This article provides helpful information on the best practices to boost video rankings and should be interesting for any SEO practitioners who need to focus on video search results. It’s divided into two sections: invisible and visible ranking factors.
Google’s YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet. It offers a wide range of management features and even provides its own comprehensive analytics dashboard to help channel managers determine the value of their content. These functions, together with the close link with Google, help it to achieve a competitive advantage over other platforms, like Vimeo or Vine and attract more users by doing do.
Any company that produces video content therefore has the opportunity to attract video views and website visits from this content, either directly from YouTube or from the integrated video results that sometimes appear in Google’s search rankings. However, to achieve this visibility, video content owners need to consider the following ranking factors:
Invisible Ranking Factors
- Video Filename – Use a descriptive video filename as well as hyphens between words
- Meta Tags – Research the popular search keywords before tagging your video and use the relevant tags, with 10 or less keywords per video. Also don’t use the same keywords you used in your title and description as ‘tag-stuffing’ can get your video removed
- Watch Time – Create descriptive and emotional video thumbnails as well as a compelling introduction, then build up interest throughout the video with programming, branding, and packaging techniques. It’s good to use annotations in the video and links in the description to encourage users to view more content on your website, and then encourage comments and participation to get users involved and to keep them interested
- Flags/Reports – Make sure you follow the Community Guidelines and if you feel that your video was wrongly flagged, appeal the removal.
Visible Ranking Factors
- Title – Write a descriptive, relevant title using appropriate search keywords, and limit titles to 100 characters with the main keywords towards the front of your title for better SEO value
- Description – Include keywords here as well but be aware of the first 157 visible characters. Describe the video without giving away too much information amd provide a clear ‘call to action’ link to on-site content
- Transcripts, Subtitles and Captions – Your channel name, icon, banner and vanity URL should reflect your brand. Remember to fill in the channel keywords and targeting, plus the channel description and social links.
- Quality – Make sure that you focus on delivering the best content possible (preferably in HD), ensure that the audio is comprehensive and of cousre the picture should be clear and not blurry or out of focus!
- Engagement – Use any and all channels to get people to watch your videos and measure your views/engagement with analytics. Promote the video and moderate comments to ensure quality and recency of engagement, and respond to people who are commenting
- Inbound Links and Embeds – Utilize any and all marketing and PR channels to build links to the channel and videos, with a focus on your best content because it will naturally attract links. Remember to also embed videos on your site or blog to build up views and engagement
- Social Shares – Set up social buttons on your website to make it easy for users to share across networks and encourage your followers to share your content.
As shown above, there are close similarities between the techniques for optimising videos as there are for web pages. If they are correctly implemented, they will result in a better focus on YouTube’s priorities and a business channel that has a greater potential to rank content well.
You can read more about these tips here or if you want to know more about how we can help you to improve your video rankings, contact us now for more information.