Today, almost all search engines will allow sites to submit video content in the form of an XML feed. However, serialization of the feed is unique to each engine, and not all guidelines are published. Many sites submit the pages on which videos are displayed, but fail to submit the videos themselves. Other sites submit the videos, but forget to index the pages.
For best results, sites should submit a permalink sitemap that mirrors their video XML feed. Title tags on the permalink pages should be identical to the video title to achieve the highest page rank. You tube is now considered to be the second largest search engine after Google therefore it is surprising that many businesses still overlook the opportunity to optimise their videos for search engines and are potentially missing out on the increase in vistor traffic that quality videos can bring.
Youtube has about two billion videos being watched on its site daily. That is a lot of room for advertisements. Youtube thus offers business the potential for incredible exposure by allowing them to place video ads on its site.
Following tips will ensure better search engine ranking for your videos:
- By making a video, you make yourself stand out from your competitors. Include appropriate keywords in the name of the video, and use the word “video” when appropriate.
- The title is the most important piece of information that the search engines have about your video, and considering that most searchers include the word “video” when searching for a video, this inclusion boosts the relevance of your page as a search result.
- There is more text content on the web than there is video content. You can optimize your video with keywords to allow for the video to show up only when your targeted audience searches appropriately.
- Youtube is the world’s greatest springboard for videos. No other video website can possibly compete with it. Therefore, your video is on the world’s most popular video site, as well as one of the world’s most popular sites in general.
- Literally billions of videos are watched on Youtube on a daily basis. Youtube makes your life simply by allowing you to easily add keywords to both your title and description. For each video, write a unique, keyword-rich description that includes a URL and place the URL at the beginning. This way, even when the “more info” option is collapsed, the user will still see the link. A video’s description is the next-best indicator to search engines of the video’s content, right behind the title so use this space to place relevant keywords when appropriate.
- If you take the time and effort to make a truly memorable video, your clients will most likely share it with friends and other potential clients. In a very short period of time, you could witness an explosion of new clients, simply because they liked your video.
- Videos are the best means for increasing brand awareness. How often do people share funny videos on Youtube with one another? All the time. If your video is funny, as well as informative, without jamming the idea that you are advertising down viewers’ throats, you will be giving people unfamiliar with your business unfettered access and a great first impression.
- Provide video transcripts if possible as until the technology improves, YouTube and other online videos are practically invisible to most search engines and the search engines are only guessing about the content of your video based on the information they parse from the title, description, and tags, therefore if you have a full transcript of your video placed in the description, the search engines will fully understand the video.
It is best to open commenting and embedding as much as possible, but remember to monitor your videos for spam and inappropriate comments. Also consider posting your videos as responses to other popular videos since this is a good way to capitalise on the success of someone else’s video and divert some of those eyes to your own content.
Video SEO can increase search engine performance by more than 5,000 percent and provide a powerful new marketing tool for your organization.
