Video SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO has two purposes:

1. Helping search engines determine the relevance of your content
2. Increasing the popularity of the content that you wish to rank highest within search results

In this article you’ll learn how to optimize your video content for search engines by getting the most out of:

• Keyword analysis
• Meta data
• Video sitemaps

SEO for video behaves slightly different than traditional SEO, as search engines are unable to ‘read’ your video content. Video SEO helps search engines better understand your video content.

What does video SEO help you achieve?

• Making sure your pages/videos appear in the Google search results
• Influencing the ranking of your videos in the Google search results
• Ensuring that your video appears as a thumbnail
• Enriching your video results

1.0 | Step by step video SEO guide

1.1 | Keyword analysis

Decide per page or website which subjects you want to rank in the search results. Once you have these subjects sorted out, you convert them into specific keywords. You’ll need these keywords to optimise your video for search engines.  Here are some tips for deciding on your keywords:

• • Research per product or service
    • What challenges does your target group face?
    • What words does the target group use to search for products or services?
    • How often do they use these words to search?
    • Is seasonality an issue?
  • Enter each subject in one of the following tools
    • Google Keyword Planner
    • Ubersuggest
    • Answer the Public
    • Google Trends

• • View and compare the suggestions and search volumes given by the tool and decide on the best keyword
    • Use the search volumes to determine where a certain keyword will rank in the search results
    • Consider less obvious keywords

1.2 | Add metadata

Navigate to the “Media Library” and look for the video you want to edit. Open the video and click on the “Metadata” tab.

• • Enter a title
    • Consider the number of characters (50-60 characters)
    • Make sure you put the most important keyword at the beginning

• • Add a description
    • Consider the number of characters (max. 300)
    • Use the most important and relevant keywords

• • When applicable, add an author
    • Google can display these in the search results
  • Deep link
    Enter the URL that leads to the page on which you want to index the video.
    Tip:

    When you embed a video on your own website, we advise you to enter the page URL where you placed the video.

• • Add tags
    Use the most important keywords.
    Tip:

    You can add a “standard tag”, so Media Clips are automatically added to a clip list. For example, you can create the tag “video sitemap”.

  • Customised fields
    You might have unique and relevant custom fields, so be sure to fill them in. These could be fields like Category or Purpose, for example.
    Note:

    This only applies to publications that are equipped with custom fields.

1.3 | Creating a video sitemap

1. Create a playlist
In the Blue Billywig Platform, browse to “Playlists” > “Create new static playlist”.

2. Select the video
Select the video you want to add to the playlist.

3. Add a title
Browse to the tab “General” and add a title to the playlist.

4. Publish the playlist
Make sure you “Publish” the playlist using the switch in the right-hand corner. Click “Save”. After saving, a number will appear next to the title. This is the unique ID for your playlist.

5. Submit to Google Webmaster Tools
The final step is to place the video sitemap on your website and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. This way, Google knows exactly where your videos will be located. We advise you to let a Webmaster conduct this last step. Your Webmaster will need the unique ID from the playlist.

6. Check if your videos are being indexed
Head over to https://search.google.com/test/rich-results and type in the URL of the page where your video is embedded. See if a video comes up in detected items. By clicking the dropdown, you can also see all the metadata Google has on your video.

2.0 | JSON-LD

One top of applying keyword analysis, meta data and video sitemaps, it’s worth noting that Blue Billywig automatically optimises your videos for search engines by injecting schema.org markup (via JSON-LD).

JSON-LD tags provide structured data: a standardized format for providing information about a page. This in turn helps search engines to understand the content of a page.

Learn more about JSON-LD tagging.