Metadata is the organizational information (both visible and hidden) behind digital content that communicates the asset’s structure, administrative info, and description. 

All kinds of files contain metadata: from text documents to MP3s. Computers use this information to understand a file’s details. For web pages and uploaded content, search engines use metadata to organize and align content with relevant search queries. Metadata also details who owns the content and if there are control permissions.

While the idea of metadata may sound complicated, it’s easy for anyone to add metadata to videos — which is a great thing! Video metadata is essential for making videos discoverable through search engines. 

In this post, we’ll discuss the types of metadata, how to add metadata to videos, and how to use video metadata to increase organic traffic. 

What is Video Metadata?

Similar to the traditional card catalog at your local library — used to index and locate library books — video metadata makes it possible for search engines to analyze and understand rich content web pages.

There are many types of metadata. Metadata might describe content, contain user requirements, illustrate the relationship between two files, and more. 

Every web page includes metadata. Page titles, headers, alt text, and descriptions are examples of metadata that search engines use to organize and rank content.

When it comes to adding metadata to videos, there are four main types: title, description, tags, and URL. We’ll discuss how to optimize these later. 

Why is Video Metadata Important?

More and more, Google presents videos for search results — even outside of the Video tab. 

Unlike web pages, which include keyword information, videos rely on metadata to communicate the subject matter. Therefore, metadata is essential for video SEO.

Search engines rely on metadata to categorize digital assets, like videos and images, and correctly display them in searches.

The 3 Major Types of Metadata 

There are many types of technical metadata. Here are the three most common:

• Descriptive: This is a video’s contextual information. The metadata includes title, tags, description, and technical information like runtime, file type, size, or date created. 
• Administrative: This is the comprehensive information on who owns a file and who is permitted access. It may include user requirements, copyright information, rights management, license agreements, and other technical data. 
• Structural: This is organizing metadata that dictates the relationship between assets. Like the chapters of a book or episodes in a series, the structural metadata establishes and maintains these connections (i.e. the pages of a website).

While all forms of metadata are important to the structure, security, and organization of content, descriptive metadata is what we’re most concerned with when optimizing the discoverability of video content. We’ll discuss this next.

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How to Optimize Video Metadata for Search Engines 

Each of your videos should attempt to rank for a specific keyword phrase. To choose the best keyword phrase, research how people search for a particular topic.

1. Verify that the keyword phrase you want to use is receiving significant monthly traffic with Google’s Keyword Planner.
2. Use an Incognito window and search for the keyword phrase. Review the competition. Ensure that the search term produces the expected results and aligns with your target audience.
3. Consider: can you compete with the current search results? Does Google trust your website (authority) or are you still establishing your brand?

   Note: The more general the keyword, the more likely there is significant competition. When answering a more specific query (called a long-tail keyword), you have a better chance of competing with other search results.
   
   Oftentimes, long-tail keywords are specific questions you can answer. These types of keywords may not be as easy to verify with Google’s Keyword Planner. In this case, use Google search to narrow the topic down with “People Also Ask”.

4. Upload the file to your video hosting platform (such as SproutVideo) and include the keyword in the video’s metadata.

How to Optimize Each Type of Video Metadata

As mentioned above, the four types of video metadata that communicate your video’s content to search engines are the title, description, tags, and URL. 

Video Title

This is the first opportunity to include keyword search terms for your video content. Focus on ranking each video for a single general keyword term.

Choose a title that correctly describes the video to encourage longer watch times. Longer watch times tell Google that visitors are engaging with your content, which raises the likelihood it will rank for that search term. 

Note: If you want to ensure your web page (where the video is embedded) can display alongside the video snippet in search results, the video title and page title need to match. For example, if the page title is “How to Make Papier Mâché,” the video title should be the same.

Video Description

The information you include in your video description will display beneath the title in search engine results. The description is another opportunity to add keyword search terms. 

Include keywords closer to the beginning of the description, and concisely explain what people should expect from the video. Try to be as descriptive as possible without abusing keywords. Search engines tend to frown upon keyword overloading.

Video Tags

Much like hashtags on social media, tags (or meta tags) are another way to tell search engines about your content. The tags you create should include keyword search terms that describe your video or organize the content. 

Three to four tags (at most) work best. Keep the tags short and straightforward.

For example, a video on “How to Make Vegan Mac and Cheese” might include the following tags: “vegan recipes,” “vegan mac and cheese,” and “vegan soul food”.

Tags also help you organize your content into categories that viewers can easily search through. Categorical organization becomes more important as your library of content expands. 

Overall, meta tags have less influence than the video title and description in positioning your videos for search engines.

Embedded URL

This may not apply to all videos. However, an embedded video on a web page is affected by the metadata of that page, which includes the URL. Therefore, the page URL should contain the main keyword phrase of the video. 

For example: 

• A page on How to Make Papier Mâché might have a URL of “https://example.com/how-to-make-papier-mache.html”.
• If that page is a broader guide on Papier Mâché that includes a video on How to Make Papier Mâché, the URL might be https://example.com/papier-mache.html”.

For pages with multiple videos, the video you want to rank for that page should be the closest to the top of the page. Its title should be the same as the page title as well. 

How to View, Edit & Add Metadata to Videos 

The video metadata you need to optimize for search engines is visible metadata. On the SproutVideo platform, this information is easily edited in the settings for each video. 

Whichever platform you use for video hosting, the title, description, and tags are generally easy to locate when editing a video’s settings. In most instances, you can view the metadata for each video’s settings as well. 

How to Add Metadata to Your Videos

Most video hosting platforms let you add or edit your video’s metadata directly within the video details page. In the SproutVideo platform, simply click on the video title to edit its settings.  

How to View the Metadata of a Video File

You can access your video metadata directly on your computer without third-party apps or tools.

• For Windows, right-click the file and select Properties, then Details. 
• For Mac, right-click the file and select Get Info. 

In both cases, the file type will limit what information can be changed. 

For more complex metadata information, you may need a metadata editor. However, you can likely use your video editing software to edit your video’s metadata. 

How to Index Your Videos (Don’t Skip This Step!)

Finally, it’s time to tell search engines about your content with a video sitemap. This step tells search engines to crawl your website and index the content you upload. 

Video sitemaps are common, but they can be tricky to create and maintain. If you’re a SproutVideo user, you’re in luck! 

• For our hosted video website users, we automatically create a video sitemap and submit it to Google and other search engines for you. 
• For other SproutVideo users, we make it easy to create and submit a sitemap. Once submitted, we keep it updated as you continue to add more content to your library. 

In other words, we ensure search engines know about your new content. For complete instructions on how to set up your video sitemap, follow these steps at Video Sitemaps for SEO.

