We all know how popular search is for internet users. However, did you know that as of October 2008, video surpassed search on the major 5 search engines in terms of becoming the most popular online activity? According to research covered on ReelSEO, online video is now the most popular online activity worldwide.
Online video, combined with search, is one of the most effective ways to drive internet users to your videos and market your products and services. However, being that online video marketing is such a new strategy, there are still many aspects of video marketing that are not well understood. For online marketers and video content producers, it is important to learn and practice techniques that increase the likelihood that internet users will discover their content via the major search engines. To do this, one must understand video search optimization, also known as video SEO.
In order to leverage the power of online video with search, one must first answer the question, “what is video SEO, or video search engine optimization?” Simply stated, it is the art and process of creating online video content in such a way that it is easily discovered and indexed by search engines. Doing this will help to drive maximum exposure to your video content. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 separate and distinct strategies for optimizing video online.
“Posted” video SEO is one strategy whereby the goal is to get as many viewers as possible to your video content. “Posted” video is basically when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video sharing websites. The benefit with this strategy is that you can leverage the massive viewing audiences that already exist at these major video destinations like Youtube and metacafe. Additionally, by uploading videos to these video sharing websites, you can leverage the pre-established page rank and authority that these sites have in order to assist you in ranking well within universal search.
With posted video SEO, it is important that you pay close attention to the keywords that you include in fields entered upon upload like the title, tags, descriptions, etc… We recommend utilizing tools and services that help you to automatically upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Although it is not impossible to do so, the major downfall with this strategy falls into place when your goal is purely to drive traffic back to your website.
In addition to “Posted” video search optimization, there are many techniques and strategies for “hosted” video SEO, or “website” video SEO. With this, the goal is to optimize video content that is placed on your own website. With universal search on the rise, it is possible to utilize video content to increase your own website’s chances of ranking in the major search engines as well as the video search engines. The main benefit in this strategy is that you can expose potential viewers to your other business assets, products and services.
For “hosted” video SEO strategy, it is most crucial that you consider it a holistic approach to website optimization and follow general best practices for optimizing website content. That being said, because search engines can not yet understand the content within a video, it is most important that you optimize your pages utilizing on-page text that is relevant to your video content. There are many tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO. The following tips are crucial:
1) When including video on a web page, make certain that you populate the page with relevant on-page text.
2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.
3) Publish all your videos within the same directory or subdomain and keep each video on its own unique URL.
4) Publish a video sitemap or MRSS feed to help guide the search engines to your video content.
5) Be sure to generate off-site links to your video pages by encouraging users to share and link to your videos.
Whatever strategy you utilize for optimizing your video content, ReelSEO has a ton of expert tips, guidelines, tutorials, and information for both “posted” and “hosted” video SEO. In addition, ReelSEO is the only website out there today that is 100% focused on video search engine optimization and online video marketing. If you want to learn about online video marketing, ReelSEO is the most authoritative source out there.
Good luck and happy optimization. Get on board with Video SEO today.
Before you dive further into online video, be sure to check out the web video marketing experts at ReelSEO, the online video marketer’s guide. Learn more about video marketing, video SEO, video advertising, and general best practices for online video publishing and marketing.
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