It has become harder than ever to get a first-page ranking on Google, and all of us, including website owners, search engine optimization (SEO) veterans and web analysts know this. Unmistakably, this intricacy can be attributed to continuously changing and ever-evolving search and indexing algorithms of the giant search engine.
Another reason for this notable shift is that Google has begun to award multimedia content a higher position in SERPs as compared to text.
As a result, conventional web results that would normally compete for top rankings are getting pushed down the first page, and sometimes even off the page!
With Google’s growing love for videos, it has become way easier for websites rich in such content to secure first-page rankings. Now, video thumbnails can always be expected to make it to the top of the search results, obtaining about 53 times more organic rankings on the first page than a traditional web page!
Let’s find out how you can plan and execute a video SEO campaign to bump your search engine rankings:
Uploading Videos to YouTube
This is probably the best way to ascertain that your content exists and Google’s search engine has recognized it. Even though this doesn’t mean that you’ll definitely get a first-page position, the biggest gain of uploading your video to YouTube is that you can stay fully confident about getting indexed into Google.
While it is true that any clicks that YouTube video gets will be obtained by YouTube, still doing so can be highly rewarding, particularly if your ultimate goal is branding. Opposite to this, however, it may not be that effective if you are aiming at driving more traffic.
Going for Full Video Search Engine Optimization
Since the technique of uploading your video to YouTube is limited to branding, full video SEO will be a more effective and successful strategy to boost traffic. Video SEO refers to systematic execution of a set of techniques intended to ensure that:
- Google is aware that your video content exists
- Your video content gets easily indexed by the search engine
- Your video will be displayed immediately after specific keywords or search terms are entered
To make this happen exactly that way, you need to prepare and carry out a strategic video SEO plan. Here’s what you need to do and how:
1. Preparing Video Content
Google’s attitude toward what it believes to be video content is pretty much elastic. Though actual video content refers to full video footages, you can also make use of screen captures, simple or animated PowerPoint slide shows etc. Google looks at title and meta-data in order to get an idea of what type of content your video has and can’t see inside the video.
2. Submit Video Using a Video Sitemap
Google uses crawlers to find and index web content within traditional pages. Most of the video content on the web is undetectable by Google for its crawlers are not able to read Flash well. This is why you should use a Video Sitemap to submit a video, so that it can appear in blended Google search results. A Video Sitemap is specially designed for videos, keeps information only about the content of your video and can be submitted with help of Google’s Webmaster Tools.
3. Make Your Title Relevant
The first thing Google looks at when ranking videos is relevancy of the video title and search keywords. Meta description and keywords too have their importance, but don’t affect search ranking much. The best way to please Google and make it give your content more weightage among results is by matching the title tag with the title of your video.
4. Target Long-tail Search Terms
Video SEO is very much similar to traditional SEO when it comes to obtaining better results by focusing more on long-tail search terms. For example, a video titled ‘Bike’ can hardly get a first-page ranking, but one titled “BMW K1200S Racing Bike” will possibly score well among search result pages and even appear on the first page. And since you know that Google is not able to see the actual video content, try submitting your video so many times using diverse titles that are relevant to search terms with high search volume.