What is Video SEO and Why is it Important?

You have an SEO strategy and you have a video marketing strategy. So, what the heck is a Video SEO strategy and why do you need it? Well, we’re glad you’re asking because that’s exactly what we’re here to help you with today. 

Video has grown, and will continue to grow, exponentially over time, with businesses seeing pretty sweet ROI on this type of medium. Just look at the explosion of TikTok and Reels on Instagram. Video content is the way to go. 

Ok, before we go and get all overwhelmed (I’m projecting, aren’t I?!), let’s pretend for a moment that we’re talking about written content. You always ensure that your blogs and copy are search engine optimized before publishing them, right? So, why wouldn’t you adopt the same principle with your video content? Search engine optimization of videos is, quite simply, a must. It seems obvious in hindsight, but if people were already doing it, we wouldn’t have had any content for this blog post! That being said, let’s dive right in.

What is the search intent of your video?

Similarly to how your blogs should address a need of your audience, so too should your videos. Are you answering a question? Solving a problem? Are you ultimately creating content that adds value to your audience? Great! Search engines are smart enough to recognize the content of your video, thereby determining if it’s relevant to searchers’ intent. If this is all sounding very familiar, it’s because it is. Video functions much like written content does. Similar to how you’d pepper your keywords throughout your blog post, do the same thing with your video content. In summation, determine the intent of your video. Based on that intent, choose appropriate keywords and insert them into your video and transcript.

Choose Amazing Thumbnails, Titles, and Descriptions for your Videos

You’ve heard the phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” countless times. Buuuut, that saying wouldn’t exist if people weren’t prone to judge by appearance alone. (Annoying, right?!) So, let’s use this knowledge to our advantage. In search engines, videos have three primary elements that appear in search results: The title, description, and thumbnail. We want to nail all three. 

Is your title truly relevant to the content? Does the thumbnail give an accurate glimpse into what the user can expect to see in the video? Is the meta description useful to the user in helping them determine if your video will help answer their question/fill their need? Investing in a bit of time upfront to answer these questions and create compelling titles, thumbnails and descriptions for your videos can help capture your audience’s attention.

Create a Video Sitemap on your Website

Help Google to crawl your site as easily as possible by creating a video sitemap on your website. Sitemaps help search engines better understand the context of your webpage (or video) through metadata. 

If you’re new to the world of sitemap-ping and you need some help with this one, get in touch with us because we’d love to help!

Add Video Transcripts on your Pages

This is a simple step that goes a long way! Adding in transcripts of your video is not only best practice, but also leaves little room for error when it comes to search engines crawling your content. Platforms like Google Meet, Zoom and GoToWebinar actually have a built-in feature that transcribes videos for you. YouTube also offers a free captioning feature. Voila! 

However, we do caution that you should always proofread automatically-generated transcripts! Double check all spelling and grammar before posting! And while we’re on the subject of transcripts…

Add Content to the Page Besides the Video Transcript

Please add other content to your page! You don’t want to be that kid in the group project who does the bare minimum to get by, do you? Exactly. Consider adding in some copy to accompany the transcript. Make it easy for yourself and add content that outlines what the user can expect to learn from the video, highlight key takeaways, or even just answer some frequently asked questions. Just add more than the transcript, okay?!

Video Schema Markup

Schema markup is code (also called microdata) that you can add to the HTML of your website. This microdata helps search engines better understand your content so they can return more detailed and informative results for searchers. Google offers an in-depth guide for video schema markup that you can take a look at here. We can also help you with that, so don’t be shy! Give us a call or send us a note here!

Add Video Chapters or Timestamps

Users are busy people who need answers fast. What better way to accommodate this than by adding in handy little timestamps to your video? Notice how we’ve added in handy headlines to our blog to help you easily scan the content? The same principle applies again to video content. Adding chapters/timestamps to your videos is a simple and fast way to improve the user experience. Additionally, search engines can show the most relevant chapter to a searcher, thus making your video (or portion thereof) easily accessible to those who need it most. 

Try out these video SEO tips and let me know how you do! Not interested in jumping into the deep end on your own? Drop me a line and let’s see if we can work together to make your website and business really stand out!