Ten Detailed Tips and Guidelines for Video SEO

by Mark Robertson

People usually love video, millions of Americans consume videos online and same is the case world over. A consumer is most likely to keep in mind and refer to a video in comparison to a print advertisement. These days video making is very economical as compared to the cost of a traditional commercial. Broadband is getting enormous popularity worldwide. Now people can watch videos without long download times or quality issues. Present generation considers video to be a reliable source of news and information. Online video for them is second to nature. Here are a few tips/hints for optimizing your video:

1) It is recommended that you create and submit a transcript for users and the search engines, add a transcript to each video file you’ve uploaded via your Video Status page. Create a Keyword Rich Title for your Transcript; include a brief introductory paragraph/synopsis that describes the subject matter of your transcript (and video) and be sure to publish your transcript.

2) Make sure to include the keyword that you are targeting visitors for. Most often users will use the word “video” in conjunction with their search if searching for videos via the search engines. Therefore, it is important to use the word “video in your title, description, meta tags, and any other on-page text that you include with your video.

3) Off-page SEO, or, the techniques that one uses outside of the actual coding of the site itself (links, etc…), is just as effective for online video content as it is with any other webpage. Therefore, do your best to develop inbound links to your videos with the keywords that you are targeting in the anchor text of those links.

4) It is advisable to create a separate sitemap just for your videos in your site and try to keep your video files in one directory this would help the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) When hosting video content on your own, keep in mind that flash is next to impossible for search engines to read and understand. Try to work with a format that is not flash. However, the simplest way to enable video on your site is via the popular flash players. That being said, do your best to take advantage of the other tips for SEO so that search engines can easily understand what it is your video is about.

6) It is advisable to optimize the URLs of your video pages for the search engines with the help of mod_rewrite function so that the pages are freely assessable by the search engines.

7) The first thing that users see when browsing for or searching for videos is the video thumbnail. Research shows that the thumbnail you choose for your video can really effect the number of viewers that watch the video itself. Try to experiment with the thumbnails that you choose to see which ones create more interest and get seen more often by viewers.

8) Try to keep one video per page and put all video pages into the same directory or folder.

Beside the above mentioned points there are few more points relevant for the optimization:

9) Keyword research, as with search engine optimization for other online content, is crucial for targeting the audience you desire most effectively. Use keyword research tools available in order to identify those words that most often are searched for when searching for related content online.

10) Enable ratings, reviews, comments, and feedback on your videos. Research shows that allowing users to provide feedback results in greater views for your video in addition to the fact that users who provide feedback tend to be those users that act.

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