Turn On the Traffic Tap with Video SEO
Most of us know that a site that’s well optimized for search engines is a vital factor in driving high levels of traffic to your website. The one hugely important element that is largely ignored though, is VIDEO and smart marketers are rushing to take advantage of this strategy before the rest of the world catches on.
Multimedia content has already become the most popular way of conveying information – whether promotional or instructional and correct video search engine optimization is the key to achieving success and standing out from the competition. YouTube for example, is one of the top video sharing sites as well as one of the most important video search engines today. It accounts for close to 95% of the videos viewed via Google and more than 80 million people watched over four billion videos last year. With over thirteen hours of new videos submitted every minute and more than fifty percent of web surfers and online video watchers sharing links with others, getting a good YouTube ranking is an important way to drive traffic to your site. For website owners and publishers of video content, Video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most powerful ways of getting more exposure, a higher profile and free traffic.
However, being found by viewers must happen before you can get loads of views. In order to achieve this happy result, your data must be rich in meta information, and you should be using RSS feeds that are updated regularly. It is important to ensure that you produce well optimized content before you submit your video to the various search engines. This places you in the queue for spiders (web crawlers) waiting to index your site – which will happen faster than if you just left your site online without submission. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results. Google or YouTube are not the only search engines to index your site.
Make sure you submit your video to as many of the hundreds of other video sharing sites and search engines that exist today (MSN, Bing, Yahoo, Blinkx, etc. etc.) and you will bump up your rating exponentially. Every search site has different specifications for submissions and its important to pay individual attention to each, in order to ensure that your video receives the importance it deserves. If the website owner is not conversant with these unique requirements, it is well worth their while to hire a professional to do this task for them to get the best results.
As an extension of your strategy, make sure you publish a further series of related videos at regular intervals. When a viewer sees a video online that they like, there’s a good chance that they will search for others like them. While a single, well designed video will be popular, you’ll do even better if it’s part of a series. The more views you get, the more you will be linked to by other sites, which will result in higher rankings on all the search engines. Use an embedded video player and many more viewers end up watching your submissions. Don’t use pop-up players though, since they tend to annoy more people than they entertain and make sure that your viewer retains control of when to start/stop/pause your video.
You can even customize your video player to display playlists and other information, giving your viewers a choice as to which video to watch. Make sure that your video is the right length for your audience – too long and you start losing them. Use Google Analytics to see how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you’ll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page. Remember if you’re a local business using video to advertise, clicks are not as important as calls and sales are the bottom line. Always include a call to action with your contact information at the end of (or even during) your video.
Make sure that your videos are high enough in quality and professionally developed – you never know, they might end up on Google TV, which is very affordable. Keep descriptions and titles consistent and file names should be descriptive so they make sense to the viewer. Keep in mind that different video sites require different approaches. Correctly researched keywords are vital however – keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your own website as well as on video search sites. Make sure you include your URL (e.g. http://www.mediapower.ca/ ) in the beginning of the video description to ensure that it is always seen and also end the video with a mention of your link.
Allow comments since that adds refreshed content to your channel/site/blog but try and moderate those comments before they are published to avoid negative remarks from being displayed.
While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause viewers to click off and never return. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you’ll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.
Today, Video SEO has become a major component of any marketing strategy. With its exceptionally high return on your investment, in today’s business world, online video is one of the most important tools in your marketing arsenal and one that you ignore at your own peril!
To read archived articles on Streaming Video Production visit: http://www.mediastreams.ca/newsletters/newsletters.htm
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This just goes to show that Internet Marketing strategies are becomming more and more covert and it’s time to step up your tactics.
Blackhat SEO - February 8, 2010 at 6:22 am