With video content rising in popularity on the world wide web, the competition for gaining more views and/or driving in more traffic to the site is leading many brands to invest heavily into creating quality videos and optimising them for search engines. Here are several actionable SEO tips that can improve your video ranking.

1. Conduct thorough keyword research
When it comes to search engine optimization, you cannot ignore the power of using the right keywords that are relevant to your content. Just as you would with written content such as a blog post or website copy, you should also conduct keyword research for your video content.

There are many free tools online that you can use for choosing relevant keywords such as Google Trends and keywordtool.io, among others. You could also check if the keywords you have in mind have YouTube searches.

2. Add titles with keywords
Now that you have decided on which keywords to use, it’s time to add them to your titles. The title of your video is like the headline for a blog post, which is why it must be search engine-optimized. Not only should it be concise and intriguing, but it should also contain your primary keyword.

While making your video title sound interesting is important, you should be careful not to make it sound too “clickbait-y”. Don’t trick your audience into watching something completely different than what the title promises.

3. Add captions to your video
The more text you can have to accompany your video, the better it will work in your favor because Google is, after all, a database of text. That is exactly why adding captions and video transcriptions are so important. Again, make sure that your video captions and transcriptions contain keywords.

4. Pay attention to your thumbnails
Even though your thumbnail does not affect your SEO ranking, it sure has a huge influence on users who are deciding which video to click on. Your thumbnail should be attention-grabbing while giving users an idea of what to expect in the video.

5. Add optimized video description
Your video descriptions should also be optimized using keywords, apart from being well-written, succinct and easy to read. The description should provide a clear summary of what the contents of your video are so that viewers have an idea of what your video content entails.

6. Enable Interactivity to let your audience to learn more about and ways to reach out
Don’t let the audience interest die while they are consuming the content. Give them a chance to learn more about your product or let them sign up within or much more. Learn more about the types of interactive content here at Wootag.com

7. Sites with Videos help boost your site’s SEO

While self-hosting your videos can help boost your site’s SEO when done correctly, using other platforms is important. There are various ways to have your content hosted within your site like 1. Inline Embed 2. Pop-Over Embed and ensure the embeds are responsive to your Mobile screens.

8. Optimize your video URLs
URLs play a more important role in SEO than you may realize. An optimized URL gives users an idea of what the content of that page is about. So, if you have a video on a page on your site, optimizing the URL of that page can work wonders. Just like how you would include information about a page on your site in the URL of that page, the same goes for pages that contain videos.

For example,www.wootag.com/video/seo-tips.html is a much better URL than www.wootag.com/seo-tips.html.

9. Create a video sitemap
If you are self-hosting videos on your site, then it is essential that you create a video sitemap. A video sitemap is a document that allows the page containing your video to be indexed by search engines. In other words, a video sitemap is what makes your video noticeable during active search.

Make sure that your video sitemap contains the video file, a thumbnail, as well as the video title and description. Without a video sitemap, search engines cannot include your video directly in active search results.

10. Ensure that the content of the entire page is relevant to the video
If you want your site to rank higher, then it is important that the content of the rest of the page, and just the video and video information itself, is relevant to the video and also optimised for SEO. If you don’t do this, then the chances are that search engines won’t even bother to crawl the page in the first place.

11. Share and promote on social media
A great way to drive in more traffic to the page and get more views on your video is by sharing and promoting them on other platforms such as social media. Whether you are self-hosting or uploading on third-party sites such as YouTube, make sure to share links to your videos on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. This is very effective in increasing the number of views.

12. The video you want to be ranked first should be embedded first
If you have more than one video on a single page on your site, make sure that the video you want to be ranked is embedded first on the page. This is because Google indexes only one video for every page as the crawlers typically stop crawling after the first video.

13. Remember to add relevant tags
Tagging your videos with keywords relevant to your content is an important aspect of video SEO. When you use keywords that people usually search for as tags in your videos, then there is a better chance that your video will rank better during active search.

14. Optimise for mobile
A majority of viewers browse the web using mobile devices. This has made mobile optimization an integral part of SEO. So, you need to ensure that your video player and website are optimised for mobile viewing. Not only this, the format and content of the video itself should be mobile-friendly.

With these video SEO tips, you can be confident that you have a much better chance of search engines finding your videos during active search.

REQUEST A WOOTAGED MOCK BASED ON YOUR OBJECTIVE

When used strategically, interactive ads can be an effective tool in actively engaging with your audience and achieving your final objective through digital campaigns.

Wootag makes your audience a part of your brand and as a result a part of your story.

Leveraging these tools can widely increase the efficiency and the growth spectrum of your Business by converting your viewers into customers using immersive technology effectively bridging the gap. We’d love to hear from you and learn how we can help you.

So, if you’re considering using Interactive Videos and want to know more, drop us a line and let’s chat about it.