5 Crucial Video SEO Tips and Tricks for Better Rankings

video SEO

It’s predicted that by 2017, 74% of the entire Internet will be video content. Online video is constantly on the rise – generating billions of views every single day on different platforms. It is engaging, direct and it has a higher conversion rate than any other media format.

That’s why these days, video marketing is more important than ever, as more companies are seizing the opportunity to connect with their customers more directly. But the video world is not all sunshine and rainbows. Starting from planning and production, all the way to optimization – companies struggle to reach their expectations.

No matter how much money you put in a video, you’re going to need organic outreach. And this is where SEO kicks in, with its optimization practices and trends. To help you rank higher and get more views, here are 5 video SEO tips and tricks.

1. Perform a Video Keyword Research

video SEO

SEO is all about understanding what people search for. This goes for everything – text, videos and images. That’s why you’ll need to make a research and find out the best keywords that are related to your video. Take a number of video keywords and experiment to see which one works the best.

2. Offer Valuable and Engaging Video Content

This shouldn’t be a much of a surprise to you. If you create a bad video, no SEO effort will save it – no matter how much time you put into it. Remember: video SEO and quality go hand in hand.

Start with a video production brief and plan everything out. Whether you decide to do it yourself or hire someone for the production process, you’re going to need a killer video script, decent equipment and tons of creativity to produce a great video.

3. Place Your Focus Keyword in all the Right Places

Once you have the video – all nice and ready for promotion, you’ll need to put your keyword research results into use. This step plays crucial role in how your video will rank in organic search results.

It all starts with the video file title, which 90% of the time will be generic like “video123-final_version”. Before you upload it, change the name into something that makes sense – preferably with your keyword in mind. Viewers won’t see this, but guess who will? Search engines, of course. Here are some of the YouTube SEO best practices:

  • Include your keyword in the title, preferably at the beginning
  • Add the keyword into your video description
  • Add tags and choose the proper category and sub-category
  • Place your keyword in annotations

4. Add Interactive Video Elements

video SEO

Do you want to turn your passive viewers into active customers? All it takes, is to add bunch of interactive elements throughout the video, so that you can engage your viewers into taking an action while watching.

There are at least a dozen great web apps that will allow you to turn your ordinary video into interactive one. And the best thing is – you won’t need technical knowledge, as you’ll be working with simple drag & drop tools.

If you manage to provide great user experience and optimize the video for search engines, you’ll have the winning combo. So, do you want to redirect your viewers to your product’s page, or maybe throw in a contact/subscription form? It’s time to get creative with interactive video elements!

5. Include Video Transcripts

Transcriptions are very important for video SEO. Why? Because of bots. Search engine bots can’t watch your video, but they can inspect the transcript. A transcript from your video content will give them pretty good idea what the video is about.

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