Video Search Engine Optimization
Most of us know that a site that is well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting internet traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your videos and well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia is becoming much more popular now days as a way of distributing information, correct optimization for video is important.
For example, on YouTube alone (which accounts for more that ninety-eight of videos view by Google), more that eighty-two million people watch over four billion videos last year. That make YouTube the top video sharing site and top video search engine.
YouTube receives over thirty-two hours of user-submitted videos every minute, and more than fifty percent of people watching videos online share links with other people. So, getting a good rating on YouTube could be an important way of driving traffic to your site.
For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get free traffic to your site. Being discovered by viewers must happen before you get tons of views on your site. This means having data rich in media information and using quality RSS or MRSS feeds that are updated on a regular basis.
Make sure that your meta data is well placed and topic relevant.
Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit video. This places you in the queue for the web crawlers, and means that you will be indexed more quickly and more often that if you didn't submit your content.
Index your site on other engines than just Google and YouTube. They can spread your content to search engines you might not have heard of before. For instance, indexing your site to Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among many others.
One more important part of your strategy is a series of videos. When a viewer sees a video that he or she likes, there is a high possibility that they will look for others like them. While a single, great video is popular and welcomed, you will do better if it is part of a series.
The more views you get, the more likely you are to get picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, adjusts layouts, and many other information.
You can use Google Analytics to track how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to see which of your videos get the best response. From here you will be able to decided which content needs to be linked first from your home page.
You might also want to make sure that your videos are high enough quality and in the correct format for television. Google TV is very affordable and lets you create closely targeted video.
Don't use Active X controls and export all files in swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help you with navigation, and build separate pages for each video, rather than having many videos on same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page that you would any other. Then link to it from your index page.
Don't tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you'll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.
Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you're planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it's optimized.
About the Author Kyle Reddoch is a Web Expert located in Amarillo, TX, USA. You can contact him on his website at KyleReddoch.com.
