Video SEO – Optimize Your Video for Better Ranking

1. Choose the most suitable hosting platform for your videos:-

A video hosting platform is a platform where you upload your videos. It is one of the most crucial decisions to make. You must begin with defining your goals. Different platforms are better for achieving specific marketing goals. 

If your goal is to bring traffic to your website, Facebook is one of the most traffic-driving hosting platforms. If your goal is to increase brand awareness and connect to your target audience, nothing is better than Youtube. 

2. Insert a transcript to your videos:-

It is a process of using automatic audio recognition to convert your video audio into text. It is another way for your users to digest the content of the video. Without video transcripts, audio-visual is the only way for your videos to convey information. 

Some of the benefits of video transcription are as follows:

Improves SEO:-

Video transcripts are found to increase your organic rankings. According to a study SafeNet conducted, there was a gradual increase in the rankings of the transcripted videos. They utilized Yahoo and Bing for this purpose. The video achieved 14th position on both platforms in the first week of indexing. Their rankings were further increased to the 9th and 11th spot respectively at the end of the second week.

Search engine bots can not crawl videos. Transcripts enable them to read the text and match it with appropriate user queries.

Improves user experience:- 

Transcripts are another way for a user to obtain the output. Transcripts add text to your videos and enhance the overall experience for the viewers. Another way to increase user experience with transcripts is the usage of playlist search plugins. It enables your visitors to search a specific word in the video transcript and forward the video timeline to where it is spoken. 

It makes your videos user-friendly and increases engagement on the videos. 

Increases accessibility:-

It can benefit people with hearing ailments and those who might find it hard to understand the speaker’s pronunciation. It adds to the usefulness of the video and increases its accessibility.

3. Create an engaging thumbnail:-

A video thumbnail is the best way to increase the click-through rates on your videos. It is the first thing that your visitors see, and it must grab consumer attention as soon as possible. There are various ways you can make engaging thumbnails. 

You must understand the requirements of your specific audience to understand the type of content they like most. Several thumbnails themes yield excellent results. Some of them are as follows:

Declutter:- This thumbnail theme comprises an image that clearly defines the contents of a video. Avoid using fancy or cluttered images. You can also improvise text to clearly define the contents of the video. 

Focus on facial expressions:- Facial expressions have psychological effects on human minds. It is one of the best ways to increase click-through rates. They are best for generating a specific emotion and touching those deeply hidden motivations in users’ minds. 

Try animation:- Animated thumbnails can be a good option for a specific type of audience. For example, FPS gamers get tremendous results with animated thumbnails.

Show drama:- Drama is one of the best ways to grab user attention. Making a controversial statement on your thumbnail is one of the best implications for dramatic content.

4. Focus on the title and description of your video.

Similar to blogs and articles, title and meta description play an important role in video SEO. Take your time researching the most appropriate keywords and improvise them in your title and description to make your videos SEO-friendly.  

Take your time crafting a comprehensive description for your videos to increase their organic rankings and click-through rates. 

However, You must regulate the frequency of keywords in your meta description. The presence of keywords is essential for the organic rankings of your videos. Besides, stuffing your meta description with keywords is bad for your organic rankings. 

5. Optimize your webpage for organic search rankings:- 

Relying solely on video SEO won’t be wise. The whole page, incorporating videos, must be optimized around a certain set of keywords to gain the most out of your marketing efforts. If your page is not optimized for organic search rankings, you won’t get views on your videos. 

You must take a holistic approach to increase the rankings of your website. Focus your SEO efforts holistically on your website to increase rankings on video-inclusive web pages. Once you start publishing quality content and focus your SEO efforts holistically on the whole website, you will see a gradual increase in your website rankings. 

Another thing to keep in mind while optimizing your website for organic rankings is technical SEO. Check the components related to the technical SEO on your website to enable search engine bots to crawl your website. It increases the chances of your videos ranking for organic search terms.

6. Add targeted videos first on the page:- 

Google typically indexes one video per page. Your targeted video must come before the other one to instruct Google about the priorities. 

Google bots usually stop crawling a web page for videos after one video. Besides, you must avoid embedding multiple videos on a single webpage. Focusing your SEO efforts on one video is a better option. It assures Google the quality of the video you created, and its chances of appearing in the video tab for a targeted set of keywords increases. 

7. Keep video in focus:-

One of the most common mistakes businesses make is embedding the video far below the title on the web page. The motive behind this is making the user read the article and then click on the video. It requires visitors to scroll down to access the video content. It leads to a bad user experience and decreased engagement. 

Embed the video above the fold to instantly grab consumer attention and increase engagement. It will yield a higher click-through rate, and you will see a gradual increase in your video traffic.

8. Avoid embedding the same video on multiple pages:-

You must avoid embedding the same video twice on different web pages. It is like competing with yourself. However, you can frame an article around the keywords you want your video to rank for and link it to a video-embedded web page. 

It will enable constructive interlinking, one of the SEO ranking factors, and increase the organic rankings of your video. It is also essential for the SEO of your website. 

9. Consider paid promotion:-

Relying solely on SEO for increasing your website ranking is not a wise idea. Google constantly changes SEO algorithms, and most big algorithm updates remain unannounced. Focusing only on organic traffic might hinder your marketing efforts. 

One of the alternatives to increase your video views is paid promotion. It is one of the most convenient ways of reaching your target audience. It provides you an exposure to the target audience in return for money. 

Paid promotion is one of the best options for beginners. It allows them to compete among established businesses and gradually build their prominence.

10. Keep up with video SEO trends:- 

Video SEO is one of the most essential marketing strategies in 2022 for the success of your marketing endeavors. However, to keep up with the competition and stand out among your competitor, you must keep up with the latest trends to beef up your video SEO campaign. 

Unlike SEO, it has more to do with the content of your videos. Evaluate the videos gaining a lot of engagement in your niche to understand the likes and dislikes of your target audience. One of the best ways to find out the most suitable trends for your videos is to analyze your competitor’s videos. Find out the tricks and techniques he is using to increase engagement on his videos, and incorporate learnings into your video SEO strategy.

11. Improve search with a video sitemap:-

A video sitemap is a sitemap that features additional information about the videos hosted on your website. It is one of the best ways to make Google aware of the information that its bots might have missed. You can ensure the indexing of your videos with Google in this way. 

There are two ways of including video in a sitemap. Either you create a separate sitemap for your videos or include videos in the existing sitemap.

Visit here to learn about the guidelines of video SEO.

12. Reuse existing videos to build multiple traffic sources:- 

There are numerous ways you can use your videos to create multiple channels for increasing traffic to your website. Click random screenshots of the existing video on the image submission websites, create interactive infographics and embed a link to the video, increase video length by incorporating some more visual information into it. 

Keep looking for creative ways to generate traffic for your existing video. It enhances the reach of your video and increases video views. 

13. Evaluate from the eyes of the audience:-

Evaluation is one of the essentials to maintain the quality of the videos. Watching a video after creating it enable you to put yourself into the audience’s shoes. It is a chance for you to find whether the video is conveying the message it was intended to or not. 

It enables you to eradicate any mistakes you might have made and make the video ready to be published.