Video Optimization Tips

If you follow the world of search engine optimization at all, you know how important video is to the

These girls are starring in an online video

search engines now.  In fact, 2009, was the year of video for SEO.

When it comes to video optimization, it’s like the old glory days of optimizing your site.  It’s easy if you know what you are doing.  Since Google can’t actually see your video, you can easily tell it what your video is all about.

How Do Video Watchers Find My Video?

It’s important first to note just how videos are actually found.

• 45% of videos are found directly on video sites like YouTube.
• 44% of videos are found embedded on blogs.
• 6% are found through search engines.
• 2% are found through social networking sites.
• 2% are found through social bookmarking sites.
• 1% are found on video search engines.

(Source — Tube Mogel; Feb. ‘09)

SEO for Videos

The best way to find your videos is through SEO efforts.  Be sure to include a pertinent title, description, and meta tags.  Be far more descriptive with these than you would be with regular copy.  Titles, for instance, can be up to 120 characters.  The description can be as many as 1000 characters.  Make it very detailed and include URLs to your other videos within the copy itself.  Be sure to include the http:// in the URL’s.  Cross promote your descriptions with other video sites you have on the same subject.  Meta tags can also be up to 120 characters and be sure to include your brand name, your city, and topics.

One of the things you may not know is that there is a You Tube keyword suggestion tool.  Use it to help with your meta tags.

Adding subtitles to your videos and captions are also very important since the copy surrounding the video is a key factor in the search engines understanding what your video is all about.

“Don’t be afraid to add your competition names to your descriptions,” said Greg Jarboe, president of SEO-PR.  Jarboe, speaking at the Chicago SES Show said that this is white hat SEO, because “people are still in the fact finding stage when researching videos.”

With so many videos found on the search engines themselves, it’s important to get as many hits as possible on your videos on YouTube.  Hits count the same whether the user stays for just a few seconds or the entire video (in fact, 10.4% of all watchers stay less than 10 seconds).  Also, hits count back to YouTube if your video is embedded elsewhere.

Should I put my video on YouTube and embed it on my site or host it myself?

The answer to this question is a question.  Do you want to get maximum views or get maximum SEO value?  If you want maximum views, you are better off putting it on YouTube and embedding it on your blog.  If you want to get maximum SEO value, including the inbound links to your blog, you are better off hosting it yourself.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.