Great Video, but Nobody Sees it. SEO to the Rescue!

SEO for Video

SEO for Video

Many organizations are jumping on the video bandwagon, and there’s plenty of reasons why they should. Studies show that video growth is accelerating, and viewers can’t seem to get enough.

Here is a brief checklist that you can follow to optimize your videos for search.

 

  • Your video file should be encoded with Meta data including keywords, descriptions and titles.
  • The video file name should include the target keyword and be a recognized video file format. Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv.
  • Videos should be grouped together on the server in a subfolder or sub domain. This makes it easier to block indexing of multiple formats as well as to create video sitemaps.
  • If you’re offering multiple formats for your audience, it is important to block search engine indexing of duplicate versions via your robots.txt.
  • Include a watermark to indicate origin. This will help if your video goes viral, and is copied to multiple sites, because it will still carry your branding message and/or site information.
  • Adding sharing elements can help the video spread virally. This would include embed scripts that allow users to email or embed the video in a webpage or blog.
  • Displaying the video’s full link makes it possible for a user to submit the video to social sites like Digg, Mixx or Facebook.  Offering an RSS feed of your latest videos is an effective way to get users coming back to your site.

Search Engine Optimization of videos is relatively easy to perform, and is a great way to aid your brand awareness via video!