It’s obvious the growth of online videos has been quite significant. Take a stroll through Youtube and you’ll find everything from SEO advice to cat juggling to 3 year old ninjas. What’s more, online videos are becoming a highly effective means of social communication that can be used to promote individuals, businesses or causes. Your kid’s garage band can reach millions of viewers with the right video twist. By the same token, your presentation on why annuities are such a great idea can achieve a global audience. Videos take communication up a notch.
If you browse the selection of videos available on Youtube, however, you’ll find that most video quality is sadly lacking. The majority of online videos are badly produced. Most of the time, you won’t even be able to find the video without a direct page link. It’s easy to drown in all the mediocrity.
With the great camera technology that’s widely available, it’s easy to shoot your own video and upload it, but how do you ever get anybody to find it? How do you reach people when they don’t even know you exist? The answer is a combination of video optimization and search engine marketing. Because you’re dealing with videos, however, you must utilize some basic video optimization techniques so that the search engines can properly decipher what your video is about. Here are a few techniques you can use to help increase the visibility of your video in the search engines…
If at all possible, avoid Flash. Although flash video is a very common sight on the Internet these days, it remains one of the hardest formats of video for search engines to crawl. I would highly recommend staying away from flash if at all possible.
Create a video sitemap for all your video content. Search engines can easily read these. The more you can accurately and succinctly tell them about your video, the more likely they are to list you in relevant results.
Make sure you do keyword research. You would do this similar to that of any online content. Use a keyword research tool to find out the keywords that are most relevant to your market. Remember to not only go for the most common keywords, but those that are specifically related to your market and demographic.
Make your urls logical. Your url structure should utilize your keywords and be user friendly. Make it easy on the search engine by being clear about what your video and keywords are about.
Use relevant text to describe your video. It’s helpful to include a synopsis of text that’s rich in keywords. Search engines tend to crawl text the best, so including keyword rich text that describes the video is always a good idea. Sometimes, it’s this text that will come up in the search engine results. Make sure you include the word video. Many users will put this word into their searches. If you have it, you are more likely to rank.
Make a space for users to comment, rate and review your videos. If you can provide space for feedback, you’ll get more views on your video. Google designs the Internet to be communicative and inclusive. The more your site can allow this to happen, the more favorably it will be received by the search engines.
Keep your videos organized. If you have multiple videos, provide a logical listing so a search engine can easily find it. This will usually involve using folders and logical video names to organize the content. It also makes it easier on your user, who may want to see other relevant videos you may have. If your user has a hard time sorting through your videos, they will most likely click away to another website.
Make sure the thumbnail for your video is compelling. Often, it’s the thumbnail that users use to determine if they want to see the video. If your thumbnail isn’t interesting, it may be the only part of your video anyone ever sees. Make sure your thumbnail gets them to make that click. The thumbnail can be what convinces them to check out the video in the first place.
This guest post was written by Ryan Frank, an avid blogger and Internet marketing enthusiast living in San Diego. Ryan currently works for BestRank.com, a full service Internet marketing firm based in San Diego, California.
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