How to Optimize Video for SEO
Videos and video content pages can be optimized for search engine visibility so they appear in the search results for target keywords. Don’t assume that posting videos on YouTube will mean they will rank better because Google owns YouTube. Video SEO comes from taking the right steps to be indexed around the right keywords.
Video SEO Best Practices
If you want traffic to your videos from search results pages, follow these best practices.
- Pick the right platform for your videos. While all video platforms support SEO, some are better for particular goals. If you care about traffic acquisition and leads, a specialized video host like Wistia can be a good choice. If you care more about building a social following, YouTube, which has it’s own powerful search, is likely the best option.
- Know your keywords. Find out what people are talking about or asking. Answer questions with your content and make sure your videos fully satisfy those questions. When writing content for your video pages include the terminology viewers use.
- Add captions and transcript for your video. A full transcript of the content on the page you want to rank instantly makes everything available to search engines. It also makes your content available for people who’d rather read what you have to say than watch a video.
- Write great titles and descriptions. Make your titles and descriptions unique, keeping within the standard meta-title length of about 70 characters.
Make Sure Your Videos Are Crawlable
The pages that have video content must be reachable by search engines. The same goes for the videos themselves. If you host them on your site, don’t forget to make them available to the outside world. Be sure nothing prevents resources crawling in the robots.txt file.
