Video is more important now than ever regarding rankings and SEO. If you don’t have a video optimization game going on, you’re losing all sorts of authority, traffic, and revenue.
Just plopping a video on your blog or site isn’t going to be enough. You have to know just how to do things and do them right. Not optimizing your videos is just not professional.
First of all, if you’re producing your videos, do a good job. Don’t have your cousin Joe do your camera work or editing because you’re afraid to hurt his feelings. This is business, your reputation, and your brand.
Next, keyword phrases are of utmost importance. Do the research regarding what keyword phrases are being used. Do some trial and error to zero in on what the best of the results will glean. If your videos are about dog grooming, then you have a large playing field to farm from. Try things outside of the standard ‘dog grooming’ and try things like ‘poodle dog grooming’ or ‘toy dog grooming’. There are lots of variations on a rule. Experimentation will pay off in the short and long term.
Using good descriptive terms and tags for your video is equally important. This allows Google to index you better. Be relevant and don’t stuff keywords or keyphrases into it. Instead of describing the video as ‘video 1’ or ‘video 2’, add what your video is about with something like, ‘video 1 grooming dogs’ or ‘video 1 grooming poodles’, and variations like that. It’s all extra info that will spread your listings into the relevant categories.
Back to tagging videos. Use as much of the tagging as you can without getting spammy. This is vital as it will allow for search engines to better index you. Keywords and keyphrases that you’re using, add to the tags where appropriate. The more precise you are with tagging the better your chances are for higher rankings.
When posting to YouTube, put your videos in the appropriate categories. Do not make the mistake of just putting them in every category or you’ll end up penalized. Each video may qualify for more than one category so look carefully at what is in your video and don’t forget local SEO. So if your video is about dog grooming in Dallas, Texas, then you would put your video in categories like dogs, dog grooming, pets, Dallas, and Texas, plus the breed of the dogs in the video. You cover far more ground and they’re all relevant categories. Remember to tag and put descriptions that are relevant to each category though.
Believe it or not, closed caption is a great tool. Google will see this and index you better so make sure it’s enabled in your videos. Add transcriptions too. It’s an extra bonus that acts like copywriting content that also boosts your profile.
Video SEO isn’t that difficult to do. It takes time and you’ll get it in no time. With the booming mobile market, video has become ten times as important than ever.
