Videos and SEO are a perfect combination. The use of videos greatly helps the
The videos are multimedia elements that can be inserted within your website that users can interact with or the so-called Engagement Objects. This makes them, in the eyes of search engines, an exciting and very influential element for the video search engine optimization of your website.
Advantages of Video Use
A quality video within a web page brings numerous advantages that improve your site’s user experience.
Here are some advantages, for example:
- Increase in time spent on the page, with a relative decrease in the bounce rate.
- Improvement of the graphic impact of the page.
- Greater ease of sharing on Social Media, with the potential to become viral.
- Presence in the SERPs dedicated to videos.
- Greater customer attraction through a Visual Storytelling strategy.
Video Optimization
Of course, even for this kind of content, inserting them on the site is not enough. But there are instead many small activities to be carried out to optimize the videos and their positioning.
For example, the video must be uploaded by naming it with criteria. Use the right keywords, and insert the hyphen (-) and not the underscore (_) as a separator. So no names like sample_video.avi or POV00274.mp4.
Furthermore, uploading the video directly to your website would be better since Google and other search engines prefer the original content. Still, videos embedded from various channels such as Youtube and Vimeo are also fine.
The topic of the video must be exciting and inherent in the content of the page it is loaded. If you want to know how to optimize your videos for YouTube, please read our blog post about what is YouTube SEO.
HD Videos Are the Way to Success
Another essential element is the quality of the videos; users often close a low-resolution video after a few seconds of viewing. A High Definition (HD) video is much more captivating and easily shareable.
Precisely for this feature, social sharing buttons are a very useful element to highlight and quickly trigger the diffusion of your multimedia content.
It is also important to provide a title and description of the video as if it were a post or a web page, concise but effective text, the use of suitable keywords, and the insertion of useful information.
The length of the videos can be another determining factor. Typically a video longer than 2-3 minutes is too long for users and can be closed before the end. However, this does not apply to video tutorials or videos in which procedures and/or concepts are illustrated or explained. So longevity is often seen as greater correctness and completeness of the contents.
Therefore for the presentation videos (for example, of a product), it is good to stay at a very low duration. At the same time, you can extend the video courses and tutorials as you wish.
You also should not overlook the video’s preview image, which is displayed before the video is played. This image must essentially entice users to click on play and be inherent in the video’s content, even better if it is an extract from the video itself.
Finally, as for video SEO optimization, create a sitemap dedicated to your website’s videos and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools. This will greatly assist you in the process of indexing and positioning your videos.
Use Schema.org Markups to Create Rich Snippets
The last phase of SEO video optimization is the insertion of the microdata based on the Schema.org markup, supported by all the major search engines (Google, Yandex, Bing, Yahoo, etc …), to obtain so-called rich snippets.
This technique will add different types of information to your video, improving the search engines’ page content analysis. But above all, they will enrich your page’s snippet among the search results with video previews and other additional information.
Statistics show how using these rich snippets for videos significantly increases clicks toward your web page and better positioning in SERPs.
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For more information and to see how to insert these microdatas into your HTML, Google offers a guide on using microdatas for videos.
In general, Youtube videos have already automatically added rich snippets. However, I recommend adding microdata to your video to pass a series of more complete and exhaustive information to the search engines.
WordPress Plugin: SEO Video by Yoast
In addition to the famous free plugin for SEO on WordPress, Yoast has also created a specific plugin for improve SEO video strategy. However, unfortunately, this tool is only available for a fee.
This WordPress plugin will simplify many SEO activities for your videos. Such as the insertion of the microdata of the Schema.org markup for the creation of rich snippets. Or creating a sitemap dedicated to your videos or inserting a description and title.
Furthermore, with this tool, you can easily add social sharing buttons to your videos and even make your website’s videos responsive, all without complications.
Finally, the use of this plugin guarantees that your video is included in the Google Videos list.
Conclusion
When you make a video, like when you create a web page, you need to think about what users’ needs are and how they can be satisfied through the creation of valuable content. Videos are extremely important to improve website SEO, as they must capture the user’s interest by increasing the chances of conversion. It is recommended to optimize them with SEO techniques to improve their positioning.
1 Comment
Great post! You did a great job of explaining the importance of SEO and video content for businesses. I think it would be helpful to include more examples of how businesses have used video to improve their SEO rankings.