The Benefits of Structured Data: JSON-LD

Structured data is often called the language of search engines. JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD), specifically, is the structured data that Google recognizes. This makes it highly valuable schema to include on your website. 

JSON-LD can be included on webpages without disrupting the HTML, as it includes no HTML itself. It can also be added to any part of the page, not just within the <body> of the website. You can use this free tool to easily generate the JSON-LD data needed for your page!

One of the major beenfits of JSON-LD for search engine optimization (SEO) is that Google uses this data to create rich snippets when presenting your content in search results. This might include your website logo, social proof (such as product review stars), and more. 

Overall, structured data allows search engines to more easily understand, organize, and connect the elements of a page. This, in turn, improves search engine visibility and enhances a website’s overall performance. 

Note: SproutVideo customers who use our hosted video websites can skip this step. We automatically submit video sitemaps and include JSON-LD data. Simply upload your content and add the metadata information.

Expand Organic Reach with Video Metadata

The short and sweet of video metadata is that it allows you to rank videos with search engines like Google. Video metadata creates a strong video marketing strategy, wherein the people looking for your content can organically discover it. 

It’s not always possible to predict how well a video will rank with search engines. However, the instructions in this blog post provide best practices for video metadata to give your video content an SEO advantage. You can improve the reach of your content even more with these SEO tips.

The post What is Video Metadata and How Do I Use It? appeared first on SproutVideo.

1. Skipping the Technical Side of SEO

Video sitemaps, metadata, and structured data are essential for search engines to locate and index your video content correctly. Video is a unique content type that search engines can’t scan and read like text, or increasingly, images.

If you don’t take the time to update your page with the right metadata or create a video sitemap, you risk missing out on many of the video SEO benefits we’ve laid out in this article.

2. Multiple Videos Per Page

You might be thinking, “Well, if one video is great for SEO, why not add more?” 

More video does not necessarily equal more organic traffic to your page. In fact, if you have lots of videos on the page, it can have the opposite effect.

Search engines will usually only highlight the first video on your page in search results. Therefore, adding more videos to the page will not help your website stand out to people conducting searches online.

Also, if you have multiple videos, you risk slowing down your page. To be clear, you would have to have dozens of videos for this to be a significant page load speed factor, but it is something to keep in mind nonetheless.

If you’re looking to add that much video content, the focus of the page comes into question. Are you really just addressing one topic? The site visitor experience will suffer if your page is sprawling and disorganized, and you’ll see your bounce rate go up.

You are likely better off creating dedicated pages for each topic than trying to cram it all into one massive page. That way, each video can be indexed correctly against the most relevant search terms.

3. Adding Low-Quality Video

While adding video is almost always a plus for SEO, that won’t hold true if you don’t invest in your video content. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend a fortune on every video. It’s very possible to make a compelling video without a large budget. 

What it really means is taking the time to think through your message and goals for the video. Who is the intended audience? What do you want them to walk away with?

Ensuring your answers to those questions are crystal clear will help you produce quality, engaging how-to content for viewers.

Of course, production value does count. For tips on improving your videos, check out our How To Video series.

4. Skimping on Surrounding Text

While it’d be nice to be able to just share a video on your blog with little to no text, and still rank for search terms, that’s pretty unlikely. The surrounding content is very important to your overall SEO profile.

Your page should be descriptive and include relevant content that helps visitors understand the topic you’re addressing. Especially for how-to videos, visitors should be able to follow all the steps in the video without actually watching it.

Why? There are several reasons. Everyone has different learning styles. Some people may not want to watch any videos at all, and prefer to read instructions instead. By including written content as well as a video, you’re helping to ensure that everyone visiting your page will find it useful, not just those who choose to watch a video. This is key for earning shares and backlinks to your page.

In addition, you’re likely to improve your keyword density for related search terms when you add written content. That way, search engines will know your page is a thorough resource focused on a particular topic. In turn, that will increase your chances of ranking highly for your targeted keywords. 

5. Only Optimizing for Search Engines

At the end of the day, real human beings are the ones who will judge your content and deem it useful or forgettable, not Google. If you only optimize against search engine requirements for your page, you’re unlikely to wind up with an enjoyable user experience.

It’s true that SEO has become more human-centric in recent years. For example, the changes to standards for mobile, page load speeds, and pop-ups are all reflect and encourage a better user experience online. However, there is still a difference between what matters to people, and what matters to algorithms. 

Knowing your audience, and creating great content for them, is key to video marketing. The SEO should follow.

6. Creating Overly Similar Content

Maybe you really like a particular subject, a lot. That doesn’t mean you should flood the airwaves of the Internet with video after video on the same topic.

If it were up to Google, each page of your website would have one clear purpose, and be distinct from all your other pages. You should approach your video content in a similar manner. 

Each video you create for SEO purposes should be focused narrowly on answering a specific question. It should address a particular need of your audience.

If your content overlaps significantly, you run the risk of competing against yourself for backlinks and shares. Those remain important ranking factors for search results.

7. Assuming Video SEO is “One and Done”

For video SEO to be effective, the simple truth is that you can’t just create one video, put it on your homepage, and call it a day. It’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll move the needle in terms of organic traffic with just a single video. 

When done correctly, video SEO increases your visibility for targeted search terms. So, why stop at just one or two keywords? By implementing video more broadly into your marketing content, you’ll build significantly more organic traffic over time.

8. Only Sharing on YouTube

YouTube definitely has a role to play in video marketing. As a social network, it’s ideal for reaching a really large audience, whether through paid video ads or viral moments. 

However, when it comes to video SEO, YouTube can actually steal your thunder. While it’s free to use, YouTube makes you pay by branding the player, and actively driving traffic back to YouTube by showing ads or related videos before, during, or after your video plays. After putting lots of effort into optimizing your page for SEO, it’s a big mistake to use a player that is purposely designed to drive traffic off your site.

9. Not Actively Promoting Your Content

The beauty of organic traffic is that once you’ve earned it, it will continue to build over time at no extra cost out of pocket. However, the key takeaway here is that you do need to earn it.

Outreach is an essential part of search marketing. By engaging with other experts, thought leaders, and renowned resources online, you can build not just backlinks, but your network of expertise.

When done correctly, you’ll have more places to turn when you need a quote for an article, or help replacing a broken link.

10. Ignoring Images

Your video is unlikely to be the only media on the page. The header image, your video’s poster frame, and any other images that help break up the content and enhance the user’s experience shouldn’t be overlooked.

While it’s important to include images for the reasons above, adjusting your alt text is highly recommended as well. Alt text, or alternative text, is an attribute applied within the <img> HTML code and is used to describe the contents of the image. When done correctly, this improves the chances of your images appearing in search results, which ultimately improves the page’s SEO ranking.

SEO can be the gift that keeps on giving when all the proper steps are taken. If you have any additional tips and tricks on maximizing the effects of video SEO, let us know in the comments below.

