How to Optimize Video Content for Search Engines?

Video content is one of the most valuable pieces of content in today’s world. People scroll through their phones to watch video content in all formats. Even a 10-second reel has the potential to make you go viral overnight. However, it isn’t just about the quality of the video uploaded. If you don’t optimize your video, it will not reach as many people as you expect. 

Steps for optimizing video content for search engines 

Optimizing your video content is not as challenging if you have a strategic framework in place. 

Here are some easy steps you can follow to optimize your videos:

Finalize your objectives before designing your video 

Before optimization and everything else, you need to be clear about what you are trying to achieve with a particular piece of video content. Your video content can be a brilliant tool for brand positioning and generating sales. However you need to have a proper strategy in mind. Our SEO agency will curate this personalized strategy keeping your company’s goals in mind. 

• Who is your target audience for the video content?
• What kind of content is your audience expecting from you? 
• What are the emotions you want to evoke in your audience? Do you want to inspire them, educate them or entertain them? 

Once you answer all these questions, shoot your video content accordingly. 

Choose the Right Video Hosting Platform

To pick the perfect video hosting platform, you need to define the goals for your video content. 

Your goal might be to:

• Gain site traffic and generate new leads
• Establish brand authority and awareness

For instance, if your goal is the first one, you need video hosting platforms that automatically insert SEO metadata. It will increase the probability of your video appearing on top of search engines which will boost your website traffic.

But if your goal is the second one, YouTube and Vimeo are the perfect platforms. It is because most of the traffic that goes into these platforms does not get redirected to your business website. People will instead keep scrolling through these platforms and watch other videos. Make the videos information-rich to establish brand leadership and credibility. We are an SEO agency that can help you with creating such videos. 

Insert a video transcript 

Gen z’s and millennials will hardly watch a video with the sound on. So you need to insert video transcripts or subtitles if you want your videos to perform well. Also, transcripts make your videos more searchable by bots due to additional text. The indexable text makes your videos more probable to rank on search engines.

The thumbnail image should be attention-seeking 

People are highly visual, and if the thumbnail of your video does not stimulate them enough, they are not likely to play the video. The thumbnail image should be compelling, aesthetic, and relevant to the content of the video. Thumbnails containing human images are likely to receive a 30% higher open rate.

Create a good title and description for your video

The Title and Meta Description of a video plays a significant role in the ranking of your video. Research relevant keywords to figure out the phrases people search for in your niche. Include these phrases in your title and Meta Descriptions but don’t over-stuff keywords. It should not look like a chain of keywords that do not make any sense. Both title and Meta Description should be catchy, attention hooking, and exciting. 

Optimize your web page around the video

Imagine someone visits your website, and they keep scrolling down but still can’t find your video. Don’t make your audience or the website crawler hunt for your videos. It will impact the play rate and search engine ranking of your video negatively. Instead, design your entire web page in a way that highlights and creates focus around your video. 

Don’t embed the same video on multiple landing pages

Why would you want your website pages to compete against each other for search rankings? If you embed the same video on multiple pages, you will exactly be doing that. When you add a video to a page, it should complement the content on that page. Your video and page should rank for the exact keywords you are targeting. 

Use strong CTAs

What action should your audience take after they have watched your video? How will you generate leads for your business if you don’t inspire your audience to take any action like signing up for your newsletter or purchasing something? The objective of every video should be either to direct them further towards your another content piece or collect details from them or push them further into the sales funnel. Strong CTAs also rank videos higher in the search engine. Our SEO company will make sure that your videos have such compelling CTAs.

Monitor performance 

You will never know if your video content is 100% optimized if you don’t compare it against any metrics. Identify the metrics relevant to your goals and constantly monitor if your video is hitting those metrics. What is the average time your viewers are spending on your video? How many people responded to the CTA on your video? The more you track the performance of your video content, the better you will get an idea of how well optimized your video is and where there is a scope for improvement.

 Embed the Video You Want to be Ranked First on the Page

Google will index your website based on the first video you have on your page. So make sure that your best-performing video content is always on the top. The web crawler will stop crawling further after it encounters the first video. Also, having multiple videos on a single page is not a good idea when you are trying to focus your audience’s attention on a particular video. Keep your website page focused on one video so that it gains maximum traction.

Scripting and shooting a high-quality video is just half the work done. If you don’t optimize your video for the search engine, all your efforts into creating the video will go in vain. Our SEO company will manage the entire process for you to generate the best results.