Video search engine optimization is an important part of your web strategy - it helps to boost your website within the video search results and provides another avenue to attract potential customers. We’ve compiled a list of strategies to help you supplement your video SEO strategy and monetize your videos while you do it!

What is Video SEO?

Video SEO is the act of optimizing your videos in order for them to rank higher for certain keywords in the search engines results page. In reverse, it can also be a way to optimize your page to rank higher in search than other pages - especially if other pages ranking include videos and yours doesn’t.

If you’re already implementing a video SEO strategy within your website, you might be a few steps ahead of your competition, but there are ways you can improve or complement your video SEO as a Publisher.

What is the purpose of Video SEO?

First of all,video SEO can help you to show up for rich snippets, which are separate from your typical search engine results appearance. Using video within your content can also help you beat out your competition on the search engine results page that don’t have a video or that have a video and rank above you. 

Top 5 Ways to Enhance Your Video SEO Strategy

1. Choosing The Right Video Hosting

It’s important to vet and choose the right video hosting provider for your website. Since you’re likely looking to keep as much traffic on your website as possible, it may be more beneficial to host your web-videos on a web-first platform.

A non-YouTube format can allow for more customization on your website and ensure that you don’t have pesky pre-roll ads showing up on your video when you don’t want them to. Self-hosting or using an integrative video host will allow you to rank for those rich snippets, without driving traffic to YouTube.

However, YouTube itself lends itself to search engine optimization. You can upload videos to YouTube and do keyword research to inform your title and description so that your content shows up first when users are searching on YouTube.

We suggest doing a combination of both. Use YouTube as you would a social channel. Direct traffic from your YouTube video to your website page with the video embedded and additional content. You can even use YouTube search volume to help determine your video topics.

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2. Include a Transcript.

Including a transcript is the #1 way to increase the content on your website. It also allows search engines to index and crawl that content.

A video typically only has a title and description in order to tell search engines what the video is about. This is usually short and doesn’t give a full synopsis of what is covered in the video. A transcript provides keyword signals and the ability to link build.

After a transcript, it is important to provide additional relevant information about the topic - whether that is a blog post additional to the transcript or maybe a call to action that directs to your company’s related pages or services.

Absent of closed captioning, transcripts are also very important to keep your website ADA compliant and accessible.

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3.Cross-Post the Video

Your goal with most content is likely to educate consumers and help them to convert. To do that, you need initial traffic on your website. To elevate and accentuate the basis of your search engine optimization video strategy, you shouldn’t neglect more owned areas of media. Be sure to drive traffic to your page through organic social media posts.

If you didn’t know, Facebook links also count as a backlink, so be sure to link to your page with your video embedded on it from the post! While these might not directly affect your pages ranking, it can help to influence or increase.

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4. Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of signals that Google will use to rank your website starting in May 2021. Typically, Google changes the algorithm and doesn’t really tell anyone why or what they changed These include the following:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - Largest Contentful Paint or LCP refers to your page loading performance. Most specifically, how long does it take to load the top of your page; it should preferably be within 2.5 seconds.
• First Input Delay -  It’s the delay in between a user taking action and the website actually moving on that action. Sites should strive for 100MS or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - How much your website shifts during loading. This is a sign of poor user-experience.

You should work to optimize these measurements on your site in order to get more traffic into your funnel to be able to convert!

5. Implementing a Monetization strategy for your videos.

In order to monetize your video strategy, you’ll want to assess your willingness to place ads on your website.

For videos on your website, you may be thinking “I don’t want a commercial/ad to show up before my video content.” That’s understandable - but you’re leaving money on the table on your evergreen content. 

On-stream advertising is a new form of advertising that appears in the corner or on the side of your video, leaving your content free and clear for your audience to view. The ads are also served contextually, so the ads are relative to your content.

This form of advertising is a great way to make money from content your users want to watch without pushing them away or interrupting your own videos.

Conclusion

Video SEO is an important part of your web strategy - and video-first is quickly becoming a best practice for marketing. The best way to take advantage of the content you are already producing for SEO is to make sure that you choose the right hosting platform, create content around the video, include the transcript, post it to your social channels and implement a monetization strategy so that your videos earn for your business while you sleep.