Confessions of a Six Figure Professional Blogger

Does Online Video Sacrifice SEO Benefits?

January 6, 2009 | Feature, Search Engines

I am a big believer that social media (and I’m going to include video and blogs under that header) has gone a long way to make SEO a much less important thing. That said, though, there is no doubt that SEO is still alive and well. Videos, though, aren’t indexable. Are you wasting your SEO efforts by using video?

The answer is no – IF you do it right.

When you post a video, there are two VERY important things that newbies overlook but that are VERY important:

  1. The title given to your video
  2. The description given to your video.

In both your video’s title and your video description, make sure that you use keywords which accurately describe the content of your video. Use keywords which people will search for. Your video will show up in search engines based on this text which accompanies your video.

Also very important:

  1. Put your site’s URL into the video description. All of my Flip Tips have a description which starts with this blog’s URL, almost like a press release would show the city and date before the text of the news story.
  2. When editing your video, make damn sure you put your URL into the video itself. Video holds a user’s attention a lot better than text and you’re wasting a huge opportunity if your URL isn’t in your video.

So, when doing it right, online video HELPS your search engine optimization efforts. Sure, the actual content of your video isn’t indexable (they’ll probably get around that soon), but the text along with your video is. Keep in mind, too, that Youtube is owned by Google so a video with good keywords can show up right in Google’s search results, complete with a video thumbnail.

Now, go make some videos.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

  1. Maximizing Your Online Video Quality [How To]
  2. 10 Point Crash Course in Blog SEO
  3. Using Lynx for SEO
  4. Video: Drugging of Our Children
  5. Don’t Be a Video Spammer – Here’s Why

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  • Great post, David; an oldie but goodie. I recently started a new YouTube YourNetBiz channel; used some of your advice.

    I wonder if Malika had the baby yet... Congrats anyway!

    Best,
    Ana
  • socialmaker
    Online promotion with the aid of online marketing and seo are good ways to promote yourself and your business on the online environment. When it comes to seo services there are only a handful of companies who really know what they're doing. Only these know what content is all about, fixing site issues, URL canoniclization and rewrites and getting you a lot of links. If you want SEO for your site i recommend you search for a good company. Don't let a noname mess up your site !
  • I agree with you, title and descripiton are very important, but i always look at comments also because they can tell you a lot about the video.
  • Ahhh . . . using the url in the description. Brilliant! Thanks!
  • Thanks for the tip about putting your URL in the description --- and I think your right, I am sure they are working on figuring out how to index video.
  • I am on page 1 of youtube, but cant seem to get on page 1 of google. But, I am happy at the moment.

    I do know that google loves quality. So, What I usually do is put whatever my description is in paragraph form. I also mention my keyword as much as possible in the description area and using brackets and what not.
  • I'm new to the video phenomenon, so I'll probably expose my ignorance a bit. But I'm dying to ask a question about writing descriptions for videos. Since the video content isn't indexable, how long would you recommend making those descriptions? Do you usually approach it the way you would long form body copy?
  • Make the video description as long you need it to be to fit what you have to say. There isn't really any set rule about that I know of. I've seen some people put whole articles into their Youtube descriptions. I usually do 2-3 sentences.
  • Video is the future. Plain and simple. Those with the ability will succeed a notch above those who cannot. I visit your site and I'm a subscriber. The videos you post keep me around much longer because you post great videos with great content. I get much better reader reaction with my videos. Videos make my phone ring and I get more e-mails concerning a video. I have a new local site, and I'm receiving interest in locals advertising on my site. Why? The videos I have posted. I have an offline video job because of it. I have watched my videos that I posted on video hosting sites climb the google rankings faster than articles. Just last week I bought a Kodak zi6 so I can shoot quick easy videos on the go and get them posted quickly. It compliments my Canon XH A1. Video SEO is of great interest to me. If you are focusing on any type of niche and not using video, you are missing the boat.
  • I think you do a good combo too of sharing the key info in your posts when you do the videos. Some folks just post a video, but I think your combo-effect is a double whammy.
  • Jon
    We have over 200 3D assembly animations on our WoodMarvels.com site and each time we use TubeMogul we get a great surge in traffic. So far, we have used the same description for all our videos, never considered describing the video there for some reason... will do that from now on!

    Jon
    http://WoodMarvels.com - Create Unique Memories
  • I did this experiment and it was true. What I did was quite similar to SEO by copying the top vids's Title and description, but I did it slightly better.
  • Good points, but not really that surprising. I am doing a lot of video-interviews for the NGN (Dutch Netwerk Pro's, www.ngn.nl) and I'm experimenting with XML-sitemaps for just videos. Seems to be getting more and more important to Google now people are making videos all the time. I'm using Video-sitemap Pro (free) http://www.videositemappro.com/index.html and verify the sitemap by Google via the webmaster-tools from Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

    What are your thoughts on that?
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