Your Complete Guide to Creating A Kickass Video SEO Strategy

Video has become a central focus in digital marketing. When implemented correctly, video marketing helps potential buyers learn about your products and services, increases your business presence, and gives you a competitive edge.

Today, more businesses are realizing the long-term benefits of video content and are prioritizing video in their digital marketing strategies. Video doesn't just provide companies with a good return on investment, videos are used in several ways to support marketing efforts.

For instance, businesses can incorporate video content to share a new product or service, provide tutorials, or show some personality on-screen. It's also one of the greatest assets to your search engine optimization. In fact, 86% of businesses use video content as a marketing tool, with 81% of marketers stating that video content has a direct impact on sales.

Even more, video has become the preferred choice for content consumption. This means that your target audience is more likely to be receptive to video content compared to any other content tool you provide. Not convinced? The global average for video consumption is 86 minutes a day. As consumers spend more time viewing video content, businesses are realizing that video marketing is an effective and seamless way to connect with their audience.

In this post, we'll cover:

• What is Video SEO?
• Video SEO is More Important Than Eve
• How to Create a Video SEO Strategy From Scratch (+ Helpful Tips)
• Resolving Your Video SEO Questions
• Empower Your Business with Video SEO

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What is Video SEO?

SEO refers to search engine optimization. SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, drives traffic, and creates many opportunities for businesses to turn visitors into customers.

Video SEO involves optimizing your content to be indexed and ranked on the search engine results page for relevant keyword searches. There are several strategies that businesses can use to optimize their video content and earn a better chance of ranking. With the right strategies, SEO can create opportunities for business growth.

Benefits of Video SEO

Optimizing your video content offers several benefits. Here are a few benefits to consider:

1. Featured on Rich Snippets

Video SEO increases your chances of being featured on rich snippets. Rich snippets, also known as rich results, are regular Google search results but with additional data displayed. This data is typically found from Structured Data pulled from the HTML. A rich snippet helps the search engine know what information is on each webpage.

But why is a rich snippet so essential? Most Google search results display standard data: title tag, meta description, and URL. A rich snippet adds more information, and the results are generally more eye-catching compared to a normal snippet.

Video SEO makes you more likely to be featured on rich snippets thanks to all the additional information you can include. You can keywords for your video titles, detailed video descriptions, add links, and use a video XML sitemap.

2. Get Links Back to Your Site

Video content is one of the best ways to get links back to your site. Not only are most consumers more receptive to video but video content is compatible with most devices. Even more, videos provide a personal touch to users. This makes video content a useful tool to capture the attention of your target audience and receive quality links back to your website.

3. Social Shares

Thanks to the easy sharability of video content and the ability for videos to adapt to several devices, businesses that produce video content often see an increase in social shares. Videos are ultimately shaping content consumption in the social world. As a result, businesses can expect to see better results in the form of social shares when they produce quality and relevant video content for their audience.

4. Increased Visibility

Video content is one of the best tools to captivate your audience. It combines video, audio, and text elements together, making it one of the most engaging marketing tools for businesses. But video improves the value of your SEO, which helps increase your visibility in the search engine.

Video SEO is More Important Than Ever

Video SEO should be ingrained in your digital marketing strategy. Video offers one of the best ways for consumers to learn about a product or service. In 2022, consumers expect marketing videos from brands and are consuming video content across platforms at impressive rates.

Video content has become so essential that YouTube videos are now being shown on the search engine results page. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, with 1.7 billion unique monthly visitors. It's safe to say that if you're not optimizing your video for SEO, you're missing out on an opportunity to tap into new markets and grow your company.

How to Create a Video SEO Strategy From Scratch (+ Helpful Tips)

Ready to enhance your digital marketing? Here is a look at how you can create a video SEO strategy from scratch.

