As we discussed in Part 1 of our series, video plays an increasingly vital role in your SEO, or search engine optimization. With search engines like Google placing more weight on quality video content, you don’t want your website to be left behind in search rankings.
This week, we’re looking at effective ways to improve your videos. With the following tips, you can not only enhance the look and feel of your business’ website but also work to enhance your SEO.
Keep these ideas in mind as you build out your business’ portfolio of videos. Your video marketing efforts could pay dividends as you start ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Produce Videos That Inform or Educate
Don’t make videos just to have some video content on your website. If the video is only still images or text content already on the webpage, it’s not adding any real value to the viewer.
Video has some advantages over text and still images, so use them to your advantage. If you’re looking to add a personal touch to your website (and your business), and informative video hosted by an owner, manager or employee is a great way to do so.
In the following example, the dealership uses video to inform and elaborate on its new temporary service center location during construction. The video utilizes drone footage to show visitors where the new service and parts departments are located in relation to the dealership’s other facilities. The video footage is both engaging and educational, and it certainly adds value to the webpage and for any visitors.
The above video is also surrounded by context, which we’ll cover next.
Surround Your Videos with Context
Placing a video or multiple videos on a webpage and calling it good doesn’t do the trick. You want to lead into the video with some context. Introduce the topic through text above the video, then elaborate further below the video.
By surrounding your video with relevant written and visual content, you’ll create a complete picture of the video and page’s topic or goal.
Host Videos on YouTube
While it makes sense to promote your videos on your website and social media channels, it’s a great idea to host the videos on YouTube. For one, Google is much more likely to rank videos hosted on YouTube. Since Google owns YouTube, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they would rather promote content hosted on its property than somewhere else.
YouTube is the largest video search engine, so ranking high can be a win-win for increasing views and driving organic traffic to your website. Google and YouTube rank videos a bit differently, but increasing your views on YouTube can help your video rank higher on Google.
Consider the Technical Aspects
Creating videos for enhanced SEO isn’t as simple as shooting and editing the video and posting it on YouTube and your website. Search engines like Google utilize backend information to categorize, label and prioritize videos. With this information, search engine crawlers and YouTube can better promote your video to the right audiences.
Google and YouTube use various data to rank your videos, including:
- Title
- Description
- Category
- Keywords
- Tags
- Links to the video
- Comments
- Likes and dislikes
- Video length
- Audience retention
- Subscribers after watching
Final Thoughts On Enhancing Your Videos
We’ve covered a lot in this short series on video and SEO. Here’s a recap of what we’ve discussed here:
- Create professional, entertaining videos that add value and people will want to watch.
- Host your videos on YouTube.
- Embed the video on your own site.
- Promote the video across your social media channels for more views.
- Remember to consider the meta data for each video.
If you’d like further assistance with your video marketing efforts, contact the fusionZONE team. We’re experts in digital marketing and SEO, and we can help your business rise above your competition online!