Videos and Search Engines
Tips for Optimizing Your Video Content for the Search Engines
Do you use video on your site? As I sit here my eyes are telling me close give us a rest. Between keeping up with Twitter and Facebook writing articles reading articles video is a welcome relief. Sometimes it’s a way for you to brand your business and connect with your audience. While many website owners are skilled at creating valuable video content, they sometimes forget to optimize this content for the search engines. This is a mistake as search engine spiders can index video content, if you know how to show them the way.
#1 Video Tagging
Most video-sharing sites allow you to create “tags.” Tags are simply keywords that describe video contents. This tagging makes it easier for people to find your content and it makes your content easier for spiders to index. Make sure to use all the tags you can.
#2 Video Titles
Give your video a title. Titles serve two purposes, like an attention grabbing headline they capture the attention of your prospect and when you use keywords, they can enhance your search engine rankings.
#3 Categorize your videos
Video sharing sites typically require you to place your video in a specific category. The more specific you can categorize your video, the better.
#4 Create a relevant file name.
If you are hosting a video on your own site, take your SEO one-step further by creating a relevant file name for your video with keywords.
#5 Only publish one video per web page.
Experts recommend only publishing one video per webpage with a simple text title and description. Optimize the page where you publish your video for both video search engines and content search engines by using meta tags for the
content of the page. They also recommend creating separate video site maps, which can be submitted to video and content search engines alike.
#6 Use keyword optimized anchor text if you link to the video from other pages of your Web site.
#7 Consider Using YouTube Suggest to Generate Keywords
At this point you’re probably familiar with many of the content keyword tools, however for video optimizing, many experts recommend using YouTube’s Suggest tool. Because Google owns YouTube, it works much like the Google Suggest tool. Per the YouTube Blog, “A query suggestions option is now available for search. To opt in, click the “advanced” link next to the search button, then choose “Display query suggestions as I type” from the search settings. As you type in your search terms a menu will appear with suggested results to choose from to help you more quickly find the videos you’re looking for. On the search results page you’ll also get an additional list of recommended searches by clicking on any of the terms listed next to the new “Also try” menu.
Optimizing video for the search engines just makes sense. Utilize these seven steps to make sure your video content is indexed by the search engines.
Tell me do you use video’s? Do you create video’s? Are they on your website or just your YouTube page? Any other suggestions?
SEO Mistakes to Avoid
SEO Mistake #1 Not using keywords correctly.
Are you so concerned about being banned from the search engines for keyword spamming or stuffing that you have limited your use of keywords all together? Good news as long as your content sounds natural and reads easily, the chances are you have not overused your keywords.
TIP Make sure your keywords are included in the first paragraph, in your headings and in your title and meta tags.
SEO Mistake #2 Trying to fool search engine spiders.
Search engines are a lot more sophisticated than most of us realize. There are no-no’s such as hidden text, keyword spamming, and cloaking,( which is showing different content to the search engine spiders than to your visitors). These practices serve to hurt your page ranking and can in fact cause your website to be banned by the search engines, which means no one will find you and no traffic means no profits.
SEO Mistake #3 Using Flash
Use Flash if you have a media related website and want to demonstrate your industry savvy. However for most of us, it’s just not necessary and can harm your page ranking. Search engine spiders cannot read content embedded in Flash files, which means they’re not recognized or indexed.
SEO Mistake #4 Using Your Company Name As a Title Tag
Are you branding your company name? If not include it in the title tag, but is should not be the only element in your title tag. Use your primary keyword for each webpage title tag. This is more useful for your customers and helps the search engines identify the various pages on your site.
SEO Mistake #5 Using A Splash Page
A splash page, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a web page with a large graphic or company logo, and a link to enter the site. Reason this is not an effective strategy
* No keyword rich text on the page, nothing for the spiders to index.
* Only one internal link on the page
* These pages often have a redirect which often causes spiders to ignore them
If search engine optimization is important to your business, you may need to forgo the splash page. Your home page should be easy to navigate, content rich, and link visitors and spiders to other main web pages.
The majority of search engine mistakes are reversible. If you’ve committed a few of these mistakes, simply correcting them can increase your page ranking almost immediately. Take some time to evaluate your SEO strategy and eliminate these SEO mistakes.