There is nothing worse than investing valuable time and resources into a marketing video, only to have it return absolutely zilch. No views. No clicks. Nothing.
When this happens, not only are you burning money, you’re also not filling up your sales funnel. For a small business, that can be terminal.
So, how can you get people onto your website and watching your videos? The answer is video marketing for SEO.
In a few simple steps, you can optimize both your website and your video content to pull in more traffic and reach a larger audience. The value proposition of Google search campaigns speak for themselves: more views, greater brand awareness, and, ultimately, more sales.
After all, that’s why Viddyoze provides simple video software. So that you can create effective video content and generate sales. We know SEO is a big part of that, and we want to help you understand that too.
Read this guide, and we’re going to show you how to master video SEO. We’re going to explain how you can optimize your website and video files so that your video content appears at the top of Google and YouTube search at the same time.
Don’t miss these essential video marketing SEO tips.
Where Should You Host Your Videos?
Simply put, this is where your video “sits” on the internet – the actual web server where the file is stored. There are tons of video platforms out there, such as Wistia and Vimeo, that provide this service.
However, the vast majority of videos (94%, according to Moz) that rank in the top 3 video positions on Google are hosted on YouTube.
If you didn’t know already, Google and YouTube are owned by the same company, which explains why they work so well together.
That’s not saying there aren’t positives to using a dedicated video platform – there are. Namely, those platforms tend to have much faster loading times, which is great for conversion and user experience (UX).
It’s possible to host using multiple platforms, however, the goal of this guide is video SEO strategy, so we’re going to stick with YouTube as the primary hosting platform – the 94% stat from Moz speaks for itself.
Aside from its links to Google, there are 3 main digital marketing reasons for this:
- It’s free and it lets you embed videos onto your website with ease
- It allows you to make video SEO tweaks to your videos without having to use complex code
- YouTube videos rank on Google, as well as YouTube
Step 1 – Keyword Research (Google & YouTube)
Keyword research is the foundation of any good video marketing SEO strategy. These are the main words your would-be customer is searching. For example, a solution, a topic, or a product.
Most of the time, keywords come from the topic of your content. So, for this article, the main keyword could be “SEO video marketing”.
Once you have that, you can use SEO tools, such as Google Trends, Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, SEM Rush, or Answer The Public, to expand your keyword research into a longer list of relevant keywords (Ideally, you want between 5 and 10 in your video transcript).
The great thing about hosting a video on YouTube, from an SEO perspective, is that you can drive traffic to your website from two sources: Google and YouTube. No other kind of SEO really has this perk.
However, to take advantage of this powerful digital marketing feature, you’ll need to target Google SERPs (search engine results pages) that trigger video results. Here’s an example of what they look like in the SERP for the keyword “become an investor”:
The tools mentioned above (Ahrefs and SEM Rush, in particular), provide data on SERPs, so you know which keywords to target in your marketing strategy.
Once you’ve found your keywords, remember to check the search volume for both Google and YouTube to get a full idea of the traffic potential your content could have.
Pro-tip: if you find keywords that are perfect for your business but have low search volume, don’t be discouraged! It’s better to get 50 real customers onto your website than 500 visitors who aren’t likely to buy.
Step 2 – Preparing Your Blog Outline And Video Script
Before you create your content, there’s a little bit of prep to do. First, you’ll need to build a custom webpage to host your video.
Now, to get your video ranking in search this next step is absolutely crucial: the webpage content needs to match the content of the video. You can’t add your video to any random page and expect it to rank. It doesn’t work this way.
The webpage needs to feature the same keywords and phrases as your video. Follow this rule of thumb:
- If you’re targeting an informational keyword – embed your video on a blog page
- If you’re targeting a transactional keyword – embed your video on a product landing page
If you’re creating a blog post page, you can save time by using your blog outline to inform your video transcript.
In terms of page layout, here are some best practice SEO tips you should follow:
- Include any secondary keywords into the headings of your blog content. Format those in H2s and H3 (as we have for this post)
- Use the exact same secondary keyword headings in your YouTube content using the chapters feature (example below)
Doing this for multiple videos will improve your ability to rank and widen the net in terms of keywords.
Step 3 – Optimizing Your Video For Audience Retention
Next, we need to talk about audience retention. This is super important for your video SEO strategy. Without it, your video content just won’t rank.
YouTube retention is the average percentage of a video that a person watches. It also shows you when a person stops watching your content, and total watch time.
Simply put, it shows you how engaging your content is, and whether it’s giving your audience the information they are searching for.