The post Ten Common Video SEO Pitfalls to Avoid appeared first on SproutVideo.

Today, we’re cutting through the noise to look at a proven, evergreen method for driving organic traffic to your site that you can easily replicate for your company. It’s all about how-to video content. Here’s a deep-dive into why it’s such an effective SEO strategy, and how to use it to attract your target audience.

Why ‘How To’ Video Content Works So Well For SEO

The “why” is truly simple. The first thing people tend to do when they don’t know how to tackle a problem is to search for an answer online. By providing those answers, you can attract organic traffic to your site.

This strategy has a lot of appeal. For starters, when offering solutions, you can plug relevant products and services. And, you not only have the opportunity to improve your brand recognition, you can position yourself as a thought leader to boot. Finally, by solving an issue for your audience, you’re providing value, which improves brand affinity and helps establish your website as a useful resource online. 

Why Adding Video Boosts This Strategy

You might be thinking that you could just write out answers in a text-based article and call it a day. However, adding video provides specific SEO benefits that you would otherwise miss out on.

Video Helps With Onsite SEO

Searches that begin with “how to…” signal a specific type of search intent. A search engine choosing which content to deliver for that type of query will be looking for certain attributes in the results.

A thorough, structured article that fully answers the targeted question is definitely a cornerstone of this strategy. If you also include multimedia, your page stands a better chance of being ranked highly by search engines. Adding video indicates that your page is high quality and is likely to be more useful to visitors than pages without video content. 

Including video also enables you to enhance your keyword strategy by optimizing all the video metadata on the page. That will help improve your keyword density and overall relevancy to your targeted keyword phrases.

And, a video sitemap can help your page get indexed against specific search terms. It also increases the likelihood your site will appear in multiple search listing tabs for a query (example below).

While video metadata and sitemaps sound very technical, here is a video guide that shows just how easy it is to set them up using SproutVideo’s built-in SEO tools:

Finally, video also helps improve average time on page, which sends a signal back to search engines that visitors are finding useful information there. By providing engaging video content, you’re reducing the chances they’ll quickly scan your article sections and bounce.

From our own blog, of our top twenty-five articles for organic traffic, nine include original video content. The average time on page is 17% higher on average for those articles.

Video Helps With Offsite SEO

A solid backlink strategy is an essential part of growing your organic traffic. Video content can help with that because it is highly shareable. It adds an engaging, personal touch and boosts the perceived value of your page.

If your article and video are high quality, you’re more likely to earn backlinks to your content because other websites will link to it as a resource in their own articles. Of course, outreach is always recommended as part of your backlink campaign efforts.

Video Helps Your Search Visibility

Of course, the number one goal is to appear at the top of the first page out of all results on Google. However, using multimedia in your content helps improve your visibility beyond page one.

Here’s an example from our own blog, where we are currently ranked in the number two spot for “studio lighting best practices” in the All Results tab in Google:

However, if you click over to the Videos tab, we are in the number one spot:

And we’re also ranked number one for the image results as well:

This example shows that by adding rich content to your article, you can improve the overall visibility of your website across the different types of search results. In turn, that increases the chances someone will click through to your website.

So how can you get this to work for your website? The trick is knowing which questions to answer, and doing it in a way that stands out from the crowd of other answers.

Which How To’s Are Right For You?

There are endless options for the types of questions you could answer for your audience. So how do you know which are worth spending your time on?

It’s important to pick a subject that is closely related to your business. It’ll be easier to grow leads and sales from that traffic if your site visitors are ultimately looking for answers related to something you offer.

Inspiration can come from many places. Check your customer support channels to see what types of pre-sales or implementation questions people have before signing up. Or, look at competitors and thought leaders in your space to see which subjects they’re addressing. Events and conferences can also provide ideas. Check the topics of keynotes to see what’s top of mind for industry experts.

Once you’ve got some ideas, there are a few key factors you have to consider when planning your video SEO strategy. First up is your authority on the topic, next is search volume and relevancy to your target audience, then the search intent of the user, and finally, your competition.

Authority

When deciding which results to show on the first page, Google and other search engines try to determine which sites can be considered an authority on a given topic. In this context, authority is another word for expert, or thought leader.

It’s important to play to your strengths. If your company is uniquely positioned as an authority on a subject, even if it’s fairly specific, you can attract a lot of organic traffic by focusing on that niche.

If you’re just starting out, you can build authority by publishing consistently on a given subject, and earning backlinks from other websites with content on the same topic. Featuring or linking out to other experts and high authority websites is another tactic to try.

There are very few shortcuts to building authority. Usually, it just takes time and sustained effort.

Volume and Relevancy

The next factor to consider is the search volume for your target key phrases, and their relevancy to your audience. The goal is to ensure you’ll actually hit your mark when producing your content. After all, if your area of expertise is not relevant to your target audience, or is something hardly anyone searches for online, it won’t be worth producing videos about it.

Usually, it’s a bit of a trade off. Typically, you’ll find that search volume is lower for “long tail” and highly specific keywords, but the relevancy will be high for certain segments of your audience. Conversely, search volume will be higher for broader, shorter phrases, but the relevancy to your specific audience will be lower.

For example, searching for the term “home repair” will deliver very broad results online. In contrast, searching for “how to repair windows” will deliver much more targeted results. Although more people search for “home repair” in total, if you are selling window repair services, you’re much better off optimizing against the more narrow term to reach your target audience.

Ideally, you’ll identify a topic that fits your expertise, with sufficient search traffic from your targeted audience.

Search Intent

In the past few years, Google has changed up its algorithm significantly to reflect the ultimate goal of the user typing the query. Today, search intent is one of the biggest ranking factors for SEO. 

For example, if someone searches for a specific product, Google understands they are likely shopping or looking for reviews. If someone starts a search with “how to…” Google knows they are looking for guides and step-by-step articles. The results pages will reflect that. 

The key here is framing. How you frame your content around your chosen key phrases has to match the intent Google understands for that search. If there is a mismatch between the search intent and the type of page you’ve built, your chances of ranking are very low.

Basically, your blog post about your product is unlikely to rank for a search to buy that product. Your product landing page will rank instead. Your homepage is unlikely to rank for comparison research. And so on.

When researching your how-to topic, make sure your content is a close match to the intent of the search. You’re not necessarily trying to imitate the other results, just making sure your page will be a fit for that particular type of search. By focusing on the ultimate goal of the person you are trying to reach, you’ll be much more likely to get it right.

Competition

With SEO, your competition might not come from other companies you actively compete with for customers. It comes from other websites that have already published content on a subject that’s ranked highly by search engines.

When planning your content, start by searching the Internet using phrases your audience is likely to use when researching a question related to your niche. What does the first page of results look like? What kind of content is being displayed?

