However, it’s essential to understand that your video marketing efforts are not complete until you make SEO a priority and optimize your content to improve its scope and discoverability.
To that end, brands pour all their efforts into their video marketing campaigns to make sure their pieces don’t just look stunning, but also stand out and reach ever-larger audiences. The thing is, though, that there are many aspects involved in an effective SEO strategy, and it can get very overwhelming without some experience in the field. Feeling overwhelmed?
Fortunately for you, we’ve selected six of the most important elements to keep in mind when working on video SEO. Hopefully, by following our tips, you’ll have an easier chance to have your video reach your target audience and fulfil its intended marketing goals.
Choosing the Right Hosting Platform
As the second-largest search engine in the world after Google, YouTube is the first platform that comes to mind when we think of videos. And the hub is indeed a great place to gain brand visibility.
However, as reliable as YouTube is, there are many other places you can take your content and make it shine.
For starters, your video should be wherever your targets reside. To a large extent, that means uploading your content on the social platforms where your audience interacts the most with other brands. However, it’s not enough to link to your video from YouTube.
Whenever possible, try to upload your videos natively, since services like Facebook and Instagram reward those pieces of content with increased exposure through their algorithms.
The Importance of Optimized Titles and Descriptions
Your video is a unique piece of art in its message and style. But chances are it will get lost among the dozens of similar videos—unless you use the right words to name and describe them.
Your viewers are immediately drawn to titles, so these should be catchy and informative enough to grab your audience’s attention. But to have your video rank better in searches, you must also make sure to use relevant keywords.
SEO tools like Ahrefs and Google Trends collect information from all over the web and allow you to discover the most popular keywords used around a topic. Making the effort to include them in your title and description will increase your chances of appearing in top searches.
But it’s crucial not to use keywords for their own sake. Nonsensical titles and descriptions that don’t provide useful information will most certainly put off curious users out there.
Prioritizing Videos for Embedding
YouTube and other video hubs are great for boosting brand awareness and growing your social media audience. However, all views you get there will stay on those platforms, so you also want to take the time to upload your videos on your landing pages.
When you do so, you need to be very selective in choosing which video to prioritize. Google’s crawler bots are programmed to show only one (usually the first) video embedded in a website.
So, if you want your video to appear in SERPs, make sure you stick with the one that’s most relevant for your current purpose.
The key is to think about what you want to achieve with your landing page as such. If it’s aimed at introducing your brand to visitors, an animated explainer video is a great choice to gain visibility. But if you rather want to drive conversions, a product video can be the best option.
How Thumbnails Can Make or Break Your Video’s Performance
Thumbnails are just as important as titles for grabbing viewers’ attention—perhaps even more so, as we all naturally connect with visuals and colors! So, when uploading your content, you should always aim for something much better than a randomly selected frame of your video.
Try to create custom images that give an attractive preview of your piece. If possible, use colorful, high-quality photos to make your video look promising.
Text headings can also help you to stimulate the audience’s curiosity. If used wisely, they work as a complement to your video, as they give a clue about its content. However, if you add text, it shouldn’t take up more than a quarter of your thumbnail.
The Power of Using Transcripts
Adding transcripts to your videos is an effective move to improve customer experience. With optimized captions, you can make your message easier to follow and digest for your viewers.
But what many marketers don’t know is that adding transcripts also comes with SEO benefits. The algorithms of Google, YouTube, and other services are designed to process the captions’ text and factor it into search results.
Keep this in mind early on, when you’re writing your video’s script. In it, try to include as many relevant keywords as possible. Make sure that the transitions between sections of the video also introduce these keywords. If you then decide to add timestamps, you’ll make it easier for services like Google to recognize the precise content of your video.
Video Landing Page Optimization
Now, it’s not enough to simply add a video to your landing page. You must also work on designing an optimized page around your video to ensure that your visitors will watch it without problems.
As a rule, you need to make your video the centerpiece of your page. You have a wide range of options to achieve this, but these are some of the most useful tips you can follow:
- Make sure your visitors don’t have to scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch your piece. Usually, the top center of the page is the best spot to place your video.
- Keep text, headers, and sidebars to a minimum. Either remove them from your page or keep them in areas that will not obstruct your video.
- Lastly, put your efforts on a single goal. Focus on a single next step and avoid enticing your visitors with your other offerings.
Conclusion
Developing a SEO strategy for your brand’s videos is a comprehensive task that involves working on several fronts. Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how to start optimizing your content for such a challenge!
Strive to have a presence in those places that your audience frequently visits. And improve titles, descriptions, and transcripts with the most popular keywords among users interested in your trade.
Also, you can use your videos to drive traffic to your website. If you do, prioritize one video per page and front-load it so that users have no problem viewing it.
These are some of the strategies you can implement now to raise brand awareness and reach. What are you waiting for to give it a try?
Victor Blasco is an audiovisual designer, video marketing expert, and founder/CEO of the explainer video production company Yum Yum Videos. Besides running the business, he’s a lifelong student of Chinese philosophy and a passionate geek for all things sci-fi.