I see many great videos online almost on a daily basis and it still blows my mind how some of these videos can be completely un-optimized when it comes to getting them to rank in search results.
Just randomly submitting a video without any thought whatsoever into YouTube or Vimeo and not really taking the time to truly optimize the components of that video submission is a big disservice to your online efforts to market yourself or your business through the internet. A video submission is like any other web page bouncing around in the search results and requires some SEO efforts to increase its potential to be found through search engine optimization labors. Often times a title and description of a video will act as the page’s meta title tag and meta tag description. If you use very generic or cutesy titles during your video submission you are only hurting your potential to be found by your audience through organic listings.
Here are some of the components to optimize your video submission:
Title: Take the time and really think about the title of your video. It has to be a combination of industry keywords and a good catchy title. This is important for two reasons. First, you want people to be enticed to click on your video and watch it. If you just jam it with keywords the open rate of your video is going to be poor. Once you figure out a title that you think will work well with your audience add one or two industry keywords to get the rankings of your video bouncing around in front of your audience, you’ll be in good shape. It is crucial to have both elements in place because once that title is published it will also be used as the meta title tag for the page that video sits on. From an SEO stand point that is very important to apply it to your video search engine marketing campaign.
Description: The description is a very important area to focus on as well. Remember that your description often times is going to be used as the meta tag description for the webpage the video is on so it is important you use it to your advantage. Don’t worry about focusing on what keywords you can jam in there but rather focus on writing a nice compelling description first than naturally insert a small handful of your targeted industry keywords or phrases. It has to look natural, anytime you do anything online SEO related you always want to make sure everything looks as natural as possible. As soon as you over step that boundary you develop problems with visibility.
Technical Aspects: Google recommends you follow some technical guidelines when trying to optimize a YouTube video. Things like resolution and frame rate are important to keep in mind when uploading a video anywhere. Best results usually come with 24 or 25 fps (frames per second). Also a video should be in the area of 640×480 in order to fill the player screen ideally. Any less and YouTube will automatically drop those black pillars on both sides of your video which could affect user experience.
It is important to take the time and really make everything you do online 100% efficient when uploading any video. Videos have a very powerful impact when done right and could significantly increase rankings. When uploading a video anywhere utilize every text field to your advantage. They are there for a reason; search spiders come across them and read every single field allowed for text so make sure to fill them in completely with the most relevant information necessary to get your point across. Don’t just stuff keywords into fields to try and manipulate rankings in search results. Take a tasteful approach with anything you do online especially your video submission process. If done right a few great videos can really help your SEO efforts along with increasing leads and sales for your business.
