Video SEO To Get To The Top of Google’s Search Results
Google, Videos, search engine optimization, social media |
To be able to provide beefier results, Google has been adapting “blended search” or the practice of presenting their results in mashups combining the proverbial text links with both image and video thumbnails. For the user, this feature makes searching a whole lot more dynamic while roping in exactly what they need and more in whatever format from virtually every source online. However, for the marketer aiming for their Web site to get to the top of search results to further their campaign, this could be a challenge.
Since these thumbnails are located at the very top of the Google results page, the customary text-based search results that would otherwise have competed for top page rankings are further pushed lower in the page or even shoved into the succeeding pages. Because thumbnails practically occupy more real estate on the results page and are virtually the first results seen at every search, users are more compelled to click on them for a closer look.
As a result, sites with videos (even those with not-so-impressive Google index scores) have significantly better chances of achieving first page ranking. In fact, according to a study by technology and market research firm Forrester Research, videos in the index are 50 times more likely to generate a first page ranking on Google than any given traditional text page in the index.
On the other hand, this also poses as a big opportunity especially if you’ve been embedding videos into your site’s contents, even making video SEO a tad bit easier. Here are a few suggestions to make sure Google sees your video contents and improve your search rankings.
Go With YouTube
If the main purpose of your videos is to improve on brand awareness, you can simply upload your videos on any online video service like Vimeo or Blip.tv and maybe even spread them around the social networks. But if you want your videos to automatically figure significantly on Google’s search index, Google’s own YouTube is the best way to go. Google’s algorithm includes the number of times a video has been played which affects the chances of your video appearing on top of the results pages. And, even with its few missteps, YouTube is still the most popular video sharing platform online.
The Content
When creating videos, always consider your target audience and your video’s quality. As mentioned, Google considers your video’s number of views so audio and visual qualities are also important for people to stick around long enough to watch them. Needless to say, bleary visuals and imperceptible audios aren’t exactly video attributes that will rope in viewers and they won’t help in getting your brand’s message across either. These define a poor production value and while this garners some semblance of brand awareness, it can also be a disservice to your brand’s image.
Keywords and Tags
Since search engines can only understand text, keywords play a big role in video SEO techniques. Providing clear descriptive titles and inserting keywords into the video’s filename can certainly help a lot for both Google and YouTube’s search indices. Another way to help Google discover your video is by embedding them into relevant pages in your site and pairing them with the proper text content. Moreover, you can even take a step further and match your videos’ titles with their title tags since Google seems to favor videos carrying this attribute.
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RSpears @ April 6, 2010
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