In last week’s article we talked about video’s ability to create a powerful connection with customers, much more powerful than text or pictures can ever hope to achieve. But this doesn’t do you a lick of good if nobody is watching your video, now does it?
Well, this is your lucky day, because it turns out that video is great for search engine optimization!
Here’s the deal: Google realized that when people do a search they are looking for a variety of different results. Sometimes they want to find a local business, so Google returns separate map results. Sometimes they want an update on current events, so Google returns separate news results. And sometimes they want VIDEO, so Google tries to find relevant videos and include them in its results.
The kicker is that there are many more websites out there than videos. This means that your video has fewer competitors than your website does. As a result of the lower competition, it is easier for your video to rank highly than it is for your website to rank well. To put this into perspective, one notable study found that the average website faces 500% more competition on search engines than the average video.
So how do you optimize your video for search engines?
The Text: Search engines can’t read videos like they can read a website, so you need to really dial in all of the details that they can read about the video. Pay particular attention to the video title, being sure to use your targeted keywords. Also use those same keywords in the video’s tags and in your description of the video.
The Address: Your video’s url plays a key role in its ranking, so be sure to use your keywords here as well. For example, a video you are hosting on your website to promote your affordable carpet care services should be on www.MySite.com/cheap-carpet-cleaning-denver.html rather than www.MySite.com/our-services.html. Similarly, optimize the video title, posting the video cheap-carpet-cleaning.avi rather than video-commercial.avi.
Generate Interest: YouTube (owned by Google) is the world’s largest search engine for videos. As such, it’s algorithm (ahem, closely related to that of its owning company, Google) is extremely important to your video’s success. In addition to looking at all of the text factors that we mentioned above, YouTube also bases a video’s ranking on its total views, recent trending, and rating. This means that once people show interest in your video, its ranking will improve. And that will get more interest, which means even better rankings. So to get the ball rolling after you post your video on YouTube by sending out emails linking to the video, posting it on your social media profiles, and encouraging everyone that you know to share it with their friends.
