A Practical Guide To Video SEO

Video marketing is one of the most powerful content formats for driving higher engagement and revenue from your customers. According to 78% of marketers, video directly helps to increase sales and the channel leads to 66% more qualified leads per year.

Now is the time to embrace video marketing and to ensure your videos are watched by the right people, it’s important to invest in video SEO.

Why is video SEO important?

Optimising videos for search engines is a big deal because it helps to increase a metric called dwell time. Dwell time is the amount of time a consumer spends viewing a web page after they’ve clicked a link on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

The idea is that the longer a person spends on a web page, the more value they are receiving from it and that is SEO gold dust. Video is a game-changer when it comes to increasing dwell time and sticking to best practices is always recommended.

How to do video SEO successfully

Pick the right video platform

At the start of your video SEO strategy, think about the type of platform you want to host videos on and how it aligns with your goals. Ask yourself questions like ‘are you optimising videos to increase website traffic?’ and ‘are these videos being created to build brand awareness?’

YouTube and Vimeo are among the most popular video platforms. Be aware that if you choose to upload your video to these channels, most of the traffic will go to them instead of your own website.

A more specialist video hosting platform to consider is Wistia. Identified as an ideal channel for B2B companies, Wistia provides native support for Schema.org data, automatically inserting SEO metadata and increasing the chances of a video being indexed.

Also continue to focus on building your TikTok and Instagram video portfolio, as Google recently announced that it’ll be indexing these types of videos in the future.

Merge video SEO with high-quality general SEO

Strike the right balance between video SEO and on-site SEO. Just because you have a well optimised video doesn’t mean you should neglect SEO for the rest of the page.

Here’s how to do it:

Make sure relevant keywords are included in the copy
Write a relevant meta description and meta title for the page
Focus on making the video match the tone and information on the page
Have the video be the main focus of the webpage and ensure that it’s easy to find and watch

Include a video transcript

Struggling for ideas of what to write on your video page? Why not create a transcript that covers all the information in the video?

Video transcripts not only make videos more accessible to a wider audience, they increase search rankings because of the extra text. Transcripts can be particularly effective when paired with long-form video and be sure to feature keywords within the copy for the best possible SEO experience.

Add in video captions

Video captions, also known as caption frames, are similar to transcripts. The difference is that captions are smaller versions of a full transcript and are time-coded to each frame to synch with the video’s audio.

Captions are great for video SEO because they provide another path for search engine bots to crawl and provide context for what the video is about.

Create an epic video thumbnail

A video thumbnail is the first image that a viewer sees when a video is indexed and it makes a difference on whether they will click-through to watch. Imagine the thumbnail is like the cover of a book or a movie poster. It’s got to be striking, compelling and irresistible!

Here are a few tips for generating an engaging video thumbnail:

Keep the thumbnail to the right pixel dimensions
Ensure the image is relevant to the content of the video
Avoid taking screenshots and use a high-quality, original image
Consider setting up a staged photo that’s related to the video for better creativity
Include a person in the image, as people-driven videos tend to drive higher engagement

Video quality is king

The most valuable video SEO tip to take away is that high-quality videos rule the roost. Search engine algorithms place an emphasis on great video content. If a viewer only watches your video for a few seconds and then leaves your website, it’s an indication of low quality.

Focus on offering value to your audience, creating video content that resonates. This can mean planning the video production process in advance or generating unpolished content that strikes a chord.

Developing a high-quality video SEO strategy with Trio Media

At Trio Media, we specialise in video marketing and can combine it with SEO to ensure your video content is discovered, shared and loved by your audience.