Online videos are becoming more and more popular on business websites and provide some incredible SEO benefits, but what’s the point in having a great video if it isn’t properly optimised?
Here are 6 tips for making sure your video is fully SEO-optimized for use on your website.
Keep Your Page Light
Did you know that search engines like Google send people to quicker-loading sites first? 10 or 15kb only might make the difference between a front-page ranking and one much lower down.
Therefore improving YOUR page load time matters and a video can make a big difference. Think ahead about you video resolution- do you really need it to be in HD ? What is the ideal size of your player ? Should it be a .mp4, a .swf or a quicktime video ? On which device is it most likely to be watched?
Compression is also a factor you should think ahead about to optimize images. For example, images saved as a .jpeg file will ‘weigh’ between 10 and 20% less than a .png file. Rescaling the image the size your intend to display them is good practice, too.
Think About the Title
3 seconds- that’s about the amount of time we have to convince people to click on the link to a video when it appears in a list of search engine results. Therefore, the page title should clearly and concisely tell what that video is all about. Select keywords close to your main topic and think about the promise of your video, compared to competitors. The Google Adwords keywords tool will help you find good keywords if you don’t already know them.
Surround Your Video
Search engines don’t just analyse the video when creating rankings- they also look at the other content on your page to check it’s all relevant. All the words and data on the page explain to the search engine what the focus of the content and how targeted that page is.
Meta Tags Still Matter
Meta tags tell search engines what your page/video is about; they can improve the ranking in a search results and you should utilise some of the same keywords in your page and video titles as you use in your meta tags
Load up the URL
Your video’s URL is another place where search engines get information. Instead of using a generic URL for your page address, use concise words related to the video content. Display only one video per page, so that search engines can tell exactly what’s going on at each location.
Is YouTube Helpful?
Well, you do want your video to get noticed don’t you? YouTube helps in developing your brand awareness and provides the opportunity for your video to be shared with others. However, if your video is about engagement, conversion or a product demo, then you want that video be seen on your site.
Upload your video to YouTube and use the embed code they provide to stream that video into website, precisely where you want it. This way, your website still gets the benefit of the Google/YouTube SEO advantage (Google, Yahoo and Bing are always displaying videos at the top on a search list).
Every video posted on YouTube is indexed; the proper use of tags and keywords will increase the probability for your video and company name to be displayed at the top of a search list.
Want to check your website?
A quick search online will give you several free tools on the internet. Here is a selection of our favourite:
- http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
This site will give you the pages size, time to load and errors found.
- http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
With that free tool you will see your page load order and time to load.
- http://www.uptrends.com/aspx/free-html-site-page-load-check-tool.aspx
This tool gives you the load order, number of elements and detail time to load page by page.
What is the point in creating a video in HD if you are suggesting that it shouldn`t be in HD in order for your page to load quickly. If you are a Video Production company you want your best quality up front.
Hi Brendan -That’s a fair point, however, the article is merely prompting you to take loading speed into consideration as it is an important SEO factor.
As a video production company, of course you are right! You want your best quality video displayed and would therefore ensure your page coding is not too heavy. However, for businesses using video for product/brand/marketing promo, if your page already has heavy coding, you need to decide which is more important: 1) getting your message out there and seen – whatever the quality (it definitely wont be horrendous!) or 2) whether you (and your customers!) can deal with a slower loading speed. Don’t forget, our attention spans are shorter online!
@Brendan: It depends on your target audience. There are different “sweet spots” for external audiences and people inside a corporate network. (Too much will read just like a denial of service attack, for example serving up a full HD stream to an audience of 1,500 at a corporate HQ.)
Too heavy a file will also make for a painfully slow experience for many mobile device users, depending on the quality of their carrier’s service.
Even though I originate in full HD, the end result is usually seen at 640 x 360 with a 1 meg bitrate.
Obviously, if the destination if projection, it ends up full HD.
I agree with you Rebecca and Alan Loading speed is important and it depends on your audience.