January 7th 2020
Guest post

5 SEO Tips For Increasing The Chances Of Video Marketing Success

Making videos for SEO and content marketing purposes is a good idea, but it’s important to make the most of every piece of video content you do create. Creating video content as a small business can be expensive and time-consuming, so do yourself a favour and make it worth your while! From perfecting your video metadata to finding potentially traffic-generating video topics, here are five simple video SEO tips you can follow.

Define video purpose in your strategy

One of the best ways to maximise your video marketing spend is to clarify the purpose of each video — especially when it comes to SEO. Creating more focused and purposeful videos will help you get more consistent ROI from your video marketing. Is a certain video created for raising brand awareness, or is it more of a traffic generation tool? Do you want a video to rank highly on YouTube, or is this video going to generate organic traffic and engagements on social media? Does the video come with an accompanying story or press release?

Once you have a clearer idea of what you want to achieve with an individual video or video series, you can then focus on creating the right sort of video content (tutorial vs review) and adjust your video seeding strategy accordingly.

For example, a branding video might belong in your email newsletter, whereas a video destined to generate views on YouTube will need to be promoted online on relevant forums. All small business video strategies are likely to include a mix of purposes, so you will have to adjust your strategy accordingly!

Marry videos with your site UX

Mobile optimisation is increasingly essential for all digital content — and video is no exception. You need to ensure that any video you upload to your website will work on smaller mobile screens, and that playing and pausing the video won’t disrupt the user journey. A video with poor UX, or a video that disrupts a site experience, will lead to lost customers and higher bounce rates (bad for on-page engagement metrics).

Some things that may help with video UX:

Video text
Animations
Subtitles
Shorter videos
Reducing video size
Keeping videos focused & only including one video per web page.

One common error with embedding videos on websites is the fact that people don’t go back and check uploads on a regular basis — leading to broken links and unengaging web pages. If you’re in the habit of embedding video content, especially from YouTube, take responsibility for checking the embeds still work from to time. When uploading video to social media, remember to use subtitles and captions, and always follow social media video recommendations.

Maximise your metadata

Tagging your video up with the right kind of metadata is a quick job — but it can have pretty big SEO results. Learning how to tag and optimise videos on YouTube is pretty similar to optimising content across the web and social platforms in general.

On YouTube, you want to focus on the following:

Video title
Video description
Video Tags
Thumbnail

Your thumbnail should be custom wherever possible, whereas your title should include your priority keyword. Your description should include more information and any outbound links. Some commentators argue that transcripts and subtitles may give your videos a boost, as accessibility is generally something search engines like to reward.

Find great video content ideas

Where to find great video content ideas?

The best way to ensure that you’re creating content people actually want to watch, is to conduct keyword research before you even start creating video content. Use keywords as the basis of your video content calendar and learn how to make your own videos so that you can be self-sufficient with your video content and create reactive and seasonal content. Creating your own video content comes down to having a ready list of video ideas and themes you can lean on when it’s time to quickly shoot something.

Tools like keywordtool.io are a great place to start when it comes to ideating and collating keywords that can the be grouped into a thematic video content calendar. The more research you do, the better content you will create, and the better watch times you will have. (Watch times are a confirmed ranking factor on YouTube).

Send your video content out into the world

Creating video shouldn’t just end with a YouTube or a website upload!

Use social media and email to share your video and message with the world. Remember that you have to make the most of your investment. Embed and share videos wherever you can. Chop up longer videos and create engaging social media shorts, and use videos in blog posts and ads further down the line.

Creating great video isn’t rocket science, but it can be an uphill battle to improve your video visibility when you start out. Use these simple tips to help you spread the word about your video content.

About
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Geoff Roy

SEO Director at Leapfrog Internet Marketing

Geoff lives and breathes SEO, and enjoys the challenges of getting client websites on Google page 1. Because the digital marketing world changes so quickly, Geoff enjoys researching and posting about how the latest changes can be leveraged to improve leads and sales.

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