We all know how popular search is for internet users. However, did you know that as of October 2008, video surpassed search on the major 5 search engines in terms of becoming the most popular online activity? According to research covered on ReelSEO, online video is now the most popular online activity worldwide.
Because online video is so popular right now, it presents a unique opportunity for online marketers to leverage video content as an effective means for marketing brands, products, and services. Because online video marketing is in the nascent stages, there is much that is not well understood.
For content producers as well as internet marketers, it is important to learn how to produce and publish video content in a way that users can easily discover your video content on the search engines. For this, one must learn and understand video search engine optimization, or SEO for video content.
Let’s start off by answering the question, what exactly is Video SEO? Simply put, Video SEO, also known as video search engine optimization is the art and process of publishing a video such that it is easily discovered and attracts as much traffic as possible for your target audience. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 different strategies for getting your videos discoverable on the search engines.
First, there is what is known as “Posted” video SEO. With “posted” video optimization, the strategy is to get as many views to your video content as possible. To do this, you can take advantage of the massive audience that video sharing websites like YouTube, metacafe, blip.tv and others have. One other benefit to this strategy is that you can leverage the existing authority and page rank that these sites have in order to show up in Universal search on the major search engines.
With posted video SEO, it is important that you pay close attention to the keywords that you include in fields entered upon upload like the title, tags, descriptions, etc… We recommend utilizing tools and services that help you to automatically upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Although it is not impossible to do so, the major downfall with this strategy falls into place when your goal is purely to drive traffic back to your website.
While “Posted” video SEO is a great strategy for getting video views, “Hosted” video SEO is a good strategy when your goal is to drive users to your own website. Essentially, “hosted” video SEO is the practice of optimizing your own website video content. Another benefit to this strategy is that it allows website owners to leverage video content to generate high rankings within the major search engines due to the proliferation of universal search
With “hosted” video SEO, it is most important that you follow best practices in general for search engine optimization. Because search engines can not yet read within video content, it is important that you optimize the HTML pages that contain your video content much in the same way that you would with regular SEO. Although there are many detailed tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO, most can be summed up with the following tips:
1) Be sure to include relevant, on-page text with your video web page.
2) Consider publishing a transcript or captions for your video.
3) Keep your videos within a common directory and publish each video to a unique URL
4) Create a video sitemap and offer an MRSS feed so that search engines can more easily find and index your video content.
5) Create inbound links to your video pages and encourage linking and sharing of your video content.
Whether you choose “posted” or “hosted” video SEO, ReelSEO is a great reference and resource for your to learn more tips and guidelines for video search engine optimization and marketing. ReelSEO is the only website available today that is completely focused on providing expert advice when it comes to video search engine optimization. If you want to learn more, ReelSEO is the most authoritative site in existence.
Take advantage of online video marketing and video SEO. Good luck to you and your efforts.
