Video SEO Optimization: 10+ Steps to Optimize Content for SEARCH

Why does video SEO optimization matter? Videos are an important part of internet marketing and search engine optimization. 

Not only do they increase the interest factor of your content, but they also improve rank as well. Hence optimizing videos helps bolster a website's search engine rankings and drive more traffic.

Find out more about SEO video optimization and video SEO best practices below!

How to optimize video for SEO?

What is Video SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization.

Video SEO (video search engine optimization) is simply optimizing your video to be indexed and ranked on the search engine results pages for relevant keyword searches. 

The more highly ranked your website is, the more people will find your page when they search for relevant queries, visit your website, read your material, and get familiar with your brand. 

Many optimization strategies give your videos a higher chance of ranking, which this article will outline.

Read more: Fast video converter

Video search engine optimisation explained

Why Do You Need Video Optimization SEO?

Improving the way your audience and search engine crawlers consume your videos is one of the main reasons you should optimize them for search engines. 

But there are further reasons for video optimization for SEO, including these:

Benefits of optimize video SEO

• Better brand reach: The likelihood of your videos reaching someone in a far-off place of the globe increases significantly if you put them on any platform and optimize them for search engines.

• Connect with the audience: You may educate even the most typical customer about your product and help them grasp it by using step-by-step instructions that you provide through videos.

• Improved customer engagement: It is more probable that people will take whatever action you want them to when they are actively interacting with your content. 

Optimize your videos for SEO brings many benefits

• Increase in ROI: In HubSpot's State of Video Marketing survey, 87% of marketers express satisfaction with the return on investment (ROI) that videos provide. 

• Understand user behavior: You may measure different aspects of user behavior by using Google Analytics or by looking at the analytics dashboard of the video hosting platform or video marketing tool.

• Search results visibility: Optimizing your video makes it easier for search engines to crawl and find it. 

• Get leads: If your video is optimized, not only will your viewers have a positive experience, but it will also help them become a lead if yours is the answer they were seeking.

Luckily, using a video optimizer for web can help you with that!

How to Optimize Your Video for Search?

You may achieve good search engine rankings for relevant keywords and phrases by optimizing your videos for search engines.

SEO for videos is not the same as regular SEO, so the methods listed below will help you optimize videos for search engines.

Video optimization best practices

#1: Choose the right video hosting platform

If you’re more focused on general brand awareness, YouTube and Vimeo can be great options. 

However, once your video is indexed, most of the traffic goes to those platforms, not your own website. 

This can get your website visitors lost in a sea of competitive traffic

If you aim to get on-site traffic to push leads toward conversion, the best video SEO optimization tip is to choose alternative hosting platforms that support this capability.

#2: Insert a video transcript

You should insert a video transcript

Transcripts not only make your videos more accessible to a larger audience but also make your videos more searchable as there’s additional text on the page. 

Thus, it’s advisable to optimize video for the web in general and pay more attention to transcripts in particular.

#3: Create an engaging thumbnail image 

People shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but a lot of viewers judge a video by its thumbnail. The searcher will see it when your video is indexed.

So a good video search engine optimization is to make sure your video’s thumbnail is relevant to what you’re trying to rank for. 

Create an attractive thumbnail image for your video

#4: Make a title and description for your video

The title and meta description are also responsible for the rank of videos. Hence, spend your time crafting an engaging video title and description. 

Make sure to research keywords to ensure you’re targeting keywords that people are actually searching for. 

#5: Ensure the rest of your page is optimized for SEO

You can’t rely solely on SEO to gain a position on the SERPs. 

Your website itself is also optimized for SEO, or the search engines wouldn't bother collecting that data in the first place.

Video optimization best practices

If your video is ranked low, it could be because your page is awful.

While getting your website ranked organically can be a challenge, the ranking may come thanks to high-quality content and technical SEO components.

Another important note is to ensure the video is relevant to the page you’re embedding it on. 

If that page is only put up there for no general purposes, then the chance that the page will rank is low.

