Digital Marketing
The popularity of video is mainly attributed to the fact that video caters to the visual and audio senses of an individual and thereby achieves a more holistic viewing experience. To leverage the growing popularity of the video medium, many brands have started incorporating video as a part of their digital marketing initiatives. However, you will notice that there are very few brands that give the due weightage to optimizing the video for search engines.
By taking care of the SEO of your video, you can make the video a worthy contributor to your SEO strategy. Creating a video is often more tedious than coming up with other forms of content. That is why you need to take proactive measures on SEO and ensure that your brand gets a good return on the investment involved. In this article, we will dwell on all that you need to know about creating an SEO strategy for your promotional video.
Leverage Video to Build Links
Videos have the capacity to generate thousands of high-quality links and take the viewers to the shopping page. A very good example in this regard is that of YouTube videos whose CTAs take the viewer to a page that sells the product. The only catch here is the fact that hundreds of hours’ worth of content are uploaded to YouTube every day, and unless you optimize your video for the search engine, your content will get lost.
To effectively build links from your videos, the use of keywords is an absolute must. Before you script your video, use the Google Keyword Planner tool to identify keywords that are relevant to your video content. Then, plan your script in a way that includes some of the keywords that you have.
You can also make a conscious effort to include the keywords in the video title or description. While adding the keyword to the title, try to restrict its usage to the first half of the title. Such SEO measures on your part will help your video get the required visibility, and you can then leverage it to build links.
Use Video to Generate Social Shares
Any digital marketing campaign of the modern days is incomplete without the use of social media platforms. Video is the perfect investment for brands to get shares on social media platforms and increase brand visibility. For that, you need to create a video with a defined storyline and film it in a way such that it strikes a chord with the audience.
Then, work on finding appropriate hashtags and use the same. Depending on the platform where you intend to post the video choose the number of hashtags that you will post. For example, Instagram allows you the luxury of adding up to 30 hashtags while you can post only two hashtags on a Twitter post.
While using hashtags to improve the SEO ranking is important, the choice of hashtags is just as crucial. If you opt for some of the most popular hashtags without cross-checking their relevance, people who are on the lookout for some other type of content will find your video and skim past it. To ensure that your video reaches the people it is targeted for and gets the deserved shares, you need to plan your social media SEO strategy.
Plan Your Video Post
To optimize your video for maximum reach, you need to plan the time, platform, and other details about your video posting. For example, if you can diversify the types of video content that you create, your viewers will be better entertained and more likely to follow you. For best SEO optimization, use an analytics tool to study your viewer behavior. That will give you a picture of the time of the day or week when they are most likely to be online. If you can post your video at such a time, you have better chances of catching the attention of your target group.
The best optimization practices dictate that you should consider posting your videos on your brand website instead of the common video sharing platforms. That way, people will link back the content to your domain, and that will boost your website’s overall SEO.
Top search engines such as Google rank pages with videos higher than those without it. That is why it is sensible to have videos on the landing pages instead of YouTube or Vimeo. If, due to some reason you do have to post a video on such platforms, make sure that you take the extra effort of linking back the content from the primary video webpage.
Product Videos for SEO
Product videos are a powerful tool for brands to increase their SEO. If your brand is launching an innovative product, it may so happen that the target group does not realize the need for the same. Having a product video on the landing page makes 52% of consumers more confident about buying an item. You can optimize your product videos by having keywords like ‘New’ and ‘Introducing’ in the title or description.
Also, if you are launching a new product, there are chances that all of your target groups may not speak the language of the video. Having subtitles or closed captioning in your video allows them to comprehend the video content and decide on whether to make a purchase. At the same time, the closed captioning tells the search engines what the video is about and allows the video to be displayed to the appropriate target group.
The journey of SEO is a hurdle race, and every brand has its story to tell. The above tips will give you a picture of what to expect from your video optimization and get the maximum ROI on your filmmaking efforts.
Post the basics, you will be in a position to figure out what works the best for your brand. Armed with that knowledge, you can singlehandedly steer the digital marketing initiatives of your firm and generate better leads, conversions, and revenue.
