks like Google gives more weight to videos with more viewers so be sure to share them on social media and ask others to watch it.  Google also gives weight to the viewer ratings on Youtube.  Viewers can give a thumbs up or thumbs down so ask for a positive rating.  You should also ask viewers to subscribe to your YouTube page.  Asking them to leave a comment wouldn’t hurt either.

Distribute widely

Tubemogul.com is a site that allows you to post to multiple video sharing sites automatically.  In the time it takes to upload a video to YouTube you can upload your video to a dozen video sites at once.  Very handy site and if you included a link to your site in the description then you’ve got a lot more backlinks that will help your site’s overall SEO.

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