10 Top Guidelines For Video Seo - Video Search Optimization

All have heard about the online video phenomenon that is hitting the internet. Viewers by the millions are going online to upload and watch online video content each day. Often, videos are a more effective way to convey an advertiser's message than typical offline advertising. And because video is becoming so mainstream, the cost to create online video content is extremely low and affordable for almost anyone. Online video has seen massive improvements in the past 2 years with regard to broadband connectivity, streaming, etc... Keeping in mind the vast popularity of online video as a method of internet marketing, it is important to learn the techniques most effective for optimizing your video for search engines.

1) It is recommended that you create and submit a transcript for users and the search engines, add a transcript to each video file you've uploaded via your Video Status page. Create a Keyword Rich Title for your Transcript; include a brief introductory paragraph/synopsis that describes the subject matter of your transcript (and video) and be sure to publish your transcript.

2) Make sure to include the keyword that you are targeting visitors for. Most often users will use the word "video" in conjunction with their search if searching for videos via the search engines. Therefore, it is important to use the word "video in your title, description, meta tags, and any other on-page text that you include with your video.

3) Off-page SEO, or, the techniques that one uses outside of the actual coding of the site itself (links, etc...), is just as effective for online video content as it is with any other webpage. Therefore, do your best to develop inbound links to your videos with the keywords that you are targeting in the anchor text of those links.

4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) When hosting video content on your own, keep in mind that flash is next to impossible for search engines to read and understand. Try to work with a format that is not flash. However, the simplest way to enable video on your site is via the popular flash players. That being said, do your best to take advantage of the other tips for SEO so that search engines can easily understand what it is your video is about.

6) Keep a keyword friendly URL structure that uses a few of your main keywords in the url string. For example - website.com/videos/car-racing-video/ is much better than website.com/videos/?videoID=123kjh

7) Various video search engines use to capture thumbnails of your in different manner. Some of them take the first frame of your video, while others try to take from the middle or end. It is better to experiment with each site individually to make sure they are displaying the right thumbnail for your video. A video thumbnail is always crucial when it comes to decide for a viewer which video to watch.

8) When hosting videos on your own site, keep your videos one per page and put all the pages with videos into one directory. This combined with a video sitemap will help search engines find and index all of your important videos.

Beside the above mentioned points there are few more points relevant for the optimization:

9) Always make sure viewers are searching for your targeted keywords regularly. If not, try to find the closest related keywords being searched.

10) Viewers who offer feedback are most likely to take the desired action on your video. This could be a good opportunity for you to submit fresh content, if the most popular videos were included months ago, it really helps.

Article Source: http://www.hostcontent.net

This post was written by Mark Robertson, a known expert in online marketing and in Video SEO. For more guidlines and techniques on video search engine optimization, please view our Video SEO Guide.

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