Search engines keep evolving to improve the user experience by surfacing the most relevant results in sections such as “News”, “Images”, “Video”. To keep pace with these developments, site owners should build the relevant segments into their own structures. One of these segments is “Video”.
Just like your blog posts, product descriptions, or other text sections on your site, it's possible to achieve the same SEO success with video. This means videos you upload to your site or YouTube page need some optimization to rank better in search results. We'll examine these efforts in two sections, “Video Optimization for Sites” and “Video Optimization for YouTube”. Let's say upfront that while there are no big differences, there are some points worth paying attention to on both.
Video Optimization for YouTube
As you know, YouTube is a hugely popular platform, we can call it a separate search engine just for videos. The challenge for search engines is that video content can't be read or understood by them directly. So we need to feed them the readable parts in the most useful way possible. For example; before you can add a video to YouTube, you need to think about the title, description, etc. before users can access your video.
Anahtar Kelime Analizi
As in all SEO work, keyword analysis is required for video work too. We'll identify most segments based on this analysis. Search engines often list video results for queries that fall into the following categories:
- “How-to” searches
- Product / Service / Event / Book / Film etc. evaluations
- Trainings, workshops
- Sports-related searches (10 waist-slimming movements, stomach thinning movements)
- Funny videos
Why does this matter? It helps a lot when you're determining content-based parts like the video title and description.
So how do you do keyword analysis for video? You can start with search results first. For example; the video results for a query like ”How to knit?” will look like this.
As you can see, there is no title that skips the word “How” (Nasıl). You can also search your own keyword and see what pattern the titles of the top-ranked videos follow.
As we have explained before, you can use keyword analysis tools such as Keyword Planner and keywordtool.io
Let's underline this: don't spend too much effort trying to find keywords with very high search volumes. Words that contain terms such as “how, where, when”, what we call long-tailed keywords, are often low in search volume, but they're the ones that need attention in video optimization.
Uploading Videos
You've done the keyword analysis, made your video, and now it's time to upload it to YouTube. Let's look at what to pay attention to when uploading videos from an SEO perspective.
File Name
When you're deciding on your video's file name, it's worth referring back to your keyword analysis, since your filename should contain your keyword. For example; if your target word is “knit”, you can name your file as ”how_to_knit_video.mp4..
Title
The title comes right after the file name, and it deserves a little more thought. It should be striking, while still addressing the word the user is searching for, similar to writing a title for a blog post. The only difference is that if your video content is educational and informative, you should also emphasize “How To?.
If you include the phrase “how-to” along with your keyword when determining your title in a way that can match the content of your video, you will reach more users.
Description
This section matters the most. Since search engines can't listen to your videos, they can't detect their content on their own. You give them that information through the “description” section.
- You can include your link in the description.
- You can write a concise 250-300-word description without padding it out.
- You must include your target keyword within the description.
The example above is a description for “SEO For Beginners 2017 - How To Rank High In Google?”Since that video covers SEO in every aspect, its description is both detailed and a little longer than usual. You can also build out your description section by sifting through and processing the video's raw transcript.
Tags
Tags also help YouTube and search engines understand what your video is about, and they help you get listed in the “relevant videos” section shown on the right.
User Experience Metrics
In video optimization, you need to consider the user experience just as much as the search engine, and honestly, when it comes to video, the user experience matters even more. The metrics below help you gauge how users respond to your video. You can easily tell whether your video is liked or not, especially from these metrics.
Video Length
Video length is one of the biggest factors affecting how much of a video users actually watch.
The graph above shows the average video viewing time of a user. As you can see, people watch about 3:52 minutes of video on average. You should take this into account when preparing your video, since it's important to have the video you put hard work into actually get watched. Of course, your video may be longer depending on your subject. In such cases, we recommend, if possible, splitting the video into pieces. If you want to publish it as a whole, make sure to keep it from getting monotone, so it catches the user's attention and holds it to the end.
Comments
Give your users the chance to comment on your video. Of course, the content of your video will determine whether the comments turn out positive or negative. You can also improve your future videos based on comments from users.
Subscription
A user who subscribes to your channel after watching your video is worth everything, because it shows your video is GREAT.
Watch and Share Rates
The number of people watching your video is a metric that affects other users' decisions, and the sharing rate works the same way. Both metrics show how much your viewers like your video. You can gauge the success of your video based on these rates. You can also get an idea by checking other videos on similar subjects with high views and share ratios.
Mentioning your video on different sites
You can play an active role on question / answer platforms such as Quora, commenting on relevant questions with your video's link. You can also reach more people by sharing an article that includes a link to your video on international channels that let you write blog posts, such as Medium, Linkedin. To find questions related to your video's subject on question and answer platforms, simply type the word into the search box.
And of course, don't forget to share this video on your own blog too!
Video Optimization for Websites
Now it's time to bring video optimization to your website. In fact, there isn't much difference in terms of optimization. The main difference is that while YouTube videos show variance in user metrics, there are several page-based integrations for videos on your website, such as schema.org.
Keyword Research
We covered keyword research at the beginning of our article. Since there's no difference between the keyword analysis for a video going on your website and one going on YouTube, let's not go over it again.
Title
We recommend settling on a long-tailed title that includes your primary keyword. Just as you would with a blog post title, you can crown your video with a title that describes its purpose and content.
Description
Use the “description” section to describe what your video is about and what it covers, giving search engines the text information they need about your video.
Transcript
You can add any speech or statement in your video, that is, the transcript of your video, directly below your video. This way, you get the full benefit of your video's rich content. By adding transcripts to the videos we publish on Zeo TV, we aim to both give users a better experience and achieve success in terms of SEO.
Sitemap
If you have more than one video, it's worth creating a separate sitemap, since sitemaps are the fastest and most effective way for search engines to reach your pages.
Schema
Schema tags, a type of data marker, let you highlight certain parts of your video.
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">
Video: <span itemprop="name">Title</span>
<meta itemprop="duration" content="T1M33S" />
<meta itemprop="thumbnailUrl" content="thumbnail.jpg" />
<meta itemprop="embedURL"
content="http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123" />
<object ...>
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
</object>
<span itemprop="description">Video description</span>
</div>As above, you can mark up many details such as title, duration, URL, and description with schema markup.
Other Tips
- Videos that connect with users emotionally often go viral. If your subject fits emotional content, you can build a scenario around it.
To be more precise; the Nike Women Turkey advertisement you frequently encounter in recent days. The advertisement, which challenged a number of taboos around women, has gotten a lot of attention and was highly appreciated. Videos like this are called emotion driven.
- You should create in formats like .mov, .avi, .wmv that are both visible to the search engine and preferred by users.
- Usually, videos extending more than 5 minutes can be boring, though it's certainly possible to prepare longer, satisfying videos depending on your subject.
- The still, representative picture of your video (thumbnail) affects whether users decide to watch your video.
We're at the end of our SEO optimization review for videos. We wish you plenty of videos with lots of clicks.
