SEO for text content is different from SEO for videos, called SEO video marketing. But one consideration must be made! YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google and is owned by Google. This means that videos, when integrated within articles, contribute to their ranking.
Indeed, video marketing SEO, supported by a good digital marketing strategy, such as Google Ads campaigns, can help climb the SERPs of both Google and YouTube (the two search engines are interlinked).
In order to do so – and thus maximise your visibility on the web – a few steps need to be taken, respecting specific SEO video marketing techniques.
Table of contents
SEO video marketing: what it’s
Every day millions of people watch visual content online and around 78% of them do so weekly. Investing in video marketing SEO, if done right, can help you and your business.
Video marketing SEO consists in creating quality content that can increase engagement, awareness and retention time which, as we know, are all ranking factors.
When a video is shared or embedded on another platform, it produces backlinks to your site; the more valuable backlinks (i.e. from sites with high domain authority) you receive, the better your SERP ranking will be.
Let’s focus on the technical aspects of SEO. What are the strategies to best optimise your visual and not entirely textual content? Let’s find out together.
Why SEO video marketing is an opportunity for companies
Videos nowadays perform several functions that are considered indispensable for users:
- are fast, in the sense that they communicate a lot of information in a few minutes;
- they are effortlessly accessed, most often in an enjoyable and engaging manner;
- they decrease the bounce rate of sites that incorporate them;
- they increase the conversion rate.
These simple premises are enough to make video marketing SEO a discipline separate from SEO, but indispensable for it.
5 SEO video marketing strategies
We will now analyse 5 SEO video marketing strategies useful for ranking on YouTube, but also cross-over techniques to climb Google SERPs.
1. Choose your thumbnails with care
Similar to what happens on the search results page, where users choose articles on the basis of metadata (title tag and meta description), within a video sharing platform such as YouTube or Vimeo the choice of video to watch is made on the basis of thumbnails.
If you do not carefully choose the thumbnail of your video or create an ad hoc one, YouTube will select a random frame of the video and use that as the thumbnail. The thumbnails chosen by YouTube, although the result of the algorithm (which tries to identify the salient parts of the video), are unprofessional and may represent awkward or unnecessary moments; creating attractive thumbnails that encapsulate the main topics covered in the video, even with the support of text, can help you increase the number of clicks.
2. Pay attention to title tag and meta description
If the users’ search intent matches the keyword in the title tag, i.e. what the users expect to find, you will get more clicks; on the contrary, if the title tag is not clear and catchy or consistent, you will receive a penalty from Google, with the risk of ending up at the bottom of the SERP.
The meta description of the video should also contain the keyword around which the topics of the video revolve. As with the title tag, false, inconsistent keywords and keywords put only for easy clicks should be banned (Google notices). The purpose of the meta description is to offer users a short truthful description of what they will see, trying to capture their attention as much as possible.
Remember: title tag and meta description, together with permalink, are also essential elements in “traditional” SEO for textual content.
3. Add tags
We can consider tags as the topics that revolve around the main keyword; they help the algorithm to understand what you are talking about and users to find what matches their search intent. Furthermore, tags contribute to the optimisation of a video categorising it and suggesting new videos related to previous ones.
How to add tags
Adding tags to a video is very easy:
- login to your YouTube Studio account;
- in the side menu on the right select “contents” and click on the video to which you want to add tags;
- Add tags, you can also do this from mobile.
First, however, you should track down the most frequently used tags for the topic you want to cover.
4. Add subtitles
Subtitles are an indispensable element, not only for SEO video marketing goals (we will now see why), but also for the accessibility of the content, as they enable people who are deaf with hearing impairments to still be able to enjoy the content.
The advantages of adding subtitles stem from the fact that:
- Google scans the transcripts of the video to extrapolate its topics, concepts, logical implications and thus define its positioning;
- transcribing the speech makes it possible to add time markers and thus subdivide the video in chapters;
- thanks to enhanced accessibility, the plethora of people who can enjoy the video is expanded.
Remember, don’t rely on YouTube’s automatically generated subtitles (they are often wrong and incomprehensible), but write what you say in the video; this will allow you to get better ranking and more traffic.
How to add subtitles
- login to YouTube Studio;
- from the menu on the left, select “subtitles”;
- click on the video to be edited;
- click on “add language” and select the language you prefer;
- at the bottom of the subtitles, click on “add”.
5. Take advantage of social media!
Now that your video is on YouTube full of thumbnails, metadata, tags and subtitles, use your “owned” social platforms (because you already have an audience there that knows and appreciates you) to convey it.
It may sound granted, but one of the most used viral marketing techniques is precisely sharing your content on the main social platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc.). This way you create free, effortless backlinks that Google bots value as a ranking factor.
Is it better to upload videos to YouTube or to one's own site?
We have seen how to upload our own videos to YouTube, but are we sure it is the winning choice? The answer is yes, for 3 simple reasons:
- videos are often large files that require a considerable quantity of server space, space that YouTube makes available for free;
- YouTube attracts a volume of traffic that your website alone and especially in its infancy dreams of. This is another reason why YouTube is the winning choice;
- YouTube offers a number of free tools that allow you to edit and optimise your video for SEO.
The only disadvantages of using Google’s platform for your videos are that you do not retain “total control” over your content. When you upload a video to YouTube you agree to terms and conditions that lead you to give up your intellectual property. On your site this would not happen and it would be up to you to decide whether to charge for accessing your videos.
How important is SEO video marketing?
A lot. As you will have understood from this short guide, the benefits of SEO video marketing are numerous. Doing good SEO video marketing, however, requires time, dedication and knowledge of the medium that creators sometimes lack.
At Moka Adv, we can help you retain your audience, increase traffic, and better position your videos. For more information call us or contact us by filling in the contact form below, a team of marketers is ready to answer all your questions!
SEO video marketing: go viral!
