Today, video is an increasingly effective way to engage with prospects and customers, and to convey your brand story. Did you know, for example, that four times as many customers prefer watching a video about a product to reading about it? Also, up to 43 percent of online users want to see more video content from brands. Figures further show that as many as 52 percent of marketers report that video content offers the greatest ROI.
There is no doubt that video is here to stay and it plays a crucial role in your overall SEO and content marketing strategy. So, how do gain as much traction as possible for your video content in terms of visibility and subsequently engagement with a wider audience
Integrate Video Into Your SEO Strategy
Including video content in your content mix is evidence of the quality of the content on your site as it demonstrates to search engines that your site contains rich media. As video continues to gain greater prominence, search engines will place greater importance on the ranking strength of video content.
To improve both your site ranking and the ranking of video content, it pays off to host the video on your own domain. This way, you will boost your page rank and direct traffic to your site as opposed to a third party site. For greater visibility at the search engines, create a different page for each video as this makes it easier for search engines to index the content.
Optimise for Search Engines
Search engine optimization takes various forms, all of which are important:
Metadata
Metadata constitute the details about a video that help search engines index and make the content visible to users. Essential details include the title of the video, a description of the video content and a thumbnail of the video. Other information that should be included is the length of the video and its file name.
Keywords
Be sure to keep the title of your videos concise and to include relevant keywords in the detailed description. Instead of a generic default file name, give your video an optimized name that will boost its ranking and make it easy for users to find at the search engines.
Transcript
Include a transcript to make your video more relevant to search queries and to enhance the ease of finding the video at the search engines.
Sitemap
A sitemap of your video content is essentially an extension of your website’s sitemap. Important information to include in your video sitemap might include video rating, duration, number of view, nature of content and other customized metadata.
Leverage The Power of YouTube
With regard to video SEO, it is a big plus that Google owns YouTube. It also helps that YouTube is the second largest search engine in terms of the number of queries.
Did you also know that YouTube has more than a billion users i.e. close to a third of all internet users view YouTube? The extent of YouTube viewership and reach is indisputable and therefore it is important that your videos are available on this platform.
While it is a good idea to host your video content on your own domain to boost page rankings, it also pays off to upload your videos on YouTube for improved rankings, and wider viewership and engagement, which cycles back to improving the video’s ranking.
Even with videos uploaded on YouTube, you can still direct traffic to your site by inserting your webpage into your YouTube channel or backlinking to your site by inserting your website link in the video description.
Cultivate Social Signals
Google likes traffic originating from social signals. Those likes, comments and shares show Google that your content is a talking point and is generating engagement. Social can be a powerful driver of paid and organic traffic.
Get your video in front of more viewers and encourage them to share and like it. This will boost your videos’ ranking, make it visible and drive traffic to your site.
According to YouTube, videos are ranked based on their number of likes, shares and comments. This circles back to the importance of creating video content that is relevant, entertaining or inspiring to your target audience. If your audience loves your content so will Google and YouTube.
The highest ranking videos are not necessarily those that cost the most to produce. Smart SEO tactics combined with proactive strategies such as collaborating with influencers and leveraging on-going trends are powerful ways to make your video content visible to your audience and generate greater engagement.
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