Four Online Video SEO Basics for Social Media and Video Marketing

Four Online Video SEO Basics for Social Media and Video Marketing

—Melanie Peters, Social Media Specialist

October 25, 2011

Listen to talk on Social Media and Tech sites, and you’ll hear quite a buzz about Online Video and how Google utilizes Video in it’s ever changing indexing algorithms. It’s impossible to predict how Google will change it’s discovery and indexing of video content in the future, but there are some concrete methods SEO experts agree on to help drive your video to the first page ranking your customers are asking for.
1. Upload to YouTube—  It’s no secret that Google owns YouTube, and you therefore can not ignore the power of YouTube as it’s own Search Engine.  In September of 2011, comScore.com rated Google sites as 65.6% of the total US Core Search market, with the runner up, Yahoo, crawling behind at 15.5%.  It therefore goes with out saying, posting your video on YouTube will help drive the Google SEO ratings of that YouTube video…….on YouTube.

–But if you want customers to stay on your site, (and not drift away into YouTube la la land), as well as generate the SEO benefits you are seeking, then this method won’t help you much. Visitors are one click away from watching a laughing baby and not converting on your customers product or service.  To remedy this, you’ll need to dive into the nuts and bolts of Video SEO yourself,  or utilize a Online Video SEO Platform that does it for you, but more on that later.

2. Video Sitemap— A common mistake is to assume that a video on your web page, by nature of it being there, allows that video content to be indexed by Google. Google has no way of actually viewing what the content of your video is; enter The Sitemap. The Sitemap is basically an XML file formatted for video, that contains information about your video, so search engines can better crawl that site. You’ll also want a robots.txt file on all video pages. This allows Google to verify the locations on the Web you’ve submitted actually exist, and that they contain embed codes indicating the presence of                 video.

–If you head is spinning, relax. Once again, a smart video SEO platform, such as Oculu.com, can do all of this complex stuff for you. But it is important to know what is involved on a basic level, so you can start to get the most out of Video SEO for your clients.

3. Title your Video Correctly—Google still considers the match between keywords and the title of the video very highly in it’s ranking. So, “Joe’s BBQ”, would not fair as well as, “Joe’s Grill and BBQ Ribs Recipe”. It also wouldn’t hurt to submit the video several times, using different keywords in the title to better match with potential search parameters.

–This is where a you can differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack, propose this to your clients with a brief explanation of how it will improve the overall searchability of their web site, and poof! –You’re a Web Marketing Genius.

4. Quality and Quantity—As Video Marketing professionals we all know (and have tried to remedy), the Business Owners Do-It-Yourself home video on their home made web sites. These videos in themselves can be successfully marketed using the above guidelines, because, once again, Google can not “see” what the video actually “is”. But after you have stepped in, made sure your customers message and branding has been upheld, the more the better.

–Video blogs, web series, how-to videos, all of these multiply Google’s ability to crawl your customer’s sites and gain momentum in the ranking game.

So, if your customers are asking how they can get to the front page of a Google search, knowing how and where to host your video is absolutely critical. You don’t need to be an SEO genius, you just need to know people that are.

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