Ideally, you’re looking for results that indicate low competition for that particular key phrase. Low competition is usually evidenced by sites with low authority being ranked for the term, content that is inaccurate, outdated, or no longer being updated, or content that could easily be improved upon by a new or more thorough approach.

You can also use tools specifically built for this purpose to evaluate ranking competition for keywords. We use Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner, but there are many other options out there. 

Although low competition is ideal, it’s somewhat rare for search terms that aren’t incredibly specific. Of course, you can successfully target high competition search terms with your video content. You just have to ensure you’re offering something better and differentiated compared to existing search results.

Where To Share

To maximize the benefits of your how-to video SEO strategy, you should share your video content on your own website. And, use a professional video hosting platform with built-in SEO tools to host and embed your videos. 

The best place for how-to video content is usually a blog or a knowledge base, but it could live elsewhere on your site. It really depends on the type of content you produce, and the layout of your website. Then, be sure to take these four steps for technical SEO.

1. Make sure the page on which you’re embedding video is indexable by Google and other search engines.
2. Update or create a video sitemap. This is where all the video metadata lives, and will make it easy for search engines to find it. 
3. Add any relevant open graph tags to encourage sharing and help with backlinks.
4. Use structured data to enhance how your content appears in search results.

To build on that last point, you can either follow the guidelines for structuring “how-to” content (if your article is a series of sequential steps to achieve a specific task) or for video (applies more generally to video content), whichever is a better fit.

We have a guide with seventeen video SEO best practices if you want to take things even further.

Measuring Success

Unless you have a perfect understanding of Google’s algorithm, you’re not always going to get this right (even Google doesn’t). Despite your best efforts, not all of your how-to content will rank as highly as you’d like. And, search trends can change over time. A post that doesn’t rank initially can suddenly start attracting a lot of traffic, while a popular one can fall out of favor.

The key to success is to get the fundamentals right, and make a sustained effort to improve over time. Track your results to see what is working, and where you can improve. 

Ideally, you’ll start to see patterns like this chart, taken from one of our own blog posts about color grading in Adobe Premiere Pro:

At first, this post did not attract much in the way of organic traffic. However, around October of 2019, it started to gain some traction. Finally, in February, right after we redesigned our blog, it really started to take off.

This illustrates why you can’t just publish one how-to and call it a day. If we’d only made this one post, we might not consider our strategy to be much of a success. However, by targeting multiple niche queries with compelling how-to video content, you can see how the organic traffic really starts to add up.

Have you had recent success with video SEO? Share your tips in the comments below, or ask questions to get expert advice!

The post Why How-To Video Content is SEO Gold appeared first on SproutVideo.

You could say that this makes life hard for video professionals, but we’re glass-half-full people here at SproutVideo! A truly memorable intro is a great opportunity to make a killer first impression, and set yourself apart from the rest.

In this post, we’re going to share actionable tips on what to do during those crucial first few seconds to make your viewers sit up and pay attention.

1. Move quickly.

This is so important it’s worth repeating – video drives engagement. A creative, interesting video will not only grab viewers’ attention, it will hold it. But, how do you get there?

Within the first segment of the video, focus on the hook. The intro to your video should immediately make viewers want to watch more.

Emotions are the key to a making viewers want to keep watching. Trigger an emotional response early in the video to pique their interest.

2. Choose a snappy title.

Some people find it easy to choose a snappy title, others take a little longer. If you fall into the second category, don’t panic! Research keywords to come up with some great ideas and optimize your video for Google searches.

Avoid vague titles in favor of titles that are descriptive – viewers want to know what they’re going to watch. To learn more about why video titles are important, read our post What is Video Metadata and How Do I Use It?

3. Make your thumbnail stand out.

Along with the video’s title, an outstanding poster frame will tempt viewers to stop and watch. The thumbnail should be brand-specific, so the audience knows they’re about to learn something about your organization. The image should also be HD – poor quality image could reflect badly on the quality of your video. Carry out A/B testing to ensure you’ve chosen the most effective image possible.

4. Pay attention to picture and sound quality.

Are the sound and video quality optimal? It’s unlikely viewers will stop to watch a poor quality marketing video. It also risks creating a negative first impression of your brand. Learn more about video quality (and the actions you can take) in Does Video Quality Matter?

5. Get to the point.

Your audience is much more interested in hearing what your brand can do for them, rather than how great you are. Let them tell others about your organization or product by producing an engaging, shareable video. If you want, you can use the description of the video, or other content on the landing page, to introduce your brand and provide more detail there.

6. Connect with viewers by being relatable.

Understanding your customer demographic will help you create videos they can relate to. We’ve put everything you need to know about relating to your viewers in our post How to Charm Your Audience.

7. Can you work with an influencer?

Most people don’t want a company to tell them what to buy. But, they will stop what they’re doing, watch, and trust a video featuring an influencer.

In fact, 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement. VIP influencer marketing generally requires deep pockets and friends in high places, so most brands work with influencers who have made their name on social media. Our blog Five Ways to Supercharge Your Campaigns with Influencer Video Marketing explains how to work with an influencer in your next video.

8. Keep the 8 second rule in mind.

When time is of the essence, you need to turn to video. It’s the ideal medium to strike up a conversation with your target market. Every single second matters, so spend time editing to ensure that the introduction really counts. The important information should be included in the first eight seconds: a killer hook, your company or branding, and value proposition.

9. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

People are forgetful. Almost 40% of Americans have forgotten one basic piece of information or lost one everyday item in the past week! For video marketers, this means that saying something once – especially if it’s a key piece of information – isn’t enough. The names of the product and brand should be repeated throughout the video, in as natural as way as possible. Including a call to action at the start and the end of the video is a good strategy.

10. It’s all about YOU.

A 2017 study showed that using the word ‘you’ in the first five seconds of a video will have a massive impact on views. In fact, videos that contained the word ‘you’ twice in the first five seconds had view counts that were 97% higher than videos that did not use this word. This research was carried out on YouTube videos, but it can’t hurt to use the findings in videos hosted on other platforms!

11. Mix it up.

If someone watches the first few seconds of your video, they should get the most important message, but what about the rest? All the content in your video is vital, can you really afford for your audience to miss out?

Recycle what you can. If you have lots of b-roll, see if you can use this to repackage the video. Head over to our blog 25 Cool Places and Spaces to Shoot B-Roll for interesting ideas. If you’ve included slides in your video, be sure to use these in other videos in this campaign.

Takeaways

Holding your viewers’ concentration is difficult, but not impossible. By ensuring that every aspect of your videos is engaging, relatable, and tailored to the interests of your customer base, it is possible to hook your audience. And now congratulate yourself for concentrating right to the end of this post!