#6: Make the Video the Focus of the Page

In fact, many websites “hide” the video, so users have to scroll long until they finally land on it. 

This results in low play and play rates as people aren’t patient to hunt for the video, not to mention a hidden video will have less chance to be indexed a hidden video.

Make the video the focus of the page

Therefore, a key video optimization SEO is to make your video the focus of the page to increase your video’s crawlability factor. 

#7: Avoid embedding the same video on many platforms 

Embedding your video on multiple pages is just like playing a match of tennis against yourself. 

If your video is relevant to your page, and you're hoping your page and video get ranked, then it makes no sense to embed a video elsewhere on your public website, it’s kind of competing against yourself.

Don’t embed the same video on many platforms 

#8: Don’t count solely on SEO 

It’s worth noting that SEO isn’t reliable. Google’s algorithms constantly change, video is also evolving at a fast pace. 

Therefore, ranking your videos based on search bots is not a consistent strategy to draw attention to your videos.

Read more: Fast video file converter

#9. Generate backlinks with catchy content

Generating high-quality backlinks is the goal of any potential top-ranking video, which can be achieved by viewers sharing your content over multiple platforms.

Nobody wants to share uninteresting clips with their friends and not all videos have this shareability factor.  

Do SEO for video to make it more compelling.

Generate backlinks with catchy content

#10. Host from your website

A lot of businesses choose to host the video on platforms like YouTube or other third-party streaming sites to cut costs and increase page loading time.

However, this also links viewers to a domain other than your own. 

The ultimate goal of video SEO optimization is to increase website traffic. If you host on your domain, that means your video and your website are also shared.

When hosting on your own site, you should separate video by page to improve indexing. 

If you choose to host on a third-party site, make sure to include your site link in the description, which increases the chances for viewers to find you.

SEO video optimization to increase web traffic

#11. Use well-researched keywords

Keywords are the backbone of SEO. 

Firstly, you need to research keyword dominance in your industry to pick the most popular ones.

As you’ve published a few videos, keep track of keywords to determine which ones are making a difference in your campaign.

Keywords affect not only terminology but also length. 

Studies suggest that 4-word keywords consist of 50% of searches. Long-tail keywords are paid more attention as they are more specific to your brand and product. 

Use well-researched keywords

#12. Keep it short

You should not expect someone to watch a video that is longer than 10 minutes, no matter how amazing you think it is. 

One of the best SEO video optimizations is to reduce the length of the video.

If you have long content, then make it into a series of smaller videos. This will keep users more engaged. 

It also allows you to multiply the number of videos that you can optimize, tag, drive traffic to, and rank highly. 

#13. Go social

Go social

You’ve created an interesting video, share, tag it, and submit and upload it, to the world. 

Videos are capable of attracting a large number of inbound links, which boosts your SEO rankings.

Post your video link on social media platforms and encourage commenting on your video, which makes it easy for users to spread your video.

How Does Video Content Improve Your SEO?

Video content plays an important part in search engine optimization in the following ways:

How video content improves SEO

Google cares about video

Google appreciates the quality of your content and how relevant it is to someone’s original search terms. 

The text on your page is not the only factor that Google looks at. It also scans for images and videos to see precisely what you’re offering. 

If your sites have a combination of text and quality visuals like videos, your pages are considered informative, thus boosting your SEO efforts. 

Note that SEO video optimization should be done to get the best result.

Video is a traffic-generating machine

Your incoming traffic also affects your search rankings. 

People tend to visit your website via a video on YouTube or other platforms than any type of content. 

This is why many B2B and B2C businesses are investing heavily in video content. 

Guide to SEO video optimization

Video makes people stay longer on your site 

Search engines pay special attention to how long visitors stay on your site. 

Videos are powerful as they will more consistently keep people stay longer on your page. 

By adding videos to your page and doing SEO video optimization, you can significantly improve your bounce rate and increase your ranking. 

Furthermore, people are more likely to link to your videos

The more people link to your content and your domain, the higher your pages rank in the search results.