It’s true that video consumption is at an all-time high. Reports reveal that the total consumption of online videos reached 6.1 trillion minutes from January 2022 to March 2023. This suggests that getting your videos at the top of search is a solid strategy, no matter if you’re a business owner or a video marketing company.
Although ranking your videos isn’t rocket science, there are some key SEO elements that most algorithms use to rank videos. These elements help users find your videos on YouTube, Google, and other search engines. Keep reading to learn more about video SEO.
What is Video SEO?
Video SEO is the art of optimizing your videos to rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant searches. It includes using relevant keywords, optimizing descriptions, and combining several other basic SEO practices with video-specific optimization techniques, such as:
- The video content
- The channel
- Video playlists
- Metadata language
Why Video SEO Matters?
Videos are not just limited to sports, games, music, and entertainment, but also extend to brands. When executed well, video SEO can help you attract more backlinks, boost your social presence, reach more people online, and generate more traffic and revenue.
Around 91% of consumers prefer consuming more online videos from brands. In fact, 96% of businesses consider video as a key element of their marketing, making video a powerful content strategy when used correctly with the help of a video marketing company.
How to Optimize Your Video for Search?
Ranking your video content on Google and YouTube boils down to some crucial strategies. These search engine optimization strategies will give your video content a higher chance of ranking. Let’s explore them below:
1. Optimize for Target Keyword
If you know how SEO works, you might know that keywords also apply to video SEO. Keywords make it easy for users to find a relevant video when they want to see some specific content. To optimize your video for a target keyword, make sure that you:
- Rename the video file using the target keyword
- Insert the keyword in the video title, tag, and description
- Avoid stuffing the title and description with loads of keywords
Ubersuggest, Semrush, and Google Keyword Planner are some tools you can use when conducting keyword research for your video content. You can also type your video topic idea into the search field of YouTube and look at the suggestions. You will find many potential keywords that users actively look for on YouTube.
2. Create Captivating Thumbnails
A thumbnail can directly boost the click-through rates (CTR) of your video. It is the main image that viewers notice when scrolling through video results. An ideal CTR could be somewhere between 2% and 10%. Design an eye-catching thumbnail for your video that entices viewers to click.
While you can always auto-generate your thumbnail, our video marketing company recommends uploading a custom thumbnail image for your video’s result link. Use bright colors, clear images, and text overlays to make your thumbnail stand out in search results and recommended videos.
3. Categorize Your Videos
Categorizing your videos isn’t going to boost your rankings and improve SEO directly. However, it is going to give the video search algorithm an idea of what your video is about. Take YouTube, for instance.
Its categories can divide the large repository of videos into different categories, such as music videos, entertainment, fashion, and more. Once you upload your video, categorize it in the advanced settings by answering some key questions like who are the top creators within the category and what are they known for.
4. Don’t Rely Solely on SEO
To promote your video content effectively, keep in mind that SEO isn’t the only strategy you need to follow. Since Google is constantly changing its algorithms, video marketing services
are evolving fast. So, relying entirely on search bots to rank your video content is not a consistent strategy to guarantee traffic. What are other strategies to consider to promote your video?
You can invest in paid video advertising platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads. There are more places to promote your video content, including social media platforms like Facebook (Meta), Twitter (X), and Instagram. Also, try non-paid strategies like influencers to promote your videos.
5. Monitor Performance
Video analytics will help you make informed decisions as they tell you how well your video performs. Therefore, keep track of your video’s performance and check your ranking using YouTube Analytics and other analytics tools. To gauge how well your video is resonating with viewers and make adjustments as needed, pay attention to key metrics like:
- Views
- Watch times
- Conversion rates
- Engagement rates
- Completion rates (aim for at least 70-80%)
Final Words on Video SEO
That’s what you need to know about video SEO. Time to put all that information into practice. If you want to increase conversions and boost your rankings on SERPs, video marketing services are essential. By getting in touch with a video marketing company, you can start implementing these practices and optimizing your video content for search.
FAQs:
While video SEO is a more comprehensive approach to optimizing traffic from search engines like Google, YouTube SEO explicitly focuses on maximizing results on the YouTube platform. Thus, it involves a different optimization process.
Key factors that affect video SEO include the video title, description, tags, thumbnail, engagement metrics (such as likes, comments, and shares), watch time, and audience retention.
You can track the performance of your videos using YouTube Analytics and Google Analytics. Monitor metrics such as watch time, click-through rate, audience retention, and engagement to gauge how well your videos are performing and make adjustments to your SEO strategy as needed.