A high retention rate is good for you, but it’s also good for YouTube. The longer a person watches your content, the longer they spend on YouTube. This is the platform’s ultimate goal: to keep users active on YouTube for as long as possible.
In fact, YouTube rewards videos with good retention rates by pushing them higher up the search results.
Essentially, that means YouTube makes these videos easier to find. Without a good retention rate, your videos are unlikely to appear in Google’s SERPs, too.
Really, it all boils down to quality content. If your video marketing meets the needs of its intended audience, people will watch it for longer. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Lucky for you, there is a simpler way to create high-quality video, with minimal experience: Viddyoze.
Our easy-to-use software allows you to create videos in minutes. Just select your template, customize it to match your brand, download it, and boom – an SEO-optimized video, ready to go. Remember, the more content you create, the better you will perform in Google searches.
Click here to get started or check out the video below for more info.
Step 4 – Post Your Blog First
Once you’ve created both pieces of content (blog and video), it’s time to post. First, post your written blog content – we can’t stress how important this is for your SEO video marketing.
The reason for this is simple: you should include your blog’s URL in the description of your YouTube video (more on that later). By doing this super simple hack, your content will be indexed faster so that it shows up in Google’s SERPs sooner.
Usually, it takes Google days or even weeks to discover this info (the URL, that is). Give the algorithm a helping hand by providing the URL and your YouTube video, at the same time.
As we’ve already mentioned, both the blog post and video should be targeting the same primary keyword. To give your content the best chance of appearing in both search engines (Google and YouTube), you must include your primary keyword in the following places:
- The meta title and description
- The H1 (main heading on your blog post page)
- The URL slug (the final part of your URL, after the website name and section of the site where the blog sits)
Finally, when you come to embed your video onto your blog page, ensure that it sits as high up on the page as possible. We recommend the spot beneath your H1 and above the intro text. This is Google’s own advice.
Step 5 – YouTube SEO And Tips For Posting Your Video
- Optimize Your Raw Video File
- Say Your Keyword During Your Video Intro
- Include Your Primary Keyword In The Video Title
- Include Any Keyword Variations Into Your Video Description (And Your Blog URL)
- Use Your Secondary Keywords In Your Video Chapters
- Steal Your Competitor’s Video Tags
YouTube works like any other search platform. To get the best results, you need to optimize your video correctly. To do that, follow these video marketing SEO tips:
Optimize Your Raw Video File
When it comes to search engine optimization, detail is key. Even an area as small as a file name can make a difference. With that in mind, your raw file name of your MP4 should include the following:
- Your primary keyword
- A description, including keyword variations, and a naked link to the accompanying blog post
- Add video author into the correct field
Say Your Keyword During Your Video Intro
YouTube has an auto-generated closed-captioning service. In other words, the platform can caption your content using sound recognition software. Take full advantage of this and ensure that your intro is loaded with primary keywords.
Include Your Primary Keyword In The Video Title
A nice easy one. To optimize video for SEO, every one you create MUST feature the primary keyword in its title. Best practice suggests that you should position this word as close to the beginning of the title as possible, for example:
- A video marketing guide for small businesses
Include Any Keyword Variations Into Your Video Description (And Your Blog URL)
To write an effective SEO-friendly YouTube title and description, you need to keep things simple. Describe the video clearly, using your primary keyword and a handful (5 to 7) secondary target keywords. Don’t forget to link to your blog’s URL here, too.
Use Your Secondary Keywords In Your Video Chapters
Chapters increase the UX for your videos, giving a viewer the option to skip ahead to the most relevant content. It’s also a great place to include keywords. Using the platform’s chapters feature, include relevant secondary keywords in each chapter title. This will give your video content marketing an extra boost in the search results.
Steal Your Competitor’s Video Tags
Video tags are an important ranking factor for YouTube. It tells the video hosting platform which search results you want to trigger. First of all, you’ll want to include every keyword you are targeting. Next, look at your competitor’s tags and highjack a few of those.
To find your competitor’s tags:
- Search for the keyword you’re targeting on YouTube
- Choose the first result
- If using chrome, right-click on the video’s page and select ‘view page source’
- Next, hit ctrl + f to bring up the page search bar
- Search for the term “keywords”
- The tags will appear in a list format between content=””
- Add tags to your video marketing
Step 6 – Embed Your Video To Your Blog Page
So, we’ve already mentioned the importance of embedding your videos high up the page – actually, that’s only half the battle. To optimize your videos correctly, you’ll also need to use the correct HTML in the page’s code.
