5 ways to boost the SEO value of your video
Congratulations, you’ve made a great video. It ticks all the boxes. It’s emotionally engaging, informative, and well-made.
But, remembering there are 800 million videos on YouTube, how are you going to optimise your video to boost your online ‘likes, sharing, and engagement, and make it findable via search engines? How will you drive more value from your investment to justify making more videos? Answer: Video SEO. So, where do you begin?
1. Give your video a great title
You’ll doubtless be familiar with keywords. They’re the words used by potential customers or supporters to search for a topic they are interested in. And some words and phrases are more popular and powerful than others – they push your video up through the online ranks of thousands of others.
That’s why your video title is so important.
Let’s take an aspiring gardener looking for natural ways to grow vegetables and use up food scraps. While it may be tempting to call your compost bin video “Tips to making the best tomato sauce in the world”, the reality is that “How to grow killer tomatoes with clever composting” or “How to grow terrific tomatoes from your food scraps” is going to place your video higher on the list served up by Google. Food scraps and composting are important keywords for your topic, so ignore them at your peril.
There are plenty of (often free) online keyword search tools and generators to help you find those perfect words. For starters, you could try Google Ads Keyword Planner or Google Trends or even ask ChatGPT.
2. Name your video file well!
This may seem like a minor detail – but it’s not. When you upload your video file to YouTube or the platform of your choice, not only is the title you use for your video important but how clearly you label the video file.
For example, calling it ‘Product_video_7.mov’ may be factually accurate from your point of view, but the algorithms that drive YouTube rankings won’t appreciate it at all. Again, make the file name meaningful – like ‘Composting_for_beginners.mov. If your file name isn’t relevant, your search volume and results will suffer.
3. Don't be bland - be descriptive
Your video description is another chance to get your video noticed and viewed. If you are provided with a field to fill in when uploading your video to a social media platform – grab it with both hands!
Adding a great, optimised description means that when a search engine serves up your video, it has another chance to achieve click-throughs and traffic. The description helps the searcher to refine the list of content served up. For example, if they are composting to grow better vegetables rather than just trying to avoid buying a waste disposal unit, then spell it out.
It’s important to remember that while using keywords in your description is great (and they should be at the beginning), it should be written in natural language. A string of keywords without context or elaboration will lose you brownie points when it comes to rankings.
4. #hashtagit
Video hashtags (in fact, all hashtags) are invaluable for helping users find online content. Especially if a topic is trending and they want to find out more – more quickly.
For example, searching for #compost on Google brings up 262,000,000 results. From Twitter to websites, to Homes & Gardens and even this New York Times story on compulsory food scrap composting in New Yorker. So, if you’re using that hashtag, you’re going to be in good company – and right on topic. If not, it’s an opportunity missed.
If you haven’t used a hashtag before and want to create a new one, they follow a basic formula. Start with a # sign followed by a word or keyword phrase that describes the content. While you can’t use spaces, symbols, or punctuation, you can use numbers. Rather than rehash the topic, here’s how to add a hashtag to your video.
5. Categorise, customise and communicate
Help users find your video by putting it in the right category on YouTube or your channel of choice. For example, YouTube has 15 categories, so make sure you select the one that fits the topic to make it easier to find.
And give users a clue by adding a thumbnail image that relates to the topic and also manages to be attention-grabbing. As well as driving more viewer engagement, the right thumbnail helps drive those all-important search rankings.
One final tip is to increase the accessibility of your content for those who are hearing impaired or speak another language by adding subtitles and closed captions. A little side benefit is that search engines can pick up your transcript as they would the blog content – making it a win-win for everyone.
Just an FYI – in case you thought compost was a rubbish example to use for this blog, there are currently 21,000 videos on YouTube, across 8,100 channels, using the #compost hashtag.