If you have any tips on using video to grab customers’ attention, share them below or on Twitter!

The post Stop Right There! 11 Easy Ways to Grab Your Viewers’ Attention appeared first on SproutVideo.

1. Keyword Strategy

To get started with video SEO, you need to first identify your target keywords, because that will help shape your content and a lot of the other elements on the page.

The strategy element has to do with the level of competition you are facing when selecting your keywords. If competition is low for a given keyword, you won’t have a particularly hard time if you optimize against just that keyword outright.

That’s rarely the case, however. In all likelihood, you’ll have to use longer phrases that often have less search volume, but also much less competition, making it easier to rank for those adjacent keywords.

Start by identifying the main keyword that you’d like to target, and expand from there. If you’re having trouble thinking of synonyms or longtail keyword phrases, use a website like LSIGraph to get inspiration.

Using Adwords for Video SEO

Another tool that can come in handy is Adwords’ Keyword Planner. You can use it to identify keywords that have a significant volume of monthly searches, and ideally, low competition. Don’t panic if your keyword is showing high competition, it just means it might take longer to rise through the ranks, or you might have to try additional tactics to succeed.

To use the Keyword Planner, log into your Adwords account and navigate to Tools. From there, select Keyword Planner. If you need ideas for new keywords to include, use the first option, “Find new keywords and get search volume data.” If you just want to analyze your existing keywords, use the second option, “Get Search Volume Data and Trends.”

Be sure to adjust your geographic targeting to match the location of your desired audience. Also, add negative keywords to refine your results further, especially if an adjacent or synonymous keyword is typically used for a totally different product or service. The more precise your results, the better your keyword strategy will be.

If you don’t have Adwords, you could check out Keyword.io, which is similar.

The goal here isn’t to come up with a giant list of all possible keywords. You want to find a short list of targeted keywords, ideally with high search volume and low competition, that your audience is likely to use when searching for something closely related to the topic your video addresses.

2. Optimize Content for Keywords

Next, ensure your video, its title, tags, description, and other content on your video landing page, contain the keyword(s) you are targeting. Use them in natural human-readable sentences or phrases. Keyword-stuffing, where you cram as many keywords into a piece of content as possible, is detrimental to video SEO, so be sure to steer clear of that.

For example, if you wanted to create a page for a video of a banana bread recipe you created, you’d want to use variations of the phrase “banana bread recipe” in different ways on the page. The title of the video could be “My Famous Banana Bread Recipe” and the description could be “Is this the easiest banana bread recipe ever? Or, the tastiest quick bread you can make, with healthy fruits and nuts, in only half an hour? See for yourself.”

The right amount of content to include on the page depends on your particular page layout and goals for the video, so there’s no reason to go overboard if you don’t want to.

3. Hosting Provider

When selecting a video hosting provider for your business, especially if improving SEO is your ultimate aim, you’ll want to steer clear of platforms that try to direct viewers back to their websites to view related content, or to view your video there instead of on your website.

Platforms that do this include Vimeo, Youtube and, increasingly, Facebook. Professional video hosting platforms, like SproutVideo, don’t do this, and provide SEO tools to help you optimize your videos to boot.

The reason using a free provider isn’t recommended for SEO has to do with their outsize ranking authority. If your video exists both on their platform and on your website, you don’t stand much of a chance of outranking it with your own website, even for your own video.

The best course of action would be to select a professional video hosting provider with built-in SEO tools that focuses on business needs. For instance, SproutVideo puts you in control of your content, and has SEO tools to help you ensure your site ranks for your content to boot.

4. Video Sitemaps

Video sitemaps are like a signpost pointing search engines to where your rich content lives. A properly formatted video sitemap is a big piece of the SEO puzzle to help your video content rank properly for your targeted keywords.

If you’re using one of SproutVideo’s video websites for sharing your content, you don’t have to worry about a video sitemap because we’ve already taken care of that for you automatically.

If you’re embedding video on your website, you’ll want to create a video sitemap and submit it to search engines. We have a detailed guide to creating a video sitemap and submitting it to search engines in our help section.

5. Metatags

The more you tell search engines about your website and rich content, the better. This allows you to control how your content is displayed in search results.

If you use your target keyword in each element for the page, that will reinforce the relevance of the page for that term. This is where metatags come in.

Otherwise, search engines will essentially guess what the page is about, and which pieces of rich content should be displayed in snippets returned in search results.

The most well-known metatags are title, description and tags, but Google actually supports a lot more than that for video content specifically:

Required Properties (source: Google)

• name: Text, required. The title of the video.
• Description: Text, required. The description of the video.
• thumbnailUrl: URL, required. A URL pointing to the video thumbnail image file. Images must be at least 160×90 pixels and at most 1920×1080 pixels. We recommend images in .jpg, .png, or .gif formats. All image URLs should be crawlable and indexable. Otherwise, we will not be able to display them on the search results page.
• uploadDate: Date, required. The date the video was first published, in ISO 8601 format.

For the full list of supported properties, and guides to implementing them on the page, please visit Google’s documentation for optimizing video content for search.

6. Open Graph Tags

Similar to metatags, Open Graph tags (OG tags) are used by social networks to understand your video content. OG tags ensure the right title, description, image and video appear in the timeline when your video is being shared by users.

Social sharing of the page containing your video isn’t the same as earning quality backlinks to the page. However, social sharing is increasingly a factor for video SEO because it sends positive signals to search engines about the popularity of the page.

If you’re using SproutVideo for your video website or landing pages, you don’t have to do anything to optimize your videos for social sharing. We’ve already taken care of all necessary OG tags for you.

OG tags should be implemented in the header of your HTML for the page. Here’s a great guide from Facebook to implementing OG tags correctly for your video.

7. Mobile-Friendly Design

The most recent Google algorithm update focused heavily on mobile users. A major change was to start penalizing websites with aggressive pop-ups because it interferes with mobile users’ experience when visiting the page.

Luckily, it’s easy to avoid using these types of pop-ups on the page containing your videos. Just don’t do it.

If you still want to capture leads on the page with your video, you can require an email address to view your video. Alternatively, you could use a post-play screen to display any sort of lead capture form, or to drive traffic to a landing page of your choice, among other options.

Another important factor for mobile users is responsive content, meaning images and videos automatically resize to the fit the screen your viewer is using.

If you’re using SproutVideo to host your videos, you can easily generate a responsive video embed code by simply checking a box. Also, all of the themes for our video websites are responsive, so you don’t have to do anything if you’re using one to share your content.

If you’re not using SproutVideo, it’s still easy to make your videos responsive on the page. Everyone on a small screen will thank you.

