Video SEO
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Label 2.0 Video Optimization
Are you using any SEO tactics in your videos?
I bet not. Did you know that by having a strong title, keyword rich description and long tail tags can bring an extra 100, 1,000 or 10,000 people to your videos? If you had these people watching your videos, do you know how to tell them to buy your stuff or listen to more tracks? Let’s look at a few key ways that you can take your videos and make them fan-producing promotional tools.
Video SEO Tips
We are going to focus on YouTube, do to the fact that they are by far the largest video property on the web, however the strategies listed here can be used on nearly every video service from Myspace Video to Blip to Viddler, Vimeo, etc. In another section of Label 2.0, we look at automation of video marketing. For now, let’s get your web copy and basics down.
Titles
When constructing your title, make it close to 64 characters as you can. Not any longer (that’s just the way these things work). Make sure the strongest keywords are at the front of the description as search engines read from left to right and place more importance on the words at the beginning.
Here’s an example:
Say you did a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” at a show and wanted to put the video up. Most of you would title it “Band Name Here Living on a Prayer”
Here is a more “optimized” title
Living on a Prayer Bon Jovi Cover by Band Name Here at Venue Goes Here
Or
Living on a Prayer Bon Jovi Cover by Stumpp at Backbooth Orlando
A search engine would give more importance to the words “Living on a Prayer” and “Bon Jovi” while still branding your band, in this case Stumpp. I also placed Orlando after the venue name because I had extra characters (remember to keep it as close to 64 characters as possible for maximum results) and know that when someone searches for Bon Jovi Orlando, the video will have a good chance of showing up high in the results.
Descriptions
We are going to keep this one simple. Remember when I said you needed to direct the viewer to find more songs, buy your stuff, etc? This is where you do it and here is the super secret trick to making it happen 100% more effectively than every other band on YouTube.
The first thing in your description needs to be http://www.yourlandingpage.com.
It has to have the http and you have to send them to an action page (aka not your Myspace). Using http will make the link live (meaning that your new fan doesn’t have to copy and paste, they just click). The 2nd reason to put it first is that YouTube only displays the first few words of the description on the video page, the rest can only be seen by clicking on more information. You want your link to be seen by everyone that comes to that page!
As a rule of thumb, the video description should be around 200 characters and also include the main keywords as close to the beginning as possible.
Here is a sample description. Notice the URL at the beginning, keywords in prime positions and 198 characters of text:
http://www.stumpp.com – Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer cover by Orlando rockers StuMpP at Backbooth. Watch Jack hit those notes like Jon Bon Jovi himself in this acoustic version of the classic song.
Tags
This is the last portion of the YouTube and Video SEO setup. The key here is to create long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are promoting, selling, whatever and have a greater chance of achieving results faster in the search engines.
Long tail keywords for the above example may be:
Bon Jovi cover, Living on a Prayer Live, Backbooth in Orlando, StuMpP Concert, etc
Try and use 6 long tail keywords for your tags and you will see better results.
Label 2.0 Video SEO Training Video
In the video below we go over a YouTube submission with each of the details presented above as well as some examples of live Google Results and Videos that have implemented the methods in this Module. The video is best viewed in full screen mode.