Online Video Marketing – How to Optimize your Videos for Search
By Mark Robertson | June 10th, 2008If you perform a simple search on video search or video SEO, you will be bombarded with numerous articles that try to explain this technique. Video search optimization, or Video SEO (VSEO) is a new bug that has bitten the world recently. Though it’s a new technique, still many companies have started using it aggressively to earn high ranking and more business.
To ensure that your video gets seen and discovered on these search engines, it is important to first learn some of the technical aspects that are important to online video as well as search.
There is misconception that, keyword research for video content is same as standard organic search or other search verticals. This is not true and moreover, till now there aren’t keyword research tools to determine and measure video search results. Before you begin with your actual video search optimization, put together your keyword list. The list can be based on standard search results; however, they should be supplemented with results from news search engine results pages for more appropriate content. At this early phase of online video revolution, video searches at this point tend to be shorter keywords as opposed to “long tail” searches. More than any other piece of advice, make sure you include the word “video” in your keyword list. Examples – car videos, car video, racing video, automotive videos, etc….
So, after you have completed your keyword research, I would also suggest that you take an inventory of the various video search websites. In other words, take note of which sites have the highest traffic, which channels and categories are the most popular, etc… You will likely want to submit your video to as many sites as you can but it will certainly be important to get your video on the more popular search engines as well.
As a side note, pay attention to the audience that is already searching for the terms that you identified in your keyword research. Are there closely related terms that you did not include? Take a look at videos that are similar in terms of the keywords that you are targeting and view the comments and feedback from users to find related terms.
You will want to encourage readers to submit feedback as studies show that users who provide feedback tend to be more active and easier to convert. In other words, those users that provide feedback, typically are more likely to call, email, visit your site, etc…
If you can do this, it is always better to pick a video theme that is not saturated in terms of competition out there. As an example, a video about Tom Cruise will likely be very hard to optimize for as there are thousands of results for that search.
Another important factor to know is that typically, users do not watch videos that are long and drawn out. Instead, users want quick snacks of video content, usually viewing no more than a few minutes of a video. If you have a video that is many minutes long, consider creating several shorter clips for your video ranging from 1-3 minutes in total length.
Finally, make sure that you take advantage of the fact that you can brand your video with a watermark logo, text for your URL, and additional information to get users back to your website or business. One of the main points for doing video SEO is to get users back to your destination.
So if you wish to succeed in search engine optimization’s mad frenzy race, video search engine optimization is an incredible new way to get exposure, and you have the opportunity right now, to get in the ground floor.
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Tags: SEO


