Video SEO

Written by: Gary Horsman

Video SEO

If you create a video then you also need to think about how to maximize its effectiveness in the search results and search results can (and should) include YouTube.

You have three main options and each option provides content marketing benefits to the marketer. Each option should be considered and using multiple approaches may be the most beneficial.

1. Host the video on your own website

2. Host the video on YouTube

3. Host the video on YouTube and embed it on your website

Remember that the search landscape is very diverse. For Google to do a good job it has to have different search algorithms. In the case of video there is the basic Google Universal Search, Google Video Search and the search engine built within YouTube. Each offers searchers different ways of searching and will produce different results.

This makes the job of a search engine marketer more challenging.

Here is some advice for optimizing video content for Google and for search in general.

Video SEO for Google Search

As always Google is looking for high-quality relevant content. Remember that Google wants to present search results that will please its audience. It realizes that people like video content so it pays close attention to content that is in a video format.

If the video content is on your website then this content adds to the depth and variety of content on your site. This is a case for self-hosting your videos. If you do host your video content on your site then the organic search traffic will go to your website. You may also gain in-coming links which will further help your search position. Finally, time on site may also increase and this is something that Google also pays attention to as a site where people spend more time must be better than a site where people spend less time (a reasonable conclusion).

Hosting optimized videos on your website means all organic traffic will go to your website and your site can also gain inbound links and video content helps conversion. It may also return rich snippets in organic search if prepared properly with video schema (micro meta data).

Here are the key guidelines to follow for your video SEO success.

Here are the basics:

1. Ensure that the video is relevant to the content on the page and the site in general.
2. The more links you gain to the page with the video content the better as Google measures the popularity of a page by the number of in-coming links.
3. Having the video content on your site in a keyword-rich folder location will help the video and the website page to perform in search.
4. When embedding a video use only HTML. Do not use Flash.
5. You may want to consider creating a landing page for each video and then fully optimizing that landing page. This is a good use of a landing page and provides you with the ability to really power up any video landing pages.
6. Ensure that all the meta data for the page with any video content is set up well. Just like for non-video content you need to reinforce the SEO signals. This includes the need to have some text content that is very relevant to the content of the video.
7. Create a search engine video site map. Just like you can create a site map of all your pages for the search engines you can create a video site map that defines exactly where your video content is located. This helps the search engines and therefore helps you.
8. Use rich snippet / microdata to help the search engines identify your video content. Anything that you can do to help the search engines the better. Follow the conventions of schema.org.

Here is some advice directly from Matt Cutts on whether to use rich snippet information for Video SEO Results to your video content.

9. Use social media to gain in-coming links and to boost popularity and boost the sharing of your video content. Remember that video content can be a big part of your content marketing plan and sharing is a big part of content marketing.

As you can see there are many ways to help your video content to be a success. If you create video content then leverage it fully by following this Video SEO advice. Video can be delightful content and Google is looking for it. Help this content to be found and found properly for online content marketing success.

Here is another post you may find interesting it is on SEO Trust Signals.

Watch for the next post on Video SEO as I will provide some insights into SEO for Video on YouTube.