Leveraging Video for SEO Purposes	Visited: 746 5.0/5.0 (3 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Roger Janik August 18, 2008

Roger Janik

Roger Janik is the President and Founder of ServerSideDesign.com – The Web Marketers. ServerSideDesign was founded in 2004 and over the years has grown to a staff of well-rounded professionals that handle tasks such as SEO copywriting, SEO programming, link building, social networking, pay per click management, web design, and reporting. ServerSideDesign is a proud member of the BBB, SEMPO and many other prestigious organizations. They were named as a top 10 company in 2007 for both Organic SEO and Link Popularity by Promotion World.

Roger Janik has written 7 articles for PromotionWorld.

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We SEO’s love to pat ourselves on the back for being professionals in an industry that are always on the cutting edge looking for new ways to add valuable services that ultimately help our clients.  One service that many SEO’s have been looking into recently (some for the last couple of years) has been web video.  Web video is here to stay (obviously), but it also gives us optimizers a whole new stream to not only capitalize on, but leap ahead of the competition that does not take full advantage of this technology.  For those that are fairly new to web video, here are some tips on leveraging video for SEO purposes.

Web Video for Marketing

One of the many important things to consider when thinking about adding a web video to a client’s site is that not only is video a great resource for SEO purposes, but in order to use it effectively, it must be a great marketing tool as well.  Before I discuss the SEO aspects of video, it is important to state a few important points on how to create an effective video.  While your clients might think the SEO benefits of video are good, what they will be extremely interested in is how a video can help them convert sales. 

Think of a web video as the perfect tool to have a conversation with those that visit your site.  Today, visitors generally don’t stay for more than a minute or so on a specific page, so you literally have just seconds to gain the attention of the visitor to market your message.  One mistake that many web video producers make is trying to appeal to the broadest general audience.  If you think about it, your visitors are at your site for a reason, they already know what they are looking for and it only takes a few seconds of a video to confirm whether your video is information they need or info which is too broad and general to be useful.   Most successful web videos today give their viewers exactly what they are looking for in the shortest span of time possible.  However, even with a video less than a minute or two long, you can develop a conversation and a worthwhile relationship with your viewers. 

The Important Points of Optimizing a Web Video

If you are interested in optimizing a video for SEO purposes, here are some of the most important points to keep in mind.  In this article, we will use Google Video, as our site we are posting and optimizing for, however there is very little difference between optimizing for Google Video, or other video sites.

• First off, just as you would upload the video to your client’s site, also upload it to other video sites- for instance Google Video.

• Creating a web video is usually very cost effective.  There are many inexpensive video recording software and editing packages- some even for free.  In addition, uploading your videos to Google Video, Youtube, etc are free as well.

• Keep in mind the linking strategies you use for text content; with video these linking strategies are still extremely important.  It should be noted that when creating a video, match the title of the video with the keyword phrase anchor text on the landing page of your site.  For instance, if your client’s webpage you intend to put the video on has the keyword phrase anchor text “mobile phone applications”, a good title may be “Mobile Phone Applications for Road Warriors”.

• In addition to creating a title that matches, include a link that points back to your site.  One of the advantages of a link back is to create deep links for the site in addition to the common front page links.

• Create an interesting thumbnail of your video.  Time and time again, I see many people waste their opportunity to attract attention by having a thumbnail that is simply the first frame of their video- a black screen.  Make sure you put some time in choosing a thumbnail that does your video justice.

• When uploading your video to Google or any video site for that matter, understand how the entire process works and learn the ins and outs.  For instance, Google Video offers only the choice of one category selection when you initially upload your video, however if you edit your listing once it is uploaded to Google Video miraculously Google now offers an additional 2 listing choices (a total of 3) for your video and in addition much more available category names.

• Naming your video file is also important.  Don’t forget to put your keyword phrase into the file name as well.

• It is also extremely important to link to your video from an external source for maximum optimization.  Whether it is a directory, press release, article, blog, etc your video will be easier to find and ranked by the search engines.

Alternative SEO Web Video Practices

While creating a web video can be extremely beneficial, there are other alternatives to use videos that are already produced to help with SEO.  For instance, just as buying links on high quality web pages can be effective (less now so that Google frowns upon paid linking), an already well produced video that is receiving tons of traffic can be used in a similar fashion.  For instance, if you see a video that is similar to the keywords or category that you are promoting and it is receiving tons of hits, it might be worth your while to buy a link on the video itself.  For instance, you can sponsor a video and have your link predominantly viewable on the video itself or buy the link pointing back to your site.

As always experiment a little and see what works best for you and your clients.  Web video can be an enormously effective tool for both SEO and marketing purposes.   For those trying to jump ahead or eek out the maximum potential of a campaign, you should not overlook the power of video for optimization.