Leverage Universal Search with Video SEO Tactics

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.

In order to leverage the power of online video with search, one must first answer the question, “what is video SEO, or video search engine optimization?” Simply stated, it is the art and process of creating online video content in such a way that it is easily discovered and indexed by search engines. Doing this will help to drive maximum exposure to your video content. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 separate and distinct strategies for optimizing video online.

One strategy for video SEO is that which we call “Posted” video SEO. Essentially, this is when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video websites like Youtube and Yahoo. With “Posted” video SEO, the strategy is to generate as many views as possible for your videos. Uploading your video to these sites allows you to draw upon the massive audience of viewers that these sites already have. In addition, because these websites have a pre-existing authority and page rank with the search engines, this is an effective strategy to leverage these sites to obtain rankings within organic and universal search.

When optimizing your video for uploading (“posted” video SEO), it is very important that you choose your target keywords wisely and include these in your titles, descriptions, tags, comments, etc… There are also many services available on the web that allow you to upload your videos to multiple video sharing websites at once. Although there are a few tactics that can help, for the most part, a “posted” strategy does not assist well with driving traffic back to your own website.

In addition to “Posted” video search optimization, there are many techniques and strategies for “hosted” video SEO, or “website” video SEO. With this, the goal is to optimize video content that is placed on your own website. With universal search on the rise, it is possible to utilize video content to increase your own website’s chances of ranking in the major search engines as well as the video search engines. The main benefit in this strategy is that you can expose potential viewers to your other business assets, products and services.

For “hosted” video SEO strategy, it is most crucial that you consider it a holistic approach to website optimization and follow general best practices for optimizing website content. That being said, because search engines can not yet understand the content within a video, it is most important that you optimize your pages utilizing on-page text that is relevant to your video content. There are many tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO. The following tips are crucial:

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) Publish a video sitemap or MRSS feed to help guide the search engines to your video content.

5) Create inbound links to your video pages and encourage linking and sharing of your video content.

Whether your strategy is to drive visits to your video or to your website in general, video SEO is an effective way to leverage the power of online video. If you are interested in learning more advanced tips and techniques for either “posted” or “hosted” video content, ReelSEO is the website to visit. They are the only site completely focused on providing resources and information for Video SEO.

Good luck and happy optimization. Get on board with Video SEO today.

Before you dive further into online video, be sure to check out the internet video marketing experts at ReelSEO, the online video marketer’s guide. Learn more about video marketing, video SEO, video advertising, and general best practices for online video publishing and marketing.