What is SEO-friendly content?
We know that a lot of people love watching videos. However, is that enough to get your video the visibility you want? You don’t want people to scroll through the video – instead, you want them to pause, notice, and keep coming back. Not to mention: share it with their friends. How do you make this happen?
It is not enough to create and edit the most winning videos. It is equally essential to make sure that your videos are SEO-friendly. If you are interested in digital marketing, you may already know what an SEO content strategy is. In simple terms, SEO or search engine optimization is a way to get more visibility for content by making it easier to find on search engines. With SEO strategies, you also improve the viewer experience and ease of engagement of your content.
So let us look at how video content can be optimized so that your videos are in the top search results when someone looks for products and services relevant to your business.
7 Ways To Optimize Your Videos For SEO
Search engines target video content in different ways. For starters, they prioritize keywords and phrases in the title or the video tags. But they also look at other elements within the video. Look at this step-by-step guide to figure out whether your video content is SEO-friendly.
1. Include keywords in the title and tags.
Ensure that the video title describes precisely what the viewer will see, with at least one keyword incorporated. Avoid clickbait titles that can be a turnoff for the viewer. A clickbait title is a sensationalized promise that rarely delivers. You want to entice the reader to click on your link, but at the same time, you want to live up to their expectations.
2. Use a memorable and catchy thumbnail.
The thumbnail may well be the main reason a viewer clicks on a video. It is important the thumbnail is authentic and represents the video contents. Moreover, the thumbnail should be interesting and eye-catching.
3. Add a relevant description.
A description tag makes your video accessible to the audience and search engines. It is handy for persons who rely on screen readers to understand what a video is all about. Write a precise and informative description with any relevant technical information that might be important.
4. Prioritize accessibility with closed captions.
Another important way to make your video accessible is to use a transcript. This is beneficial for both persons with visual and auditory challenges. Transcripts also help people with a preference for text-based content to enjoy your video. Multimodal content is always more memorable as it caters to different senses. Subtitles or transcripts also eliminate the issue of accent or clarity of the spoken language in the video. Online video editors can quickly help you add closed captions or subtitles.
5. Add a video sitemap.
A video sitemap is an XML file which includes all the information related to the set of videos on a website. Search engines can crawl through the videos faster using this. A video sitemap boosts the chances of your website ranking higher in the search results for relevant keywords.
6. Use hashtags for your video.
Indexing your videos according to hashtags is a great way to find potential audiences interested in the same topics. Hashtags boost content visibility on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Ensure that you add an average of 11 hashtags for maximum visibility, especially when posting directly to these social media pages from other third-party sites.
7. Embed videos on your blog.
This will provide you with valuable SEO benefits and keep visitors engaged on your site longer. Blogs with videos embedded in them are more likely to be clicked on in the search results. Not only that, the time spent by the user on your blog posts increases when there is a video in it. This increased session duration factors into the search ranking that Google gives your site.
Why Should Videos Be Optimized?
If you believe that SEO is only about the textual content and copy you post on your website or blog, you are mistaken. A lot of the content on the internet today is video-based. Not only that, but videos get more traction than texts. Search engines have also started prioritizing video-based content in their algorithms.
Google is definitely targeting this trend and the general preference towards the visual medium. Google now routinely indexes video content as part of its search results and ranks websites using social media signals from YouTube and other video platforms.
Much of the content produced online is now mobile-first or mobile-only. People prefer to stay connected on their smartphones instead of using their desktops for emails, checking blogs, scrolling through social media, etc. Most social media channels have video auto-play as the default setting on their apps. Apps like TikTok are taking over the world of content.
In this day and age, video content is saturating the online presence, and standing out is becoming harder and harder. SEO-friendly videos can take you further and help your business capitalize on this trend. And believe us when we say this trend will not slow down any time soon. With this in mind, it’s essential to make sure your video content is easily accessible and optimized for search engines.
Conclusion
In this world of digital marketing, staying abreast means following the trends. Video marketing is an opportunity to connect with audiences differently. Videos are entertaining, engaging, and easy to make. They are memorable and shareable. Creating stellar content is of no use unless it is supported by an epic marketing strategy. SEO-friendly content is the way to go to reach more audiences.
