With the innovations in technology and online search platforms, SEOs finally took notice that having high-quality content is just as important as creating a huge number of links when it comes to ranking websites. While most companies have already invested in content writers and SEO experts, one medium that has high potential remains untapped – online videos. If you read this blog about the 2016 SEO trends, you will find that videos are being given more importance than the textual data. Although companies and brands have already started adding videos in their online marketing strategies, most of them still forget to put an effective video SEO strategy at the top of their priority list. They still stick to the traditional way of marketing where they make use of images, written content, and infographics. What most companies fail to realize is that when online videos are maximized, it can provide a tremendous contribution to their company’s SEO strategy.

Despite the benefits and significant contributions of online videos, one must understand that there are traps along the way that can mess up your game. To avoid these traps, your goals need to be clear and your actions need to gear towards the achievement of the goals and outputs that you set for your company.

Be Clear About What You Want

The production of online videos sound “fun” and “nice” at first but don’t be fooled by what looks like a silver lining. Remember, the videos you produce must be in sync with your SEO strategy and it must have the capacity to return the money you invested. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail that’s why you should be clear about your goals from the very start. By doing so, you get to ditch traps and the risk of losing not just your money, but also your client’s.

Think about what you want to achieve before producing the online video. Do you want it to lure people into your website? Do you want it to spark a conversation? Do you want it to go viral? Do you want it to boost your company’s sales? Or do you just want it to have off-page SEO benefits? Once you know the answer to these questions, it becomes easier to filter out concepts and themes that may seem okay, but actually, have nothing to do with your goal.

Benefits of Creating Videos for SEO

From the POV of an SEO, the two possible goals that you can have are: increasing conversions, creating links, and generating shares on various social media platforms. When a video is created well and when the message it wants to send out is clear, it has the capacity to generate countless links for a website, including those that come from highly respected domains. Remember, there are already so many videos out there and you need to make sure that your video stands out. What do you really want to share? How can you make people want to link it up and share it on their social media accounts? The video has to be unique and it has to offer something to whoever will be viewing it. The viewer may laugh, learn, be amazed, or get annoyed with your video. The important thing is that they feel something or they learn something after watching the video. You’ll know that the video is effective if it evokes an emotional reaction that’s strong enough to make them want to share it with the social media contacts.

Increasing conversions is a two-part process and it’s something that most SEOs have issues with. Some SEOs believe that their only job is to boost the website’s rankings while others believe that it’s important to also be able to increase the sales and revenues of their client. Since increasing conversions is a two-part process, one must first produce a video that will attract prospects and clients to visit their website. Once the visitors are there, the website should be optimized in such a way that they will want to purchase something before moving on to another website. Visitors must be converted into clients.

One of the benefits of producing videos is that it can easily increase conversions. As a matter of fact, brands that place videos on all the pages of their website keep their visitors engaged, and eventually convince them to purchase items from the online shop. You only have a few seconds to convince the site visitors to make a purchase so you need to produce videos that are clear, straight to the point, and detailed but not too wordy. The editing has to be good, the quality has to be excellent or else the visitor will just click the close button if they find themselves unimpressed with your online video. It has to tug at their heartstrings too.

SEO for Videos

The first thing you need to do to create SEO for your online videos is by writing long descriptions when you upload them to Youtube or other social media platforms. The reason behind this is because these platforms can only rely on the text that you write upon uploading that’s why you should be generous when writing in the box allotted for the description. Do limit your entry to only 200 words to avoid being ranked for long tail keywords.

It also helps if you make use of video keywords. Sure it already feels like an achievement when Youtube gives your video a high ranking but what will really benefit you if Google also puts your video right at the top of the search results. Video keywords bring in video results whenever someone uses them on Google that’s why you need to optimize them.

Invite online communities to watch your video. People will only know about your videos if you let them know that you uploaded something that’s why it’s also important that you upload it on various platforms. Ask them to watch and share.

A video SEO strategy will do wonders for your website. You just have to be clear with the message that you want to send.