Video Search

In last few years video search is surging popularity. This has led SEO pros to emphasize on video search optimization [VSO]. Search engines like Google and Bing offer separate search verticals for video search apart from their standard results. But still primary goals of Google Basics any company who is interested to grow through video promotion, is to get video thumbnail of their business on the standard web result page.

Importance of Video Search

Today online video is becoming ubiquitous. Every website is posting some kind of videos to drag traffic or to promote their products. Here are some statistical data and facts supporting the increasing popularity of video search.

• According to report of Pew Internet in 2009, 43 percent of Adult Americans watched news and 38 percent watched educational videos online.
• Slope of graph of video popularity in Google Trends has increased almost like double within last 6-7 years.

• Video Search results have 41 percent higher click through than plain text in search result [Source: aimClear]. Reason can be the ‘visual effects’ that video’s thumbnail put on the visitor and attract them to click, as compare to just plain text
• It increases duration of stay of visitor on your website if they find video interesting.
• 62 percent of universal search results contain video. Also note the 80 percent of that 62 is from YouTube. This fact shows that search engines are also focusing and giving importance to the video search. Also it is inspiring companies to post video content.
• Having video content increases your chances to get Organic traffic by 50 percent. Reason is simple:  video search trend is in developing stage. It is developing with fast pace. Also there are many big companies who are missing in this competition because they are not posting video content. This is simply giving advantage to the one who are posting videos.

Video Sharing: Uploading or Hosting?

There are basically two ways to share your video. Uploading it to any video sharing website like YouTube or Dailymotion or hosting it on your own website so that when visitors click on the video’s thumbnail in standard search results they get directed to your website rather than the third party site like YouTube [on which you have uploaded the video].

Look up at your content of the video and decide whether to upload it or host it. Ask yourself:

• Are these videos promoting my business directly or indirectly?
• Would it be okay if the video is displayed on some stranger’s blog without any link to my site?
• Would I be okay if video uploading site get higher search rank than your website due to your videos?

If your answer is NO to above questions then you probably need to forgo the idea of uploading. Instead focus on hosting it with the help of streaming platform. But if your team is suffering from technical limitations uploading video on third party site is a better option but don’t forget to embed it on your site too. Also provide your links in description on YouTube.

Video Optimization

This is how you can Video Optimization content for good SEO.

• Present every video on your site on individual URLs. Include keywords in text near the video and links pointing toward the video so that it gives contextual help to the search engines.
• Videos name should contain descriptive name separated by hyphens. This strategy is very search friendly with HTML pages.
• With the help of encoding tools you may add metadata to video itself. This may include content specific elements like Title, text transcript, description etc. Include keywords in them too.
• Generate your Video Site Map and upload it to your domain. Login Webmaster tool and submit your sitemap location. Remember <title>, <keywords>, <description> and <text> tags are of particular importance in your sitemap. Focus on them especially.
• Take advantage of media RSS Tags. Include a full-text transcript of your video, if you can.

Final Words

Today not everyone enjoys reading long page articles, but they like to watch 2-3 minute video clip to understand the content. Also this technique puts better effect on their mind. Today more than 1 billion unique visitors visit YouTube in a month this shows that how greatly they are interested in videos. Videos can be great mean for profit to your business. Take advantage.