Video content is a major factor when pushing the promotion of your brand, but how do you implement SEO into video content? You can easily utilize SEO skills with video promotion, but there’s a proper technique that needs to be used.
The difficulty when using SEO for video content is the lack of written language. SEO, or search engine optimization, hooks onto certain words and phrases, commonly known as keywords.
Most video content creators fail to use a well-written video description filled with topic-driven keywords when promoting their content.
SEO also relies on a great platform where keywords are organized, there’s a place for a title, description, and meta content, and you can upload your high-quality videos with many options concerning file upload types and sizes.
The following platforms are perfect for hosting your videos while utilizing SEO.
Three Ways to Host Videos
Before getting into each individual platform and SEO best practices, let’s discuss the three most common ways to host videos online.
1. Social Media
2. Your Own Server
3. Professional Video Hosting Channels
Each of these factors has individual platforms that will help your video promotion performance so your content ranks high in search engine results.
Social Media
Social media has evolved to cater to video promotion. Video content is highly shareable, easily increases the promotion of a brand, can generate revenue through ads, and is always popular amongst social media users.
Another benefit of social media is the SEO value. Social media can rank high in their organic searches as well as on major search engines.
Here are some of the best social media platforms that utilize video content.
YouTube
This is the most popular video-sharing platform and is most commonly used by video content creators. It’s obvious why: YouTube is the third most visited website in the world and YouTube receives 30 million visitors per day.
There’s a reason why YouTube videos rank so high and why several video creators become internet celebrities. Utilizing SEO on YouTube’s platform is extremely easy.
When writing the descriptions on your video (should be 200-250 words) pick out popular keywords that are relevant to the topic of your video. List the keywords in the ‘tags’ section and make sure you use all of the terms in your description.
Use the most searched keywords in the title of the video so YouTube can easily pull those during searches.
YouTube also has a very strong search engine; since YouTube is a popular website with several million visitors per day, its search engines are constantly being used.
But in addition to videos appearing on YouTube, these videos also appear in Google searches. When you effectively optimize SEO for video promotion, your videos could rank high on YouTube and Google search results.
The mecca of all social media platforms is becoming a lot friendlier toward video promotion.
And there’s a reason why: Facebook video generates 8 billion views per day and video posts perform better on organic posts than photos.
Facebook has even extended video posting captions to include a title, description, and keyword use. You can still tag other users and hashtag like you would a normal post.
All of these factors contribute to outstanding SEO results. Especially when other Facebook users share your video.
There are limitations when using Facebook as a video-sharing platform. Facebook only allows a minimum file upload of 10 GB, only supports certain file types, and video length cannot exceed 20 minutes.
Vimeo
This is another popular video promotion platform but has more popularity with video and filmmakers or fans. There are no ads on Vimeo and there are no restrictions on time limits and bandwidths.
Because of this, Vimeo has become a major competitor to YouTube.
Unfortunately, Vimeo isn’t the best SEO platform. Videos uploaded to Vimeo don’t rank highly enough on Google search engines. But Vimeo videos do appear in Google search results when SEO is utilized correctly.
Unlike Facebook and YouTube, Vimeo’s SEO comes from the use of embed codes and fixing the video’s sitemaps to Google’s standards. If you’re able to do this, then your Vimeo videos will appear fine on a Google search.
Dailymotion
This is a video promotion site that is similar to the ones mentioned previously.
There are more restrictions with Dailymotion: videos can’t exceed 2 GB and can’t be longer than an hour. The video quality is also limited to 1280p.
However, Dailymotion’s SEO works similarly to YouTube’s. You enter a title, description, and tags to boost performance in search engines which includes Dailymotion’s search engine.
TubeMogul
Say you want to utilize all of these video promotion platforms, but don’t want to post on each platform. Platforms that provide multi-sharing channels are extremely popular, and TubeMogul provides this for video content creators.
TubeMogul lets you distribute video content across multiple channels but also helps you analyze data and track ad revenue.
To boost SEO performance TubeMogul has partnered with major social media platforms such as Facebook.
Your Own Server
Rather than relying on a third-party platform, you can host your own videos without the need for social media.
To do this, you need a video server. This is a device that acts solely to store and distribute videos. These servers work with digital video and television.
Servers aren’t recommended unless you’re truly a professional; they’re expensive and require the knowledge of complex codecs and metadata.
There is more of an advantage to hosting your own videos through a server than through a third-party sharing platform. However, it involves knowing how to create your own sitemap and embed codes.
Even for full-time and professional filmmakers and video content creators, using a third-party platform is still recommended for video promotion.
Professional Video Hosting Server
These services offer the convenience of a social media-driven video promotion while allowing you to fully optimize the video like you would on a server. These services are pretty pricey, so they’re recommended only for professional use.
Similar to a social media platform, upload your video file to these professional servers. They will provide a codec that you can embed on your website, share on social media, etc.
These servers provide a more in-depth video experience to your company. You can control the appearance of the player such as the size.
These servers also allow you to view analytics and data. This includes heatmaps such as when your audience stopped watching and graphs showing which videos perform the best.
Professional servers are the best option if you run a company website. Rather than using a third-party social media platform, which decreases SEO results for your website, these websites use JSON-LD. This will help your video’s sitemap appear higher on organic search engine results.
This will help your video’s sitemap appear higher on organic search engine results.
You can even generate leads with these services. Some of them come with call-to-action tools such as an email subscription or a sign-up page to entice your audience and create new leads.
When implementing these videos on your website, make sure your website server is compatible with the JSON-LD video embeds.
What Gives the Best Video Promotion
It’s a cliche answer but true: it depends on your content, your audience, and the purpose behind your brand.
Different factors from the list will bring benefits to some and disadvantages to others; some brands draw a better pull on social media while others need video promotion and SEO from website hosting.
The key feature every video content creator needs is to optimize SEO for all of their videos. Whether you host your own videos or use a third-party platform, each of these channels offers an outlet for SEO tools.
Make sure the title, description, and keywords used are all tailored to your audience. If your audience can connect with your content, your engagement and sharing rates will exceed.
Using a professional service rather than YouTube is most effective for business purposes. While a professional service is more expensive, you’ll receive greater benefits.
These benefits include implementing videos on your website, generating leads, improving SEO for your website, and viewing data on your videos.
In addition to the professional services, it’s recommended a business still publish video content on social media channels while optimizing SEO.
Most professional services enable social media sharing; however, SEO is best optimized on social media when posting directly on social media platforms.
While you can embed videos from video-sharing platforms such as YouTube on your website, using professional services will give your website better SEO.
When you utilize YouTube videos for SEO, the search engine results will work in favor of YouTube rather than your website.
If you’re encouraging your audience to view your website, use the JSON-LD embed codes provided by a professional service.
Time to Create Video Content
Content creators use SEO to make sure their content can be found, and video content creators are no exception. Using the right video-sharing platform can make or break your video content’s SEO performance.
If you’re interested in knowing more about SEO, check our blogs for all SEO resources.
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