Video SEO Tactics

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of generating the maximum amount of traffic (to your website or video) from the ‘Free’ or ‘Natural Listing’s on Search Engine Search Results. These Search Result Listings, which are also known as ‘Organic’ listings can be differentiated from the ‘Paid for’ Search Results, which are the adverts that usually appear at the top of the search results listings page or else on the right-hand side of the Page. Because the natural listing results have not paid to be there, they are generally considered by many internet users to be the most reliable search results that most closely match the search terms entered and will therefore be of most use and relevance for the search engine user performing the specific internet search. (this is why users tend to click on these listings first and trust them more than the Paid ‘Ad’ listings).

Search Engine Optimisation includes a range of strategies, techniques and tactics used to maximise the amount of web traffic (the number of unique individual visitors) to a website, by obtaining a high ranking on the Search Engines Search Results Page (SERP). The most important search engines are Google (at the top), with YouTube being number two. (Bing and Yahoo are also significant search engines but Google and YouTube dominate).

You have two options when it comes to making your video content available on your company website.  The choice made at this stage can have a profound impact on the viewer experience in terms of the quality of viewing experience (due to variations in video loading speeds etc).

Option 1 - Self Hosting:  You can upload the video file directly to your website (using the uploader in the Content Management System (C.M.S.) for the website). This will result in the video file being located on your same server as your website.  Viewing the video will mean that the video content is streamed directly from this server (ie, that of your website hosting company).

Option 2 - Embedding the Video: This is essentially a two-step process. You first upload the video to a third-party video hosting service (such as YouTube or Vimeo). You then ‘embed’ the video on the appropriate webpage of your website. To complete the embedding step of the process you need to copy a small piece of code (that you get from the professional video hosting platform – after you have uploaded your video) and then paste it into the appropriate page in your website. The video will appear on this location on your webpage, but the actual video content will be streamed directly from the video hosting websites servers (and not the website hosting company’s servers), even though the video can be viewed without leaving the website.

At ImageLink Film & Media, this second option is the one that we recommend for our clients. The strategy of ‘embedding’ the video on your website (using code provided by the video hosting platform) after uploading the video file to a professional video hosting platform - offers the advantage of having your video content being ‘served’ from the Video Hosting Platform Servers (and thus utilising YouTube’s extensive Content Delivery Network (C.D.N.).  This minimises any potential issues with download speeds that might result from hosting the video on the servers (computer infrastructure) belonging to your website hosting service. No average ‘Website hosting’ company has I.T. Systems in place (or the download bandwidth available) that can rival those of YouTube, or the other large video hosting companies!

Another major advantage of not uploading the video directly to your website hosting company server (ie self hosting) is that your same video content can potentially be found on more than one location online.  For example, the same video can be found in a ‘web’ or ‘video’ Google search as well as on a YouTube search.  This scenario offers the potential that your video content will show up in more than one of the results listing on page one of a Google search – one listing might be the video on the website and another could be the video hosted on YouTube.  If the video file is just uploaded to and hosted on your website it will never show up in a YouTube search.

At ImageLink Film & Media, we can assist our clients with assessing the best options for uploading their video content online.  We can also assist with implementing a Video Distribution and Promotion strategy for the videos that we create.  This process will complement the other video SEO Strategies mentioned earlier.

To help find out what are the most popular keywords for your industry (or specific product/ service or Video Topic) you can use any of a number of ‘Keyword Research’ tools available online. Another potentially useful way of assessing the ‘popularity’ of certain keywords is through implementing a Google Ad-words campaign. When you first implement any Google Ad-words campaign (ie. using the paid PPC (Pay per Click) ads on Google) the Ad-words interface allows you to search the strength and popularity of given keywords, giving each inputted ‘search term’ a rating.  It also provides suggestions for popular keyword ‘search terms’ for the topic in question.

When you have a number of different business videos on your company website, you should consider hosting each video on a separate webpage of the site.  The information about each video (Title, Description and Tags - including targeted keywords) can assist with your website SEO, by affording you the opportunity to add yet more keywords for the website.

Adding a Site Map to your company website (including content details about your website videos) has also been shown to improve search engine results rankings - by making it easier for the search engines to ‘crawl’ your website and index the contents.

Apart from YouTube there are also numerous other ‘online video’ hosting options (as well as the option of hosting the video on your own company website hosting server - as discussed earlier). YouTube is obviously the biggest player in the online video hosting sector, but other options include Facebook, Vimeo & Instagram.

It is now possible to upload video content directly to Facebook.  Facebook tends to rank videos uploaded directly to their platform - higher than video content that is merely linked to Facebook posts.   With a Facebook ‘Promoted Post’, you can very clearly target a market using a number of attributes as well as specifying a very clear geographical area you wish to target. Depending on your business sector and your target market, Facebook might be worth considering as an option for uploading your video.

Vimeo offers its own unique advantages. For example, you can set a video on your Vimeo Channel to be either Public, Private or Password Protected.  You still have the option of hosting a video on your company website – using an embedded link from Vimeo but having the video set to private on your Vimeo Channel.  You can thus ensure that the video is only viewable on your website but still gain the high-quality streaming advantages of the Vimeo Content Delivery Network infrastructure.  Sometimes you may wish to only share video with staff or existing clients, this is where the ‘password protected’ option can be useful.  It all depends on what function your video is serving for your business.

So, each channel has its own unique advantages that are worth exploring. While some video will service a unique business function for a company, most online business video content is aimed at reaching the widest possible relevant target audience for its content.

In order to achieve this one tactic that some marketing practitioners might recommend is posting the same video on multiple platforms in an attempt to reach a wide audience.  In that scenario you would upload the video file separately to each of the main Video Hosting Services.

However, at Imagelink Film & Media, we recommend that the video is uploaded to a single location online (eg. YouTube or Vimeo) and that the video is then promoted across various different platforms.  For example, you can upload your video to YouTube, then embed the video on your website. We would then recommend that you promote the video using various platforms online, but this can be done without uploading the video file to each platform!

For example, you can promote your website video (or YouTube video) online using Facebook. You do not need to upload the video directly to Facebook, as you can simply share a link to your website video (with a short description of the video content) either on your own Facebook business page or you can post a link to relevant Facebook contacts, groups or forums.  Other Social Media sharing platforms such as Linked-In and Twitter can be utilised in a similar way (to promote the website video – and thus increase website traffic at the same time as increasing views of the video).

When interested users of these platforms click the link, they will then be brought to your website. This will result in the most views, shares etc for a single video and thus will give that one video the best chance of improving in the YouTube Search Engine Rankings over time.

For more information on how we can assist with the Distribution and Promotion of your video please click here …