How to Optimize Your Videos for SEO
This checklist will help you optimize your YouTube videos and gain top rankings in the SERPs. Also, bonus tips for optimizing hosted videos.
This checklist will help you optimize your YouTube videos and gain top rankings in the SERPs. Also, bonus tips for optimizing hosted videos.
Although YouTube isn’t the only option in video distribution, it’s hard to deny that if YouTube was a search engine, it’d be the number two search engine in the world behind Google.
A strong argument could be made for producing and optimizing video for SEO results, especially if you think about how much time you devote to content marketing to garner rankings for web pages. Given the amount of competition on the written web, ranking for video in YouTube may be much easier and — as an added bonus — top spots in YouTube often mean equally attractive position in Google’s universal search results.
Optimizing YouTube Videos for SEO
The YouTube algorithm relies on three signals when ranking your videos within YouTube’s search results:
Because I’m more of a cat person, I tried searching for “stupid dog” (dog lovers: don’t worry, I’m equally allergic to both). Here are the results:
Surprising results! You’ll notice that the top result for “stupid dog” only has 1.2 million views, and the second place result has over 3.3 million views. Despite more than 8,000 comments, and over 5,000 “likes,” “louisck” can’t catch a break, as trending for their video is relatively flat over the past 2 years.
Even though “camilamrgh” isn’t sharing their analytics, you don’t really need to know how their trending looks, it’s probably the deciding factor. We know the following:
What’s the deciding factor here? Obviously, camilamrgh’s video views have been trending higher over the past two years, and earned them the top spot. Lo and behold, look at the top results for “stupid dog” in Google search:
Some may say this is a terrible example because these videos aren’t optimized at all, but that’s the point. These videos are poorly optimized, but rank extremely well, even in Google! Just imagine if the video was optimized for “stupid dog” and any number of other keywords that could be relevant.
Here’s a checklist you can follow to optimize your videos in YouTube:
If you don’t have the technical resources, infrastructure, or budget to host your own video, YouTube is the best way to get great SEO results for your videos, so ensure you do everything you can to maximize views, ratings, and influence.
Optimizing Hosted Video for SEO
Optimizing hosted video isn’t unlike optimizing video for YouTube. However, there aren’t hard and fast rules that can be formulated in a handy checklist with specific instructions on fields to use, maximum character counts, and other tidbits of tribal knowledge.
Not much has changed with respect to optimizing hosted videos; it’s a lot like optimizing normal web pages. Consider the three main tenets of organic search success:
Although video isn’t new to the web, many marketers and businesses fail to make the best use of tools and social networks that will take their video and SEO results to the next level. If you’re going to invest time and money in boosting your SEO efforts this year, do yourself a favor and start considering video in your marketing mix. You’ll be glad you did.
Join us for SES San Francisco August 16-20, 2010 during ClickZ’s Connected Marketing Week. The festival is packed with sessions covering PPC management, keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, ad networks and exchanges, e-mail marketing, the real time web, local search, mobile, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization and usability, while offering high-level strategy, keynotes, an expo floor with 100+ companies, networking events, parties and more!