You’ve invested time and money into the creation of videos for your app. To ensure that is time and money well-spent, you need to do everything you can to put those videos to work for you. How? By making sure as many potential customers see them as possible. To do that, you’ve got to optimize your videos’ SEO. Here are our best tips to help you with that optimization.
Consider hosting videos on your company website
One major decision you’ll face is where to host your video. If you’re only going to put it in one place, you should definitely upload it to a video sharing site like Vimeo or YouTube, then embed it on your website. However, there are advantages to hosting a video directly on your website. Why? Because when videos are hosted on your site in addition to YouTube/Vimeo, it means search engines have the opportunity to find the video on both YouTube and your website – which can drive traffic to your site.
In addition, you should give each video its own landing page – you can (and should) create an aggregate page that links related videos together to keep them organized, but giving each video its own page makes it easier for indexing purposes, which increases the likelihood that your video will show up in search engine results.
Also important is the video sitemap – there are online video platforms that will build this for you, but if you’d like to learn more about sitemaps by building it yourself, here’s a good guide on how to do that. Again, this makes it easier for search engines to index, upping your video’s chances in search engine results.
Make sure your video’s filename is a strong description of the content
Search engines do look at filenames – so don’t lose another opportunity to boost your video by uploading videos with filenames like “DemoVideoFinal.mpg.” Instead, use a filename that uses some of your top keywords (see next tip below) and is a short description of the video.
Use keywords designed to boost both YouTube and Google
The top-ranking videos on both Google and YouTube search results in every category are how-tos and tutorials. It’s worth it to keep that in mind when you create items like your video’s Title, filename, metadata and keywords. Words and phrases such as “How To” and “Tutorial” are good ones to include.
When it comes to keywords, if you have a Google AdWords account (and if you don’t, you should take a few minutes to create one – it’s free, and a fantastic resource), you have access to the Google Keyword Planner, which is a tool you can use to find the best keywords for your purposes. As you search, you’re looking for those keywords which have at least several hundred searches per month; the higher the number, the better the keyword. And while using the top keywords is wise, also be on the lookout for good “niche” keywords – ones that may have a slightly lower number of searches, but that can help grab audiences who are specifically looking for what your app offers.
There are other keyword search tools out there as well; Ubersuggest is free, and WordTracker, KeyWordSpy, and SEMRush are three of the better paid tools.
Metadata = Mega Ranking
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, use them wisely, everywhere you can. Put them in your video’s title, YouTube/Vimeo categories, tags and metadata. Most important, use them in your video’s YouTube description or on your video’s landing page, as the description provides the opportunity to use long tail keywords (these are longer 3-5 word phrases which are specific and precise to whatever you’re marketing) that you may not otherwise have a way to include on your website.
Make your video interactive
Include some form of a call to action in your video; elements such as in-video links to your website, or a short quiz or survey, can encourage the viewer to remain engaged with your content. For example, a tutorial video could have an in-video link that, when clicked, takes the viewer directly to your app where they can complete the task they just learned in the video.
Always create a video transcript / closed captioning for your video
Always create a full text transcript of your video and add it not just to the YouTube/Vimeo description, but also publish it on the video’s page on your website and add it to the HTML code of the video’s page. Having a transcript (and adding it to your YouTube video so it’s used for accurate closed captions), will definitely help those with disabilities “view” your video, but it’s also more content for search engines to crawl through and use to improve your search engine results.
Your app’s video is one of your most important marketing tools – but only if it’s used properly. The only way a video can help market your app is if it’s seen – and one way to ensure that is by doing everything possible to optimize the video’s SEO. We hope these tips prove useful to you, and help you find ways to improve your video’s search ranking and increase your video’s number of views!
Need help with video for your app or product? Talk to us today.