8. Site Load Speed

No one wants to be watching the clock while trying to load a webpage. A speedy experience is best, and Google rewards fast sites with higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is another piece of the argument against hosting your own videos. When you work with a video hosting platform for business, you benefit from the fact that they continually optimize their player and video delivery method to ensure fast load times on the page.

When you’re self-hosting, you might struggle to get all of that right.

9. Captions

Generating closed captions, also known as subtitles, for a video not only improves the accessibility of your content, but can also help improve SEO. Accessibility of content is increasingly a factor in search rankings, and not just for mobile users.

Beyond accessibility, subtitles and captions help viewers process the information being presented in the video, even if they are playing your video without sound. This increases engagement, leading to more time on page and a higher likelihood that your content might be shared. All of that sends positive signals back to search engines about the relevancy of the page, while also extending your reach and potentially resulting in quality backlinks to the page.

10. Pre-Play Image

Selecting the right poster frame or thumbnail image for your video can greatly impact the likelihood that a visitor to the page will click play and watch it. A poster frame or thumbnail image is the image that is displayed in the video player before your video starts to play.

While setting the poster frame for your video doesn’t directly impact SEO, picking the right one will help drive engagement on the page. Getting visitors to stick around and interact with your content increases the likelihood they will share it or link to it on another site. It also helps search engines evaluate the relevancy of the page for a specific search term.

A still from the video can be effective, and most video hosting platforms will generate one for you automatically. SproutVideo does this during the encoding process.

If you choose to make a custom poster frame image instead, consider using a human face (especially a happy one) in the image to help attract attention to the video.

11. Limit Videos Per Page

Adding multiple videos to one webpage is problematic for video SEO for several reasons. It dilutes the focus of the page, which leads to a broader keyword strategy, and makes it harder to optimize for video SEO in general. It can also impact page load speeds depending on how you implemented the videos on the page. Finally, a page dedicated to one specific topic is arguably more likely to earn backlinks because it answers one or two specific questions.

Ideally, each page should address one specific topic, and contain multimedia content to enrich the experience of visitors to the page. This means using not only video, but SEO-optimized images to support the text on the page.

One video per page is a good rule of thumb. This allows you to focus your keyword strategy for each individual page, and will ensure speedy page load times.

12. Easy Sharing

Once a viewer has finished watching your video, you’ll want to encourage them to share it to expand your reach and help drive more traffic to your page. Whether it’s on social, as an embed code, or via email, getting viewers to share your video will help bolster your video SEO beyond your on-the-page optimizations.

If you’re using SproutVideo to host your videos, you can enable sharing options through the video player, and on your video landing page. If you’re sharing your videos through a 3rd party hosting provider, like WordPress or Squarespace, widgets or plugins will be the easiest route to enable easy sharing.

13. Backlink Outreach

Video SEO is not just about passively attracting organic traffic. Actively seeking backlinks to your content is part of the puzzle for a well-rounded video SEO profile.

To create backlinks to your content, you can selectively answer relevant questions on Quora, reddit, or other online communities focused on the topic your video addresses. Make sure you are adding value and are participating respectfully in online discussions. Spammy contributions will not benefit your video SEO.

Reaching out to influencers in the space is another tactic that can be time-consuming, but rewarding when done effectively. Find people who create or share similar content, and reach out via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin. Be transparent about why you are doing so, and focus on building the relationship over anything else. Even if they don’t circulate this video in particular, they might share something down the road.

Also, be generous in turn by sharing content you curate from other influential sources. This should only be done in a genuine manner, and giving proper credit is always required. By sharing other people’s content, you might just make them slightly more likely to share yours down the road.

14. Share with Online Communities

Outside of your backlink strategy, you can help increase the distribution of your video by sharing it with different online communities. For instance, search for a relevant group on Facebook or Linkedin, and share a link to your video in a contextual and relevant manner. Again, a spammy strategy here is only likely to backfire.

15. Evergreen Content

Once your video is up and circulating, make sure it provides enduring value by revisiting it periodically. Keep the content relevant by updating it for current events, and tweak the images or the video itself as needed.

Treat it more like a product than just another post, and you’ll increase the likelihood it will remain relevant over time.

16. Keep Up With SEO Changes

Video SEO is not a “set it and forget it” marketing strategy. The rules of SEO change over time, so it’s imperative to keep up with best practices.

Make sure your outbound links are still valid, since sometimes other sites change their structure, or even shut down. This will help ensure your content remains helpful and provides value to visitors.

You’ll also want to monitor your backlink profile for any issues as it evolves over time.

17. Analyze Results

If video SEO is done correctly, you’ll see a traffic pattern similar to this one. This example is taken from our very own blog:

Over time, organic traffic to the post has increased more than 8X on a monthly basis. This longevity adds significantly to the value provided by the post, and shows the importance of creating valuable content.

Google Analytics is a free and easy to use platform. You can implement Google Analytics with a SproutVideo website or landing page easily. You can also use it on a website hosted by a third party provider.

To check your organic traffic, navigate to Search Console on the lefthand side, and select Landing Pages. From there, you can filter Impressions and Clicks to identify top-performing pages, or those that could use improvement.

Alternatively, you can navigate to Channels under Acquisition, and pick Organic Search to analyze that traffic in the report. Then, pick Landing Pages as your primary dimension. Finally, you can sort by Sessions or other variables to determine your top performing pages.

Do you have any video SEO tips to add to this list? We’re all ears! Let us know in the comments below.

The post 17 Video SEO Best Practices appeared first on SproutVideo.

Organic VS Social Discovery

Originally, social networks were all about what people you knew directly were up to, and wanted to share about their personal lives. That remains somewhat true (ask anyone in their 30s about baby pictures in their timelines), but the focus has shifted.

Largely in-step with ad dollars, more of a focus is now on the type of content that can be publicly shared, and sponsored. Meaning, more news and entertainment, and less personal “what did I just eat” types of updates.

This has also meant better tools for content discovery within social networks. Twitter has always been about public content and hashtags. Recent new features go even further in this direction, making it easier to keep up with trending topics and breaking news.

Similarly, Facebook has been making an ongoing effort to improve content discovery on it platform as well. They introduced trending content, and new tools for video in particular. Facebook also recently launched enhanced search functionalities, positioning it more directly in competition with YouTube and Google. The results? Video now extends your organic reach more than any other content type on Facebook.

Social Signals in Search

Concurrently, search engines have been tweaking their algorithms to discern the quality of content online. The end goal is to ensure the results delivered for a given search are targeted and relevant to the searcher. Whether or not the popularity of content on social platforms is a direct factor in search rankings has been under debate for a while. Some data shows its relevant strength might be increasing over time.

Also, more public content shared on social networks is appearing in organic search results. Tweets have been appearing on mobile search in the Google App for a while, but were recently added to desktop search results too.