1. Create Your Videos with an Objective in Mind

Before creating your first video, it's essential to have an objective in mind. Objectives give your content direction and improve your results. Let's take a look at how you can establish an objective:

Consider Search Intent

Everyone searches online for a specific reason. Understanding search intent enables you to understand the purpose of an online search. Search intent falls under four categories:  informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional.

1. Informational: People search for information every day. A user may have a specific question or want to learn more about a particular topic.
2. Commercial: Many users intend to buy a product or service in the future. Before they do, they research. The users plan to make a transaction but will search for questions that will help them be certain about their decision. For instance, a person may ask, "What brand of headphones are the best?". These types of questions help them narrow down their decision.
3. Navigational: Users with a navigational search intent are looking for a specific website. The user essentially wants to navigate to the website through the search engine using keywords rather than typing in the entire website. For this reason, you want to ensure that your website can be found when someone is searching for your company.
4. Transactional: A transactional search is when someone is ready to buy something at that moment. This typically means they've already done their research and feel good about their decision.

Consider Buying Funnel Stage

Understanding where your audience is in the buying funnel will help you determine what types of videos will produce the best results.

1. Awareness: The awareness stage is when you're marketing to a wide range of potential customers with the goal of making them aware of your business, products, and services.
2. Consideration: During the consideration stage, consumers are interested in your business and are considering whether they want to buy from you.
3. Conversion: Consumers have decided they are ready to buy. Businesses benefit from removing obstacles that make it challenging for consumers to make a purchase and offer incentives.
4. Loyalty: These customers have already made a purchase and are loyal to your business. They are interested in staying abreast with your company, love loyalty programs, and respond well to email newsletters.
5. Advocacy: At this stage, your customers will recommend your business to others to generate new customers.

To learn more about buying funnel stages, visit our blog titled ‘ The Ultimate Content by Funnel Guide.’

Ensure Videos Answers a Question

Most people watch videos because they're looking for an answer to something. You need to think about what kinds of questions your audience wants to know and answer them in your videos. By understanding search intent and the buying funnel stage, you will have a better idea of what your audience is looking for.

2. Do Keyword Research

Keyword research involves finding and analyzing search terms that people search for in the search engine. Try to find hot topics on the internet that show what your audience cares about. If you're having trouble finding topics, here's what you can do:

1. Make a list of relevant topics in your industry
2. Identify a few keywords that fall into each category
3. Research search terms related to your keywords
4. Use keyword research tools

Doing keyword research will help you understand what questions your audience is asking. Be sure to use titles and descriptions that respond to these questions.

3. Optimize Your Titles

Titles are essential to video SEO. They inform the search engine about the topic and the core features of the video. Here are a few simple ways to optimize your titles:

• Integrate strong keywords
• Respond to search intent
• Use attention-grabbing headers
• 'How to' articles tend to perform best
• Use numbers when necessary
• Use emotive words and relatable language

4. Include Timestamps

Timestamps are an essential tool to incorporate into your video content. They enable viewers to watch a video from a specific place. This means that users can skip to where they need for a more convenient viewing experience. Don't forget to include keywords in your timestamps. This helps Google understand the content.

5. Optimize Your Meta Descriptions and Tags

Did you know that search engines often depend on text descriptions to understand the content of the video? To increase visibility, optimize your meta description and tags for each video. This means including keywords that you created from your keyword research.

You also want to make sure that your meta descriptions are catchy. Your video description plays a large part in your CTR and encourages searchers to click on the video.

6. Include Video Transcripts

Video transcripts create captions for your videos that contain the text of what was said. Including video transcripts allow Google to understand the content on the page, making it easier for your video to be seen by your audience.

When Google can understand your video, your content becomes more accessible. This is not only an ethical responsibility but something Google will pay more attention to in 2023.

7. Use an Engaging Thumbnail

Thumbnails play an essential role in gaining clicks. A video thumbnail acts as a preview of your video and is the first impression a user has of your video content. For this reason, you'll want to spend some time creating a relevant thumbnail that easily attracts the attention of your audience.

