If
you aren't taking advantage of video SEO, now is the time. Here are some tips
and tricks of the trade for using video SEO to increase brand awareness and
sales.
Video SEO is becoming more prominent than ever in the Internet
marketing world. In fact, videos are 53 times more likely than traditional Web
pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.Today's society
loves to view and share online videos and it is not uncommon for a person or
brand to become well-known or famous from a video that went viral.
What is video SEO?
Video SEO is a set of techniques designed to make sure that search engines find
and index your video content. Video SEO also helps to make sure search engines
display your video content when specific keywords are entered as search terms.
Think about how the right video and the right SEO techniques could help get
your brand ahead of the competition. Using video SEO to your advantage is easy;
the hard part is coming up with an idea for a video that will catch on like
wildfire. Your video can be actual video footage, screen captures, slide shows
or animated PowerPoint slides. Whatever you choose, it’s important to keep it
short, simple and entertaining. Making it funny or interesting is your best bet
if you want people to share your video with friends and family (which you do).
Once you come up with an idea, here are some tricks of the trade for using
video SEO to launch your short movie straight into success:
Upload your video to YouTube. Since Google owns YouTube, uploading
your video to this platform will guarantee it gets indexed into Google's
search engine. YouTube also offers an easy way to add video SEO to your
content.
If you choose to have your video hosted on your Website, make sure
to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap using Google's
Webmaster Tools. Also make sure you have a robots.txt file on all of your
video pages to ensure that Google can find the Web page and verify that
there are codes on it that indicate that a video is present.
Include title, description and tags. When you submit a video to
YouTube, the site allows you to provide a title, description and tags.
Make sure to use keywords in each of these in order to ensure that your
video pops up in the search results when a certain search term is typed
in. If your video is on your Website, make the title tag of the video the
same as the title tag of the page it’s on. Google likes this and will
reward the video with higher search results when this is done.
Target long tail keywords. You'll see better search results if you
target long tail keywords in your video. This means you need to get more
specific with your keywords. Don't just name your video "Salon." Name it "Hair Salon Stylist Shows How to Do Prom Up-do." A long tail keyword is
more likely to produce first page results than a generic short keyword.
Since Google can't actually see the content of the video, you could
actually submit the video a few different times with different titles.
This would allow you to cover all potential search term matches.
Remember that when it comes to video SEO, just because you're new
or a small business, doesn't mean you can't earn top rankings. When it
comes to regular SEO for Websites, a new or smaller site may not be able
to achieve the same rankings a site that's bigger and has been around
longer can achieve. However with video SEO that all goes out the window.
Someone who has posted 5 videos has just as much of a chance of reaching
top search results as someone who has posted 1 video, as long as the
proper video SEO steps have been taken.
Over time, the competition for videos will become even denser. However, right
now since there are so many more Website pages online than videos, it's very
easy for videos to rank higher in the search results without as much effort.
For now, it's important to take advantage of this and maximize the amount of
videos online to gain brand recognition and drive traffic to your Website.
Nowadays it's very likely for a video to go viral in a matter of days, which is
why if you haven't been taking advantage of online videos, the time is now.
Start brainstorming ideas for fun and informative videos and you'll increase
brand awareness and sales in no time.
Wendy Suto, President
and CEO of Search Circus, specializes in search engine optimization and search
engine marketing including video
seo for over 10 years. Certified in SEO, Wendy Suto only follows
natural and organic search engine optimization guidelines with proven results.
