Videos are one of the most versatile mediums for engaging people and are thus gaining popularity. The most preferred platform to watch videos is YouTube, which after getting launched in 2005 has today become the second largest social media platform following Facebook with more than 1.5 billion monthly users.
If you see the number of videos uploaded every minute online, it’s phenomenal. On YouTube alone, around 720,000 hours of video get uploaded every day. It is impossible to make your video visible in this hugely crowded space unless you follow effective video SEO techniques. Just like the way Google is the indisputable leader in search engines, the same applies to YouTube when it comes to video service on the web. So, most of the video SEO practices, which are adopted by the SEO companies for video marketing, are focused on the search algorithms used by YouTube.
It is not an easy job to make your video stand out in the huge crowd, but following the best video SEO practices to optimize your video search will help you get noticed.
Here are some of the best practices that must be followed:
The search algorithm used for videos uses a two-fold approach to maximize the viewer engagement and satisfaction. The first thing it looks for is “relevance” and then “watch time”. To satisfy both these major requirements of video SEO, one has to optimize the video’s metadata and take steps to increase the watch time. This can be done by:
Choosing the Right Title
The title of the video should be chosen in such a manner that it represents the content present in it. The ideal keywords should come first in the title and the branding should be towards the end of the title. In case you plan to upload serial content, then make sure to add the episode number at the end of the title.
Description
Video marketing stresses on optimizing the video’s description. As only the first few lines of the description appear in search results, it’s important to frame them in such a manner that they count. The idea is to insert the most sought-after keywords in these few lines, which have a high probability of getting picked up by the search algorithms, thus getting your video a better ranking.
Tags
Tags refer to those descriptive keywords that help people find your videos. Optimizing tags is important for YouTube searches, though Google ignores the keywords meta tags. The search algorithm used by YouTube indexes tags up to 270 characters to help people find relevant stuff. Make this 270-character limit count by utilising the whole of it. It’s advised to use a mix of both specific and general tags thoroughly and accurately to describe the video. You should also use the keywords from the video title in these tags.
Thumbnails
As these can be displayed in different formats and sizes both across the platform and outside, make sure to upload high-resolution strong and vibrant images. This will ensure that it will appear crisp and clear to the viewers irrespective of the size of the thumbnail. When shooting a video, remember to take shots that can be turned into great and customised thumbnails.
Have Compelling Video Openings
The rankings are adversely affected if the viewer abandons the video after the initial few seconds of watching it. It is thus important to have a strong opening that compels the viewer to remain engaged. Video SEO techniques dictate that after having a gripping and convincing opening one should use the techniques of programming, branding, and packaging perfectly so as to maintain the interest of the viewer throughout the video. As per a study, the ideal length of video that engrossed a majority of viewers is 7-16 minutes long.
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There are many other video SEO requirements for a better visibility of the video, but ‘relevance’ and ‘watch time’ are the most important ones. The above-discussed tips will help in nailing these two.
Author bio:
This article is written by a Micheal Anderson, he is a digital marketing expert with Techmagnate that is leading digital marketing agency in Delhi, India.