If the word ‘code’ panics you then don’t worry! It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. All you need to do is make sure that your video is wrapped inside the following HTML tags:
- <video>
- <embed>
- <iframe>
- <object>
These tags specifically tell Google that there’s a video on your page, which helps to get it indexed quicker.
As soon as your video is live on the platform, YouTube automatically generates <iframe> code so that you can easily add the video to your site in an SEO friendly way. All you need to do is hit the “share” function below any YouTube video, copy, and paste this onto your own website.
We know, it really is that simple.
Step 7 – Add Video Object Schema Markup To Your Page
The more information you give to Google, the quicker it will understand your video. By incorporating Video Object schema markup into your page, you are enabling Google (and other search engines) to process the contents of your page.
So what is it?
A schema markup is a piece of code that tells Google exactly what is on your page. It was built as a collaboration between most major search engines. To put it simply, it adds clarity and removes the likelihood of mistakes (hey, even bots can get things wrong every now and again!). Adding this saves time as you’re effectively doing the search engine’s job for it.
There are many different types of schema code, but Video Object is the one we use to categorize a video for search engines. This code contains relevant information about your video content, for example:
- Video name
- Duration of video
- The video URL
- A meta description of the video
The code is added to your page’s HTML code following the <head> code. You can see how that looks here. If you’re not confident in creating your own schema code, this free tool will do it for you.
Step 8 – Create A Video Sitemap And Submit To Google Search Console
Google recently launched a new video indexing and sitemap tool in its search console. The tool allows you to select which pages you want Google to index. This is yet another way to help boost your videos in terms of SEO.
Without a sitemap, the only way Google can find your web pages is by crawling your content. This can be a problem for certain pages (for example, those with no incoming links), as Google is unable to crawl them.
Google is now applying the same theory to video. As well as helping Google index your video, a sitemap will also inform you if there’s an issue or error with your content. It also allows you to get more of your videos appearing in SERPs and provides analytics on how your videos are performing. To make all that happen, here’s what you need to include in your video sitemap:
- title
- name
- description
- thumbnail URL
- video URL
- region restrictions
Add this to every page that hosts a video. To create a sitemap, there are three options. You can create the code yourself. You can use a plug in. Or you can use this free tool.
Step 9 – Generate Backlinks To Your Video Page
Last but not least, backlinks. This is the final piece of the SEO video marketing playbook. Backlinks have been a mainstay for Google since the very beginning. No matter how much the algorithm changes (and it changes a lot), these links stay relevant. This is traditional SEO.
In simple terms, backlinks are links to your content from other websites. Google, and other search engines, see this as an endorsement; it means “quality content”.
The more sites that link to your page hosting your target video, the more likely it is that Google will present your content in its search results.
Using Google search console you can see who’s already linking to your site for free, and help you discover new opportunities to get more links.
Final Thoughts
SEO is a huge part of any successful video marketing strategy. By taking the time to optimize your video, more people will find your website and buy your products. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but the rewards far outweigh the effort. It’s a huge source of organic traffic waiting to be tapped.
Create a content calendar and a strategic plan to target multiple keywords to get the best results. Over the course of the year, you should be releasing a steady stream of content to build up your website’s SEO profile.
Viddyoze allows you to create high-quality videos in a matter of minutes. Keep the content flowing and drive more organic traffic with regular content.
FAQS
What Is SEO Video Marketing?
SEO video marketing is the use of video to grab people’s attention and generate traffic to your website.
Why Is Video Marketing Good For SEO?
Video marketing is good for SEO because pages that contain videos tend to rank better on Google. Search engines respond well to video transcripts that contain keywords.
How Do I Add SEO To A Video?
To add SEO to a video, create a compelling title with relevant keywords, write an informative and keyword-rich description with a call-to-action, use closed captions or subtitles, use tags that accurately describe the video’s content, optimize the video’s file name with relevant keywords, and create a transcript of the video’s audio to make it more accessible and help with search engine optimization.
How Does SEO Rank Videos On YouTube?
To make your videos rank on YouTube, you must provide the platform with all relevant data and keywords. Essentially, tell the platform why the content is beneficial to your audience.
Should I Add Video Transcriptions To My Webpage?
There are two schools of thought on this type of video marketing strategy. Some say that transcription improves user experience, while others claim it overstuffs the content with keywords. We suggest you add a video transcript to your content and test it yourself.
How Can I Improve My SEO Strategy?
To improve your video content SEO strategy, create content that compliments your written content and blog posts.
How Long Should Your SEO Videos Be?
When it comes to SEO for video content, there is no set length. Just ensure your video is concise and without filler.
