Friday, October 24, 2008

How to Optimize your Videos for Search Engines

By Mark Robertson

If you perform a simple search on video search or video SEO, you will be bombarded with numerous articles that try to explain this technique. Video search optimization, or Video SEO (VSEO) is a new bug that has bitten the world recently. Though it's a new technique, still many companies have started using it aggressively to earn high ranking and more business.

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.

Keyword research is important for Video search engine optimization. However, there are some key differences in terms of the methods that should be employed for keyword researching video terms. In order to know your target audience for seeing your videos, it is important to first conduct some research on keywords and compile a keyword list. This list can be obtained by doing some simple searches for a related product or service. There are not yet any keyword research tools specifically for video. Keep in mind that video searches at this point tend to be shorter keywords, not "long tail" searches. In addition, more than anything, your keyword list should have the word "video" in it. 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.

Well, as you know with keyword research, it is an ongoing process. It is important to pay attention to the feedback, comments, and links to existing related videos to find related keyword terms that you may have missed in your original keyword list.

You will want to encourage readers to submit feedback as studies show that users who provide feedback tend to be more active and easier to convert. In other words, those users that provide feedback, typically are more likely to call, email, visit your site, etc...

If your video is popular in the video SERPs, you get the opportunity to submit fresh content. Many websites make a common mistake by providing the same content again and again. Don't make your video content to simply repeat what's already out there, instead, finding a fresh "content space" for your target keyword term.

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.

Finally, make sure that you take advantage of the fact that you can brand your video with a watermark logo, text for your URL, and additional information to get users back to your website or business. One of the main points for doing video SEO is to get users back to your destination.

Therefore, in order to get more visibility for your business, website, etc... search engine optimization for video is an excellent, and fairly new concept that you can take advantage of right now, while the buzz is hot. - 15433

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