10 Video SEO Tips – Marketing Your Videos to the Search Engines

We all have seen the research that has been pouring out all over the internet with regard to the growing popularity of online video content. Internet users are consuming online video content at a rate greater than previously predicted. And, consumers all over are learning to produce and share online video content. Video can often be a more effective means for a producer to get a message across than typical offline or online content. In order to take advantage of the opportunity that exists today with regard to online video, one must learn the tips and techniques that can be used to allow for greater discoverability of online content – this is called Video SEO or video search engine optimization.

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) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.

4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) It is very difficult for the web crawlers of any search engine to crawl into the video contents inside flash players so they usually prefer to stay away from such files. It is therefore advisable not to use such kind of file formats which discourages the web crawlers.

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) More than anything, I have learned that the thumbnail that you choose for your video is one of the most important factors in terms of the number of people that choose to view your video. With that in mind, try to experiment with various thumbnails until you have a good idea which images attract the most views from the audience that you are targeting.
If you are hosting videos on your own site, use the sitemap that we mentioned earlier and keep your videos all in the same directory folder so that search engines can more easily locate all the videos you are publishing.

In addition to the specific optimization techniques listed above, make sure that you also follow some common guidelines for online video content:

9) With any SEO that you do online, choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating.

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.

If you want to learn even more about how to optimize online video content, we suggest that you visit ReelSEO. They are is focused on providing expert tips, tutorials, and advice onVideo Search Engine Optimization. For a list of articles and resources about VSEO, visit ReelSEO.com

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