Video SEO Best Practices

Video SEO is key to the success of your video content in organic search. Properly optimized videos will reach more viewers, increase the number of people that come to your site, and improve your organic reach. Follow these video SEO best practices to get the most out of your video rankings online.

Define Keywords & Strategize

Properly optimized videos have a defined keyword strategy that identifies that appropriate keywords to be used both in the video and in the correlating content that goes alongside the video such as in titles, descriptions, and transcripts.

Before you define keywords for your video content, make sure you are using a keyword research tool to determine the terms that users are searching for to ensure you target terms that will generate the best value for you.

Create a Video Sitemap

If your website will have several videos, a video sitemap will make navigating the video content easier for the user and for search engines. A video sitemap shows the search engine where to find your videos and when the videos are updated.

Use Metatags

The meta description, thumbnail, upload date and other important details can be included in rich content such as your videos. Carefully crafted video meta tags allow you to reinforce the relevance of a keyword or topic that your video focuses on.

Search engines are unable to watch videos, so they rely on the descriptive details that you provide in the meta data and other areas of the video page.

Mobile-Friendly Videos

As you share more and more videos, consider the mobile-friendliness of your content. Videos that have excessive pop-ups or other forms of disruptive content that may irritate the viewer are not recommended.

Instead of using an annoying pop-up ad to capture the email addresses of those who view your video, consider an interactive video that asks for the email address somewhere toward the middle or end and helps to determine the flow of the content the user sees or include a lead capture form at the very end of the video asking for the email address. Neither are as intrusive or annoying as pop-up ads.

Captions

Video captions offer another SEO friendly benefit when done correctly. Including captions throughout your video will not only make your video accessible by a wider audience, but can also increase your search engine rankings. Captions help viewers to process the information you deliver in the video while providing search engines a written opportunity to better understand what the video is about.

Only 1 Video Per Page

Video SEO requires that only 1 video be included on a webpage for best practice. This is because several videos on a page can substantially increase the amount of time a page takes to load. The resulting load time leads to poor rankings of the page.

Additionally, having several videos on a page would likely confuse the user which is another SEO “no-no.” Stick to one core topic, one video, and one set of targeting for each individual page and ensure fast load times and happy viewers.

Share Buttons

Your video should include buttons that allow viewers to easily share with others. Sharing your videos is not only great for your website as it will get more views, shared videos also rank higher in video search results. If you’re not already included share buttons to encourage viewers to share your video, you really should!

These are just a few of the video SEO best practices that you should be following with each video you release. For more help creating video content or understanding video SEO, call Team Beverly Boy at 888-462-7808. We’re always happy to help you market your videos and get more views.