8 Videos SEO Best Practices From The Leaders In Search

Search engine optimization through video is a valuable tactic and can help you get a little closer to reaching your marketing goals. A well-designed video SEO strategy can help enhance your company's online presence and improve search rankings.

It may seem intimidating at first, but we've put together some of the best practices straight from the leaders in SEO to make video SEO easier and more productive.

1. Create a Solid Core Strategy.

Moz begins with a core strategy. No matter how technology changes and search algorithms advance, a goal-driven strategy will always keep you on top.

When creating a video for your website, begin with defining the goals of the business. Make sure to define the buyer personas and strategy to reach this audience. Your video content should then be created to serve those goals and reach the right audience.

2. Tweak Your Titles and Descriptions.

The basics of SEO through video begin with the title and description.

Make the title of your video short and to the point. Be sure it includes targeted keywords to match those searching for certain subjects. The description allows you to go deeper into the video's subject and entice your audience to click and view. This description also informs the search engine about the content of the video.

3. Upload Videos To YouTube and Vimeo, Embed with Wistia.

Some businesses make the mistake of only uploading videos to hosts like YouTube and Vimeo.

Videos on other domains lead to those sites instead of directing the traffic to your site. Take a two-pronged approach to video hosting.

1. Use Wistia to host your video and embed directly to your website and blog. You have greater control this way, by avoiding ads and using functionality that can help you capture leads and more. Webinars and long-form video content are perfect for this.

2. Maintain an active YouTube channel. YouTube has millions of users that could easily become customers and YouTube is important to search as well. One idea is to share a shorter videos or snippets on YouTube and then link it to a longer, more detailed video on your website or blog. 

4. Optimize the Embedded Video.

One of the top ways SEMRush ensures a boost in video rankings is by making embedded videos easily accessible to those viewing your site. Unless you have good reasons, don't make it terribly difficult to allow others to embed your videos on their site.

By allowing video embedding, you are increasing backlinks that take visitors back to your website for more views. We want to increase traffic because we know this leads to an increase in sales and service.

5. Embed Above The Fold.

Wistia directs users to always embed videos at the top of the page (or 'above the fold' to use an old term) for the best results.

Embedding videos above the fold provides visitors with visual and audio representation of your product. Consumers do not usually spend much time trying to find what they are searching for. Many times if they do not find it in seconds, they are more likely to click on another link. Make these consumers happy by having the video right there at the top of the page where they can easily access it.

6. Solve Problems Through Videos.

Another easy video SEO practice is to lure viewers in by solving problems through live video conferencing or whiteboard videos.

The videos need to be informative and have new tips to help people solve problems with your strategies. Share valuable, actionable tips and tricks with your audience so they can tell others searching for the same topic. The more views your video has, the higher it climbs in the search engine results pages.

7. Submit a Video Sitemap.

Video-rich snippets are a great way to gain visibility as people search for certain topics. These snippets are the tiny videos that show up next to your search results. Video-rich snippets have a higher click through rate with people searching online. This provides traffic to your site where consumers are more likely to use or buy your product.

Rich snippets are easily accessed by submitting a video sitemap (here's a quick tutorial from Razor Social). A video sitemap is a document that provides Google with details about all the videos on your website, similar to a traditional sitemap. They make it easier for search engines to find videos on your actual website. This means the number of visitors directed to your site to see your video drastically climbs. More traffic means ... you know this by now ... a higher search ranking!

8. Analyze the Results and Make Revisions as Necessary.

Analyze and track the performance of your videos to ensure business keeps growing, growing, growing through video SEO.

SEO rankings should move up if you are following your strategy. If you're not seeing any movement, revisit some of your tactics and make tweaks. Your videos will show up higher and higher in search engine results if you are committed to executing your brilliant plan!

What are you favorite tips for using video content as part of your overall marketing strategy? We'd love to hear how you use video in your business or organization. Leave us a comment and start a conversation!