Video SEO plays a huge role in the entire video marketing process. It is often underestimated.  Regardless of the quality of your video, it won’t rank high on SERPs unless you apply all the video SEO tactics and optimize it well.

In this piece, I’m going to give you a brief idea of video SEO and the most important 17 superb video SEO practices to optimize your video content.

1. Pick the right video hosting platform – You can opt for either of the three options – self-host your video, and embed from another video platform like YouTube or Vimeo, or from a private video-hosting site like Wistia. All these work differently for video optimization.
2. Prioritize your videos – Prioritize the video you want to rank higher on SERPs as search crawlers don’t invest much time looking for videos on web pages.
3. Capture your viewer’s attention – This means that the audience will watch most of your video, but it also leads to higher audience engagement and views counts. Begin your video by giving your viewers a good reason to watch, then move to address the problem it will solve while telling them what they would gain by it.
4. Use keywords that prioritize video results – Focus on keywords that Google finds more relevant to your video and earmarks as those carry more potential to get more views and visits.
5. Create clickable thumbnails – Try to create an attractive, custom thumbnail that is easily understandable from any screen size. Creating a great thumbnail leads to higher click-through rates.
6. Use long-tail keywords – Long-tail keywords such as ‘summer shoes for women’ get fewer searches and are more beneficial for video SEO strategy as these are more tailored as per your video and the audience you wish to target.
7. Avoid using clickbaits as these can get you a lot of hate comments and dislikes, and a huge bounce rate. So, don’t trick your viewers into thinking your video explains a topic that is exactly different from what you address.
8. Make good use of your title – Include the primary keyword at the beginning of the title as it gets easily recognizable by the algorithms. Besides, you can use brackets and parentheses in the latter part of your title.
9. Write detailed descriptions – This works best for optimizing YouTube videos. A lengthy description will make your video easily understandable by search crawlers. Include important details with keywords in your description.
10. Add Tags – Tags make it easier for crawlers to understand what your video is about. This also tells how well your video is placed for specific keywords. You can also use tags to learn about your competitors by checking which tags work well for them.
11. Insert a transcript – A transcript is a written version of a video. And by uploading a transcript you help crawlers to easily understand what your video is about. You can use captions which eventually make your content reach a broader audience resulting in a higher completion rate.
12. Use End Screens & Cards to direct your audience to another video on your YouTube channel. These help in boosting viewers’ Session watch time by making them stay longer watching your videos. Overall, it’s a great YouTube video optimization strategy.
13. Add Timestamps to the How-to videos – If you wish your videos to show under Google’s Key Moments, add timestamps to your how-to videos. Key Moments showcases specific parts of any video that matches a query. It facilitates a comfortable viewing experience.
14. Use Transitive Verbs – If you create tutorials and want them to feature on Google’s Suggested Clips, make sure they are clear and to the point. Include transitive verbs in your videos in order to make them appear as a Suggested Clip.
15. Enhance user engagement – Prompt your viewers to comment, like, and subscribe for YouTube video optimization. User engagement depends more on your audience than you.
16. Analyze the keywords you’re ranking for, to optimize your existing YouTube videos. You can do this in the Analytics dashboard. It also allows you to discover new keywords that your video organically ranks for.
17. Don’t just depend on Video SEO – Besides focusing on video SEO, it’s also important to produce quality video content and get it in front of the right audience as far as possible. Promote it via social media or email marketing, and see the rise in view count.

Conclusion

A video marketer must diligently follow these 17 video SEO practices to rank high on SERPs and attract higher views. Though, you must remember that the SEO space is constantly changing & evolving.

About the Author

Apeksha Patrick

Digital Content Specialist at 3d & 2d animation Company (EssenceStudios). She holds a Bachelor’s & Master’s degree in Journalism & Communication from Manipal University, India. Passionate about creative writing, she loves reading as well! Always keen to explore new places & opportunities. On a never-ending quest of pushing her boundaries as a writer & editor.