By Yulia Edirisinghe
It’s undeniable that video is an essential tactic in any B2B marketer’s arsenal. Why? Have a look at our wiki on video production to learn about the many benefits.
Unfortunately though, even the world’s best video is redundant if no one can find it to watch it. And, with sixty hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, competition for the top spots in search results is only increasing. So, how do you beat the competition? The answer lies in three little letters: SEO.
Optimize your video for search engines by following these simple guidelines, and you should see good results.
First, host your video
When you’re optimizing for video you’re dealing with not one, but both of the world’s largest search engines. While most general searches occur on Google, people searching specifically for video content are more likely to start on YouTube.
Possibly because Google owns YouTube, 8 out of 10 video results on Google are from YouTube. Another major benefit of this partnership is that YouTube videos are immediately indexed by Google, rather than having to waiting for bots to crawl your site or submitting a new video site map. For these reasons, it is highly recommended that you always host your videos on YouTube and then embed them on your blog or website.
Then, research your keywords and optimise
As with any good SEO campaign, you should start by identifying your keywords. Use simple, relevant keywords that will help your audience find the video. These will inform your optimization in a number of ways:
1. Title
The title for your video should contain the key phrase for which your company wants to be found. But make it interesting and something eye-catching to the user, and not just a jam of keywords.
Also, remember to keep your title under 60 characters or Google will truncate it.
Research has shown that Google ranks videos with ‘video’ in their title higher, as it is better able to identify the nature of the content.
2. Description
Once again, a keyword-rich description will prompt search engines to rank your video higher, but keep in mind that the main role of the description is to help your viewer understand the content before watching the video.
The ideal length for a description is 2-3 sentences. Include a link to your website or a call to action in the early part of the description to have these displayed whether or not ‘Show more’ is clicked.
It’s a good idea to include the word ‘video’ in your description as well.
3. Tags
Every video should be tagged with a 5-7 relevant keywords to help your viewers find it. Think about what you would be searching for when looking to find your video content and use this to inform the tags.
These will also help your video be listed as ‘related’ to other videos, generating additional views.
4. Transcripts and Captions
Especially for Google, there’s nothing like good old HTML content. Provide transcripts of your videos and place them around or near your video so that it can be indexed by search engines. Use your keywords and variations strategically in the content of the video, and that way your transcript will reflect this.
YouTube also offers the option of adding captions directly onto your videos. The benefits of this are twofold. Captions have been found to increase viewer engagement, which is the amount of time that a viewer spends watching a single video. This is one of the metrics that YouTube uses to rank videos, and a video which fewer people have watched for longer will rank higher than a video which many people have watched, but left after a few seconds.
The second benefit of using captions is accessibility. This enables a wider audience to engage with your content, including those who are hard of hearing, those whose first language may not be English, and even users who are in an especially loud environment or one which requires them to be quiet.
Up next…
Now that you’ve got all the keyword-related elements down pat, read this blog on what else you can do to get your video on top.
For more tips on how to use SEO in your B2B marketing, read our SEO Wiki here.
Yulia Edirisinghe is a Marketing Associate at align.me. For more information or to contact her, click here.
