All have heard about the online video phenomenon that is hitting the internet. Viewers by the millions are going online to upload and watch online video content each day. Often, videos are a more effective way to convey an advertiser’s message than typical offline advertising. And because video is becoming so mainstream, the cost to create online video content is extremely low and affordable for almost anyone. Online video has seen massive improvements in the past 2 years with regard to broadband connectivity, streaming, etc… Keeping in mind the vast popularity of online video as a method of internet marketing, it is important to learn the techniques most effective for optimizing your video for search engines.

1) All SEO specialists know that the search engines are built to index and rank text. Being that it is more difficult for the search engines to understand the content within a video (though they are working on it), it is a good idea to include as much text surrounding the video itself if possible. One excellent way to do this is to include a text transcript of your video alongside your video with keyword rich title and descriptions.

2) Don’t forget to encode the keywords you are targeting into your video. Try to use the word “video” as much as possible, make sure the word “video” is used in your title, description, meta data etc.

3) Search engine crawlers rely a lot on the link texts to figure out what the video is all about as they are not capable to figure out the contents of the video otherwise. Therefore it is advisable to get as many back links as possible for your video.

4) Create a video sitemap exclusively for your online video content so that engines can find all of your videos and understand the structure of your site more easily. This helps the web crawlers to locate your video files speedily and effortlessly.

5) If you are hosting the video on your own site, it is advisable to do your best to utilize a player that is not flash as search engines have difficulty understanding flash content. That being said, it will be difficult to empower video on your site without a simple flash player. If you can not get around it, do your best to take advantage of the other SEO techniques since search engines cant understand the flash technology.

6) Create search engine friendly keyword URLs for your video pages. To do this, you can use mod-rewrite function or htaccess file so that the URLs are freely assessable and readable by the search engines.

7) The first thing that users see when browsing for or searching for videos is the video thumbnail. Research shows that the thumbnail you choose for your video can really effect the number of viewers that watch the video itself. Try to experiment with the thumbnails that you choose to see which ones create more interest and get seen more often by viewers.
Try to keep one video per page and put all video pages into the same directory or folder.

In addition to the specific optimization techniques listed above, make sure that you also follow some common guidelines for online video content:

9) With any SEO that you do online, choose keywords that you know users are searching for. Use keyword research tools to discover keywords and phrases that are most often searched for when looking for the information that you are creating.

10) Allow users to submit comments and feedback on your videos. Studies show that viewers who offer feedback are those most likely to convert and take the desired action that you are trying to solicit, whether it be an email, website visit, or purchase.

If you’re interested in learning more about online video marketing and SEO, we suggest that you visit ReelSEO. They are is focused on offering expert tips, tutorials, and advice onVideo Marketing & SEO. For a list of articles and additional resources, including more advanced tips on VSEO, visit ReelSEO.com

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