First, you’ve got to start with an awesome video. Don’t have one yet? You’re in the right place. Browse to our video production section and let us know if we can help. But if you’ve got a solid video already, you’re ready to go. The real question now is how do you get people to find and watch your video?
Why have video on your website?
There are many reasons to load up your website with eye catching, informative videos. It doesn’t really matter if you’re an entertainment site or publishing videos on an industry-specific topics, all of these elements will work the same way.
SEO benefits
Google uses many factors when ranking your site (that’s surely not an enlightening statement). No one really knows the weight given to each element, but it’s been widely accepted that Google is looking for:
- Relevance (i.e. keywords)
- Page quality and user experience – linked to time on site
- Links – People are also increasingly more likely to share content with video and/or images, especially in the increasingly visual world of social media.
How to optimize video?
Google has no idea what your video is about unless you tell them. If your page only provides information via your title tag you’re doing yourself a disservice. The best way (at the moment) to tell Google what your video is about is to surround it with descriptive text. You can do this with a few paragraph synopsis or a full transcript. It’s up to you.
Titles and Meta Data
- Title: Should be catchy include keywords
- Description: Research keywords being search for in your topic area. Include a description and video tags that include these terms (without overdoing it). Write a paragraph that will convince someone that this video is both relevant and something worth watching.
- File name: Use keyword rich file names with hyphens instead of spaces.
Video Sitemap
It is important that Google be able to crawl and index your videos. This can be assured through the creation of a video sitemap. Google’s Video Sitemap Guide is great, or plugins are available on WordPress.
- Benefits of a sitemap: A video sitemap can not only be submitted to Google, it also tells Google what video thumbnail should be used on the SERP page
Where to host your video?
YouTube is one of the best places to host your video if you’re willing to let YouTube take some of the “juice” from you. The power of YouTube as a search engine cannot be forgotten, so often times a video on YouTube will be able to pull in more traffic to your website than you could on your own site. If that’s the case, use YouTube. If you are getting a ton of traffic to your site and will be able to rank well for your video pages, then host it on your own.
But as usual, there is a favorable middle ground. Consider posting a video “teaser” that shows highlights or the first few minutes. At the end, the video prompts the viewer to visit www.yourwebsite.com for the full video. From there, you’ve got way more control over the content the viewer sees, the conversion opportunities, and more.
In addition to YouTube or your own website, the final push to get your website is to go social! There are hundreds of sharing sites online like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. You can use these sites to your advantage. In addition you should always include an embed code to allow sharing more easily. Allow comments to engage your audience. Share video with social network, email contacts, and anyone else you know. Consider posting it on blogs with related content, on forums, or other content-specific sites related to your industry or message. All of these things can help your video reach the biggest audience, and eventually drive leads by positioning you as an expert in your field.
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