Friday, September 19, 2008

Online Video SEO - How to Optimize your Videos for Search

By Mark Robertson


Online video and video search is HOT! You have surely seen all the buzz on the internet about sites like youtube, blinkx, etc... With this, bloggers have been writing posts about how to shoot video, how to upload videos to these sites, etc... However, few have provided information on how to get these videos seen and discovered. Here enters Video SEO.

To ensure that your video gets seen and discovered on these search engines, it is important to first learn some of the technical aspects that are important to online video as well as search.

As with Search Engine Optimization for webpages and text content, keyword research is an important first step. Prior to optimizing your videos, you will want to obtain a keyword target list. There are however, some difference with regard to how users search for videos vs. website and webpages. Namely, most users include the word "video" when doing a search. Make sure that your keyword list contains several variations with the word video, Examples - car videos, car video, racing video, automotive videos, etc....

Once you are through with this, next step is to look across the top video search platforms having the highest performance in overall views, ratings, and latency. The only way to measure your success is to view count.

As a side note, pay attention to the audience that is already searching for the terms that you identified in your keyword research. Are there closely related terms that you did not include? Take a look at videos that are similar in terms of the keywords that you are targeting and view the comments and feedback from users to find related terms.

Studies show that people who regularly provide user feedback tend to take frequent action on your uploaded video. This even includes visits to your actual website and end-point conversions.

It is much easier to get your video optimized and seen on search engine results pages when you are choosing a theme that does not already exist in mass. Dont make the mistake of creating videos that repeat videos already out there. Instead, choose fresh ideas and find a "content space" for your theme/keyword.

Studies have shown as well that users who watch videos are less interested in watching videos that are more than a few minutes in length. Try to target your videos to be less than 3 minutes in total length. If you have a very long video, perhaps try to create multiple segments or clips from the video targeting videos with 1-3 minutes in duration.

With video SEO, it is also important to take advantage of the ability to brand your video using watermarks, logos, text, or any additional information that will get users back to your main destination. That is the beauty of video search engine optimization. It does and will drive traffic back to your website or business.

So, if you want to get your video discovered, view, and consumed by more and more users, video search engine optimization is the way to go. This is a great new technique for getting maximum exposure to your business, and currently, this is such a new topic, that you can be one of the first to capture your keyword or theme with a video search result.

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