Most people know that engaging social media posts and relevant, well-crafted videos are good for helping grow your brand and your bottom line. Unfortunately when it comes to video most people get it wrong. Not that the video is necessarily poor quality or does not provide value, but more often than not, little thought is put forth to optimize the video for search engines spiders which makes it nearly impossible to find.
According to Cisco, 84% of the Internet Traffic may consist of video by 2018. Unfortunately, then as now, most video will be buried too deep in the search results to be of value to most searchers simply because the publishers did not spend time making the video easy to be indexed. If the bots do not know what your video is about, they cannot present the video in the search results high enough to be of value to a searcher.
Here are a few things you can do to ensure your video is properly optimized for indexing:
- Include relevant keywords (include longer keyword phrases as well).
- Provide a summary of your video in as few words as possible, but make the summary relevant to the subject of your video.
- When posting to YouTube or other video platforms, take the time to add search tags, categories and captions.
- Post your video on YouTube, your website and other video platforms to get the most exposure for all search engines.
- Do not create pages on your website with multiple videos. Make sure your video and page content are in sync and that you only have 1 video per page. Summarize the video using the page content for better understanding by search bots of what your video is all about.
- When it makes sense, encourage others to embed your video on their site, blog posts, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter increasing your potential exposure to more people who can benefit from your video.
- Have a goal. If you want your video to be shared, include instructions for sharing at the end of the video. If you want people to pick up the phone, make sure your phone number is prominently displayed throughout the video. Whatever action you want people to take, make sure it is obvious to the user and encourage the behavior frequently.
- When creating a video, keep in mind that your video must entertain the audience, solve a problem or answer a question in order to be shared, liked and watched. Make sure the lighting is bright enough and that the audio is clear and loud enough. Your video does not need to be professionally produced or edited; if the message is clear and the audience finds value, your video will be a hit for your audience.
If you’ve shied away from video and are thinking now might be the time to start jump in; you’re right. Check out these numbers:
- Videos make up 53% of the internet traffic today
- After 72 hours, an average human can retain 95% of video as opposed to 10% of text
- Mobile Video has grown by 5000% in last 3 years
- 72% of the audience are likely to have a greater understanding when shown a video
Now go get ’em… “lights, camera, action!”