Steel Croissant can help with engaging thumbnail images that help you achieve clicks, or you can use a freelance service like Fiverr.

8. Publish Your Video Content on More Than One Platform

To maximize your results, be sure to adapt, repurpose, and publish your video content on several platforms as well as your website. This increases your chances to rank on Google and other platforms like YouTube for searches made specifically on that platform.

It's also essential to cross-promote your content. Cross-promotion is a marketing tactic for expanding the reach of your video and attracting more potential customers to your business through various marketing channels.

9. Optimize Video and Site for Mobile

Optimizing your video and site for mobile is essential. If you're not optimizing for mobile, you're missing out on an opportunity to reach a wider audience. 40% of viewers watch YouTube on their mobiles, and you want to ensure that you have a responsive video and website for users.

Google is also testing with mobile-first indexing. Mobile-first indexing means that Google is primarily using the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. To ensure your content ranks, make sure all content is mobile-ready.

10. Run SEO Video Audit

If you already have video content on your website, run an SEO video audit. An audit is beneficial because it helps make sure you are following the best video SEO practices and identifies issues affecting search performance and how to improve them.

With the right SEO practices, your videos will rank better, and you'll attract more attention to your videos. After running the audit, you want to ensure that all of the content outlined is optimized and updated. Steel Croissant provides detailed video SEO audits to ensure you get the most out of your video content.

Resolving Your Video SEO Questions

Do you still have questions about video SEO? Don't worry, we have answers.

Does embedding YouTube videos help SEO?

Yes, embedding YouTube videos increases your site's exposure. If you don't have video content of your own, or you want to include your own videos in your blog, embed the content.

By doing so, you will help your written content show up on the video tab on Google. This gives you the opportunity to bring the user to your website instead of YouTube.

Can I optimize for local video SEO?

Of course! Local optimization isn't just possible, it's encouraged. Don't be afraid to add a local twist to your content to attract a local audience.

To optimize for local video SEO, use a location in your video title and meta description. Include local resources, testimonials, and information in your video content. Include your business name, address, and phone number in the video and description field.

As always, publish your video transcript as well! This will help Google understand what your content is about.

What is the difference between YouTube SEO and Video SEO?

The difference between YouTube SEO and video SEO can be confusing for some businesses. This is because there is an overlap between the two. YouTube SEO refers to the techniques used when you upload to the platform. When optimizing for YouTube, you are using strategies for optimizing videos to improve placement in the search results on YouTube.

Video SEO is not specific to YouTube. It refers to video content created and optimized for search engines or any platform. There are specific tactics you can use to rank on YouTube that you might not be able to use on other platforms. However, most video SEO tactics that apply to search engines will apply to YouTube.

On the other hand, videos produced on YouTube are normally produced for social or YouTube specifically, with a style specific to YouTube.

Empower Your Business with Video SEO

If you haven't incorporated video SEO into your digital marketing strategy, now is the time. Video is the most consumed form of content, and more businesses have incorporated video content to improve their strategy, increase their online presence, and reach their target audience.

Video SEO offers several benefits to business owners. When done correctly, businesses can increase their online visibility, attract links back to their websites, and reach users across multiple channels.

It can also help you climb higher in the search rank to increase visibility and attract your target customers. Ultimately, Google doesn't just look at the text on your website when deciding whether to rank your website, Google looks at any other type of media you publish.

Incorporating optimized videos show that you offer multiple forms of media. It also helps that users prefer video content compared to other types of content when consuming information.

Lastly, effective video SEO can help you generate traffic from YouTube - the second-largest search engine. With the right SEO practices, businesses can rank both in the YouTube search results as well as in other search engines.

If you need help with video SEO, Steel Croissant provides video SEO services to help businesses simplify their digital marketing efforts, improve their marketing results, and gain new customers. Contact us today to learn more about our services.