Public content on Facebook can be indexed and reported in search results. However, it appears to be in Facebook’s best interests to maintain more walls between content on its platform and search engines given the privacy its users expect. It will be interesting to watch this growing overlap evolve over time.

From this perspective, we appear to be trending towards a world where social reach is getting bigger and better, and profoundly influencing organic search results as well.

What Does This Mean For You?

Optimizing your videos for search now also means optimizing them for social. Don’t just think about Google, think about Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms too. This will change the titles you use for your videos, and increases the importance of following best practices for video metadata and social sharing tools.

You will likely want to increase the amount of text you use in your videos too. This will make them more accessible when they autoplay silently in timelines.

Also, instead of depending on people searching specifically for the keywords you’re targeting, social sharing of video lets your audience do the heavy lifting for you. Instead of just search, it’s about discovery and referral, too.

As an added bonus, people watching your videos on social might be more likely to have confidence what you have to say. That’s because they discovered your video from a source that they know and trust (a friend).

For platforms, this means they can charge more for this kind of advertising, because it’s likely to be very successful. For marketers, it will be important to stay on top of the data and ahead of the curve as different options on these platforms evolve. That way, you can be sure to continue to benefit from these changes.

How to Take Advantage of These Social Search Trends

Creating shareable content means creating an emotional connection with your viewers. Whether you inspire laughter, empathy, or even anger, people will be more likely to share your content if they respond to it on an emotional level.

It’s all about grabbing attention, too. You only have a handful of seconds to convince people to watch your video, so use them wisely. Clever video editing, intrigue, humor, or boatloads of personality can all help.

As mentioned about, consider optimizing your videos for playing with no audio. Use text or dramatic editing techniques to get viewers past the initial few seconds. This will also prompt them to tap and listen to your video. For more on hooking viewers without sound, read more on how to make a compelling video without sound on the SproutVideo blog.

It also definitely makes sense to ensure your videos are easy to share. Make sure the video hosting platform you use for your videos supports open graph tags and integrations with different social sharing platforms. This will help any viewers on your video landing pages share your videos with ease.

How are you optimizing your videos for social discovery? Leave us a comment or tweet it to us!

The post Social Video is the New Video SEO appeared first on SproutVideo.

The phrase ‘content is king’ has gone undisputed for several years now, and for good reason. Inbound marketing and SEO strategies have been very successful for many companies. However, customers today expect marketing to be timely, personalized, and helpful. If you miss the mark, you might not get another shot to capture their attention.

Not surprisingly, many companies are choosing to automate their marketing campaigns to ensure they are on target with their messaging to consumers. To stand out from the competition, and engage their audience, many are also finding video to be a really important tool in their arsenal.

If you’re looking to engage more prospects and drive a higher ROI, keep reading to learn how to enhance your automated marketing campaigns with video.

What is Automated Marketing?

In its most basic form, automated marketing refers to a system that ensures timely actions are taken in response to specific behavior exhibited by a prospect or customer. It can be as simple as sending a follow up email after someone signs up for a service online. Or, it can be a sophisticated, multi-layered approach to nurture leads and move prospects through the different stages of a purchase decision.

Automated marketing offers many benefits compared to traditional, hands-on marketing. A major advantage is that when an automated campaign is setup correctly, fewer leads will fall through the cracks. Theoretically, that means more people will ultimately purchase your products.

It also takes tremendous time-pressure off of marketers. After the initial campaign creation, minor tweaks and revisions are all that is required to keep the marketing machine ticking along and building on past successes. Campaigns that are created on a one-off basis are also arguably more prone to human error when compared to a system that is designed, tested, and refined over time.

How Video Can Accelerate Automated Marketing Campaigns

Automated marketing campaigns can be used for many different aims. A popular approach is to target messaging to prospects as they move through different stages of your sales funnel. Typically, the stages are described as awareness, consideration, decision, and retention.

Brand Awareness

For content intended to increase brand awareness, light-hearted, shareable videos on social media are best. A video that your targeted prospect will enjoy and repost that they uncover on your Facebook page, for instance, would be perfect.

How does video accelerate this stage? It’s all about reach, and being present where your prospects are hanging out when they aren’t actively seeking something your company offers.

Social Media

Most people spend lots of time on social media every day. By designing video for different platforms, you can target your prospects on those platforms.

Social media giant Facebook recently made changes to their algorithm to increase the reach of video. And, Facebook is continuing to launch features that bring it into closer competition with YouTube, which will only increase its importance in terms of web-presence and reach for most companies. Further, content featured in Twitter’s new Moments is particularly eye-catching when it’s an autoplaying video in the feed. Across the board, video is playing an increasingly central role on social media.

For inspiration, companies doing a great job with brand awareness campaigns are GoPro and Home Depot’s YouTube channel.

The gamble with top-of-funnel marketing is that people will actually think of you when it’s time to shop for your products or services. Taking the Home Depot example, if their entertaining DIY videos instill enough confidence in their audience, the next time one of their viewers needs to buy a specialty tool of some sort, that person will likely think to go to the experts instead of another store.

Importantly, organic social reach often needs to be bolstered with paid social ads, and this is also true for video content. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have introduced new video ad formats with powerful targeting options in response to the growing demand for these formats from marketers looking to extend their reach.

Attracting More Inbound Traffic With Video

Especially with B2B products or services, the first direct contact with a potential customer might not end in a sale. The internet is full of window-shoppers, so providing content that will be helpful to those doing targeted research around products or services you offer is a great way to plant the seeds of brand affinity.

Including rich content, like video, on pages with information about products or services is a great way to improve on-page SEO to help attract organic search traffic to your site. Tools like SproutVideo’s video sitemaps will tell search engines where to locate and index that content, while visitors to the page are more likely to stick around longer, and visit more pages compared to those arriving on a site with no video.

All of those factors send positive signals back to search engines about the visitor experience on the page, as well as the relative value of your content compared to others, helping to move your site up in the rankings for relevant search terms.

Capture More Leads With Video

Once targeted traffic is arriving on your website and poking around for more information about your products and services, you now have opportunities for lead capture, and video can help with that as well.

Depending on the video, two great options are email-gating your content, or using post-play screens to capture leads or drive traffic to another landing page.

To determine which option might be best for your campaign, you always have to consider the context and positioning of your videos. If you are a professional services firm, and one of your marketing pages includes premium content, such as video interviews with industry thought-leaders, then email-gating might be a great option for some of those videos. People interested in your space are likely to be willing to exchange some personal contact information for some exclusive words of wisdom from an expert in a given domain.

That same approach, however, wouldn’t necessarily work for a product demo video. Say you sell B2B machinery, and the products you offer are large, expensive, and complex. A video is likely the best way to showcase the power and functionality of these tools, and you’ll want as many people to see that video as possible. For that reason, gating your content might not make that much sense.

