Your videos are likely to get lost and not meet their target audience if you aren’t optimizing them to satisfy what viewers are looking for. They are useless if they cannot meet their target audience. So, how do you make sure your videos are effective? Video SEO (video search engine optimization) is a term used to describe the process of optimizing videos for search engines.
Consider the target audience to simplify what you need to do. Consider their language, as well as their desires and needs. Use the following helpful hints to bring your video to the first page on Google and YouTube, as well as to gain awareness with a wide target community interested in what you have to share.
- What Do You Want From Your Video Content?
You must first assess yourself as a brand. Determine what distinguishes you from the competition and attracts customers to you and what do you place a high priority on as a company. Todd Perry, Head of Content at Outdoor Gadget Review says “Consider how the video production will align with your standards and those of your consumers.” What problems are you attempting to address and what does it mean to be successful? It would be much easier to build content around personal priorities if they are specific.
- Determine your Audience
You need to create buyer personas if you’re dreaming about running a video marketing campaign. Make use of them. You’ll be glad you did so later. You must be able to locate your audience.
Should they have a Snapchat account? If they aren’t, you aren’t required to be because you simply love it and have the time. You’ll save a lot of time, worry, and heartache if you take the time to identify your dream customer and think about the behavior of your current customers.
- Content Quality Check
Make sure the videos are important, insightful, and content-rich. Don’t waste time making videos that aren’t related to your brand or service. Matt Weidle, Business Development Manager at Buyer’s Guide says “Videos that demonstrate step-by-step procedures or share views on various subjects can be very helpful”. Videos should be entertaining, memorable, and leave the audience craving more. If you’re going to hire a video production team, make sure they appreciate the significance of these ideas. If you’re unsure about their offerings, look at their current content portfolio for videos that reflect these characteristics.
- What’s Your Competition Up To?
“Conduct a video quality assessment to determine where the content offering is lacking” says Pooneh Ramezani, CEO of Dr. Brite. Are there any things you’re overlooking that will be beneficial to your customers or visitors? Do a daily quality check if you’re just getting started with video content. What already exists in your possession that could be transformed into video content? Take a look at your rivals now. What kind of video material do they make? What are they not doing, or not doing well, most importantly?
- Tags
Use essential keyphrases or keywords to optimize the video. Use simple terms and terminology that are not unfamiliar to the ordinary person. Return to your keyword analysis and consider what your target customer may be looking for while searching for your product or service. Try tagging the video with these terms and naming the video’s file with these terms in mind.
- Add “Video” as a keyword
When you’re ready to share your video, make sure it’s optimized for Google, just like every other piece of material. This is much more critical for video because search engines can’t crawl video as they can write content like a long-form blog post. That’s why it’s critical to optimize your video’s supporting text for SEO by using both the word “video” and common keywords relevant to your subject. Adding the term “video” to your content makes it easier for the search engine to find it and improves its rating.
Chris Nutbeen, Founder & CEO of Nuttifox says “To get the best results, do your keyword analysis beforehand (ideally during your subject brainstorming phase) and make sure you use them as much as possible. Simply including them in the list of individual tags isn’t enough. Your keywords should appear in any text associated with your video”
For example, the title of your video should include your preferred keywords in a way that draws the reader’s interest and encourages them to watch it. Your keywords will appear in a more detailed summary of your video’s content in your Meta description (about 50-160 words). Your video’s raw file name and URL should also be customized with “video” and other descriptive keywords to make them easier to recognize and sort by search engines.
- Use a Transcription of the Video
Ben Richardson, Director of Development Academy says “Using a transcription of the video is an important move in improving the SEO since it makes it easier for search engines to crawl the content and allows it more available to a broader audience. These measures will have a significant effect on your video’s score, so they’re well worth the time you’ll devote to them”
- Length of the Video
Keep the video under five minutes of duration. A user’s average time spent watching a YouTube video is around 1 minute 30 seconds. People do not want to watch a dull video, and the majority of them will not. Bram Jansen, Bram Jansen, Chief Editor of vpnAlert says “If you have long-form video content, try splitting it up into smaller chunks and tagging each one separately to make it more appealing to viewers”. Not only does this allow for a more enjoyable watching experience, but it also helps with enhancement activities. YouTube is now paying particular attention to user engagement and viewership. It’s difficult for viewers to watch the long video.
- Feature a Good Video Thumbnail
Your video thumbnail is another aspect that your audiences would find first along with your video title. “People will get a quick preview of your videos by looking at the thumbnails”, says Jolene Sim, Blog and Community Manager at Kegglers. Choose a thumbnail that better reflects your video, Jolene added. After you’ve posted your file, YouTube will provide you with three thumbnails from which to pick. You’ll be able to post a custom image if your YouTube account is checked and has a clear track record.
This unique alternative can be found underneath the three auto-generated thumbnails for your video on YouTube. The ability to upload a custom thumbnail increases your chances of featuring a captivating picture. This will assist you in obtaining more taps. Pick a custom thumbnail that best represents your video.
For your custom thumbnails, use the following methods:
- Choose the ideal still from your YouTube file.
- Have text that is simple to read. This, in addition to your title, informs them about the subject of your film. You can do this with a decent photo editing tool.
- As soon as you’re ready, upload custom thumbnails for your previous images.
A thumbnail resolution of 1280720 pixels is recommended by YouTube.
- Embedding Options
“Enable other people to use the code that allows them to insert the video on their website or blog. This will help you earn useful back ties and shares, which will boost the search engine rankings” says Jay Lu, CEO of Sofary Lighting
- Share, Share, Share!
Get on social media, go through your email addresses, post on your blogs, collaborate with influencers, and start spreading the word. Share the video with others and if it’s worth sharing, it’ll be shared, again and again, resulting in a larger audience and more recognition for your brand or service.
- Syndication
“Submit your video to RSS feeds and syndicate it to gain more visibility on different websites and to further refine your video” says Joe Baker, Founder & CEO of Boots Empire
- Video Sitemaps
Dusan Stanar Founder & CEO, VSS Monitoring says “To ensure that the Search Engine crawlers can find and index your video content, submit a video sitemap to Google.” Search engines would have an easier time finding the video material if you do it this way. Create a video sitemap with the help of Google Webmaster Tools. In the anchor text that connects to your videos on your sitemap, use relevant keywords.
Summary
These SEO pointers will assist you in creating convincing videos that will score well in no time. Video optimization is a perfect way to get your products in front of people who may not be comfortable with your brand, product, or services otherwise. It’s a fantastic way to engage, amuse, and advertise yourself, and it’ll help you rank higher in search engines.