Optimizing videos for the major search engines is not difficult, and a bit like regular SEO was back in 1999. There are still many tricks you can use to dominate positioning.
The main tools for video SEO
- Video Sitemaps
- Embedded Video Metadata
- User Generated Content (reviews, citations, video responses, embeds)
- Surrounding Text and Keywords
Use video sitemaps, they are very powerful if you have a large amount of video content. Have adjectives surrounding the video on the page, this can help the video to display.
Check videos from Yoast, they have good metadata and use different cannonicalization than youtube and are well linked. He is good at getting standalone videos to rank in Google.
Updating the video sitemap can help you to allow youtube to subsidize the bandwidth while allowing your website to appear as the video result.
To get your videos to rank: metadata, ugc, sitemaps, surrounding text.
Videos: posted or hosted.
Posted video SEO: existing traffic with critical mass, better ability to rank. Use similar video content with different keyword tagging and submit to multiple video search engines to get multiple rankings. Search engines have problems with duplicate multimedia content.
You can go commando, and use the video as the main conversion element.
Benefits of hosted video SEO you have control, encoded metadata, can carpetbomb with content and the search engines will love it.
top ranking factors: title/desc/kw tags, annotations, thumbs up, video responses, embeds, playlists, rankings, links, comments, flagging, channel views, share, subscribers, age of video, view count.
On Page Video SEO – confirm using on page elements that the video is what you say it is.
in file video metadata: author, title, date, description, keywords. Have multiple formats for people mpg, mp4, wmv so you don’t loose people.
Site Structure: unique URL’s, one video per page, embedded players – not popups, have nav links to video pages.
Use social tools: comments, social sharing icons.
Can take corporate videos, add a few seconds at the beginning and the end with words and you can get these ranked better. Take a long show and cut it into clips. Submit the dozen short clips and link all to a main full length clip.
Not much difference between classic SEO and multimedia/ video SEO.
If you need to use a CDN or externally hosted service such as Bright Cove list the pages on your site in your video sitemap, and the video file link on their site. Exclude URL’s on the external hosted content website and you can get your pages to show up in the search results.
View more youtube statistics for PR professionals.
