Video search is proving to be an all important part in driving web traffic. A recently study from aimClear showed that videos in universal search results have a 41% higher click-through rate than plain-text results. With such incredible statistics, it is crucial for marketers to ensure that all videos are properly optimised so they will be picked up in search. Below, find an essential checklist for optimising videos.
- Brainstorm your title with key words. Unfortunately videos can't speak for themselves. This is the only way people know what your video is about without actually watching it. The title is the most important thing as it will make or break the video. Spend a little time working out a catchy title that will stand out and also inform people what the video is about.
- Add lots of tags to your video. Along with your title, these tags are what search engines pick up. Use all of your target search terms.
- Make sure these key words are added to your metadata.
- Put all your contact information in the last frame. How are viewers going to find you if they don't know where you are? Include your business or company's physical address and email addresses, as well as those all important social networks.
- Have attention grabbing thumbnails. Your hosting site should let you select these images yourself, but if it's up to you to select one poster image, ensure they are attractive grabs of the overall video.
- If the hosting site allows, add clickable links into the video. Link the video back to relevant pages on your website or your social networks.
- Upload to multiple video sites. Go for the biggest and the best first - YouTube and Google are a dynamic duo, as you are probably aware. But it's not the only one out there - there's also Vimeo and DailyMotion for original video content, as well as the other search engine video sites for Bing and Yahoo.
- Create an xml sitemap of your video and add to Google Webmaster. Google has plenty of tutorials on how to do this, and it's a must as it removes errors from your video's code and increases the chance of your video being a front page search result.
- Ensure you have a call to action not only in the video itself, but in the description as well. Reinforcing what you want people to do with your video will make them do exactly what you want them to, whether that's making a purchase, sharing with their friends, downloading something or simply visiting your website.
- Make the video easy to share. Along with the end frame and the clickable links, when you embed the video onto your website make sure you include some buttons that will allow visitors to the site to share it easily. Most of the major social networks have their own "share" buttons, so there's no excuse not to have these on your website.
These tips aren't guaranteed to give you a first page result in search, but they can definitely help. Because optimising video for search is still in its relatively early days, this is a great way to get ahead of the competition. It's time to optimise your video now. If you stick to these guidelines, then there is more likelihood of your video climbing up those search results.
Of course the most important thing isn't just optimising the video. At the end of the day, people are looking for great content. If you ensure that your video is a helpful, engaging addition to your website, then you have already done half of the work for yourself.
Manroop Takhar is the MD of Qudos Animations, an animation studio based in the UK. Qudos specialises in the production of high impact animated web videos. Get in touch to find out more about the how animation could be the perfect, engaging addition to your website!
Image: video button/shutterstock