Optimizing Videos for Search – Guest Blog
From Lee Schwartz, Online Marketing Strategist
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. The ramifications of that are big to your content development strategy. You should be making videos. And making them should be a priority. But there’s more to consider than the content and execution of these videos. You also need to consider how to optimize them for the search engines.
1. Choose your Keywords and metadata – whether you choose to host your own videos, or host them on YouTube or other video upload sites, be sure your videos are optimized for Title, Keyword and Description. Using the actual word “video” in your meta data give you a huge boost, but use sparingly.
2. Name your video wisely – a good strategy is to match your Video name with your title tag, preferably with the targeted keyphrase in or as the title. But make sure the title captures the user’s attention. Your title is the #1 influencer of a user click.
3. Keep it short and simple – the preferred length of any video is 5 minutes of less. The idea is to whet the appetite, and then provide more with secondary assets such as…
4. Link to your website (or blog) – use a compelling CTA (call to action) in the video description as well as the beginning and end of the video itself to get people to continue to interact with your brand.
5. Promote your Video – link building isn’t just for website and blogs. A good link building strategy includes
– press releases announcing the video
– guest posts incorporating the video
– sharing the video on other Social Media outlets such as Linked In, Twitter, Facebook and Google+
6. Encourage ratings and sharing
By creating an ongoing video content strategy in your business, you can be targeting the best of both worlds – the #1 and #2 ranked search engines on the Internet.
