Optimize Your Videos for Search Engines

Videos are one of the most engaging ways to connect with your target audience and guide them along their buying journey — but none of this can happen if users can’t find the videos to begin with. Improve the discoverability of your video content and drive high-quality traffic to your website with video-specific search engine optimization (SEO).

What is Video Search Engine Optimization?

Unoptimized videos are categorized as simple media elements and ignored by search engines. As a result, the individual video is not searchable, and businesses lose an opportunity to generate traffic from relevant searches. That’s where video SEO comes into play. 

Ensuring that search engines index video content on your website makes the content searchable and categorizes the page the video lives on as a “video page.” Once classified as a “video page,” users can discover it in the video section of Google search results or view the thumbnail for the video in a featured snippet.

Indexing Your Video Content

SEO is all about providing the contextual information search engines need to understand the value and relevancy of your website to users. To help search engines index your videos, you need to include the following information in your page metadata via structure data in your page source:

• The title of the video
• A description of the video
• The length of the video
• The upload date
• The location of where you are hosting the video
• A thumbnail image for the video

Optimizing Your Video Content

Now that your video content is discoverable, the next step is to make it as easy to discover as possible. Implement these tips to boost your organic search rankings and bring in more high-quality traffic that generates conversions.

Video Titles

Leverage SEO tools like Ahrefs to identify the keywords most likely to be included in searches relevant to your business that can drive high-quality traffic to your website. Look for relevant keywords with high search volumes and relatively low rates of competition. Once you have identified a handful of keywords relevant to your video content, create a title that utilizes one or two of them while describing what users can expect from watching your content.

Video Thumbnails

Catch the eye of search users with unique and eye-catching thumbnails for each video. People love to engage with other people. If there is a clear speaker featured in your video, make sure to include their face in the thumbnail.

All thumbnails should be cohesive when viewed together but with distinguishing images and text to provide users the information they need to select the right video for their goals.

Video Description

Using your keyword research, write a description for your video with well-organized contextual information that benefits users and search engines. While you don’t want to give away the best parts of your video in the description, you should convey the value of watching the video.

Transcripts

Search engines cannot watch videos, so inserting transcripts helps make your content more discoverable on search. Transcripts also improve the accessibility of the video for users, so it is an all-around best practice.

Next Steps

Do you need a hand with your video SEO? These tips are an excellent place to start, but if it feels like a complicated to-do, consider a digital provider who understands on- and off-site optimization tactics. Learn more about working with Adpearance with a free digital analysis to see how your business’s website stacks up against the competition.

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