In the B2B machinery case, a customized call-to-action at the end of the video would help continue the conversation with the prospect. You can display a signup form to capture their contact information, or link to another landing page with more resources or ways to contact your company.

Either way, when capturing contact information, be sure to tag the viewer with identifying information, such as the title of the video they watched, to help you improve the targeting of future campaigns you might send them. If you’re curious to test this out, SproutVideo’s integrations with Drip and Infusionsoft, two great marketing automation platforms, support viewer tagging.

For instance, if they watched a video about an upcoming conference, an email campaign with more information about the speakers, or a special offer on early bird tickets, would be very appropriate. If they were shopping for machinery, and filled out a contact form after watching a specific video, you can create a campaign to send more documentation or pricing information for that specific item.

The best part is that all of this can happen without any manual intervention beyond the initial setup.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the many ways marketing automation campaigns can be used, and we’d love to hear your take on it. Have you implemented video in your automated marketing campaigns? Let us know in the comments below, or on Twitter!

The post How To Accelerate Your Automated Marketing Campaigns With Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

Google Webmaster Search Terms Report

Google Webmaster is free to use and very easy to set up. It is intended to be used for search engine optimization (SEO), but it can also be used to better understand what people seek when they discover and click on your site organically.

To review your search terms report in Google Webmaster, log into your Webmaster account and click on Search Queries under the Search Traffic section on the lefthand side of the screen.

With at least 30 days worth of data, look at the search terms that have a lot of impressions for your website, and the number of clicks those search terms are getting. You can filter this report in different ways, but selecting those with a lot of search activity and clicks helps pinpoint popular topics that are driving traffic to your site. The click through rate does not allow you to take volume into account, which is why looking at impressions and clicks separately is necessary. For generating video content ideas, page rank is also less important because a high page rank indicates your site is already optimized against those terms, whereas video can help your site rise through the SERPs, so to maximize benefits to your site, impression and click data is paramount.

Since your goals might vary slightly, you can target your content in slightly different ways using this data. For instance, you might realize you are not getting enough clicks for a relevant search term receiving a lot of impressions. A video can help drive more clicks because search engines usually display video results towards the top of the page, and potentially rank results with video content higher than those without.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner

The only metric Google Webmaster is missing is conversion data, because ultimately, traffic is great, but if it is not resulting in paying customers or subscribers, it is worthless. This is where AdWords comes in. Admittedly, this is only useful for those paying for search traffic. However, even with a small budget, you can get a lot of very useful data and some incremental conversions to boot.

In AdWords, make sure you have at least 30 days worth of data, and go to the Keywords report. Click the “Details” drop down menu, and select “All” to see every search term that drove clicks and conversions to your site, not just those you paid for.

You can do this for your entire campaign or just for specific ad groups to get more granular data. To identify the search terms that you should target with video content, look at those that are getting a lot of impressions and clicks, but no conversions. Those search terms might be sending people to a landing page that needs a little extra oomph to increase conversions, and video has been shown to do exactly that. If you are more focused on lead generation than immediate conversions, look for a video hosting provider that offers marketing tools like email capture or calls-to-action for embedded video. Running an A/B test on landing pages with video versus landing pages without, or testing different videos, is the best way to make sure you are not doing more harm than good.

Pull It All Together

Once you have identified the search terms that are driving clicks and conversions to your website, optimize your video content against those terms. Use the keywords in the title and description of the video, as well as in the video content itself. When done correctly, this should not resemble keyword stuffing in the slightest. Rather, it should be captivating content aimed at a specific subset of your website traffic. With a professional video host like SproutVideo, your content will shine on your website with smooth HD playback and no 3rd party branding or ads.

Have you recently implemented video on your website? Just getting started and curious about how it might help? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!

The post Use Keyword Research to Target Converting Traffic With Online Video appeared first on SproutVideo.

Wait, I have so many questions?

Sure, there are 1,000’s of questions one can ask about online video, such as:

• What format should my video be in?
• How do I optimize video for the web?
• Will people actually watch my video?

But none of those questions actually matter unless you can answer this one first:

What are you trying to achieve with online video?

Answer that question, then work backwards from there. Everything depends on that question. From the choice of camera, writing the script, the editing process, to exporting your video and choosing where to publish it, you can’t get started until you know where you’re going.

Here at SproutVideo, we ask people that literally everyday as we help them sort through the myriad of options entailed in making a decision about a video hosting provider and publishing videos to the web. It helps ensure we don’t point anyone in the wrong direction. It also helps us come up with creative ways to solve different types of problems.

How to answer that question

Fill in the blank: I want to use online video to achieve… a higher conversion rate? To attract more leads? Rank higher for key search terms? To increase the value of my subscription or paid content packages? Improve employee training?

Come up with your main goal for your online videos, and only then start planning it out. You will find that answering this one question properly will actually prevent a lot of issues from surfacing down the road. It can help obviate some bad questions to have to answer, such as:

• What do I do if someone steals my online videos?
• Is Youtube bad for small business?
• Should you ever self-host your videos?

What next?

Let’s work through a couple answers to that question. This will give you an idea of how your goal for your video will guide all your future decisions regarding that online video.

Case #1: I want to achieve a higher search ranking with my video

If you are taking this direction, there is a relatively clear path to follow. The first step will be keyword research. What terms do you want to rank for?
Which get the most search traffic, and how competitive are they?

It’s best to only pick a handful of closely related terms. Trying to optimize against more than 3-4 will probably do more harm than good.

Once you know the keywords you are trying to rank for, design your video script to include those terms. Try to answer questions people searching for those terms might have in mind.

It would be smart to use this approach for the textual content on your website as well. Still, take care to avoid keyword stuffing. These search terms should appear naturally in the video and on the page because your content is focused on this subject, right?

Beyond that, consider transcripting your video. This not only helps with accessibility, it also allows search engines to better understand your video content. It’s a great way to increase keyword density on the page to boot.

Next, align your video title, description, and tags with the title of the page, and optimize all of those factors against the top 1-2 keywords you are trying to rank for. This will help ensure your video metadata works in your favor when it is read by search engines.

You are now ready to publish this video to the web. Importantly, do not upload this video to Youtube or another video sharing site that gets more traffic than your site. You want your site to rank for it, right?

In that case, you need a video hosting provider that will help you with video sitemaps, and will not use your video to promote their own platform. For instance, once you do a quick initial set up, SproutVideo will automatically add new videos to your video sitemap, and puts you in control of your content.

If you’ve covered the basics, you might want to take a deeper dive into video SEO with these seventeen best practices.

Case #2: I want to get more leads with online video

With lead generation, for a majority of industries, it’s all about getting those email addresses and growing that subscriber list. Luckily, video is a great tool for email capture when used properly.

There are actually a couple ways to do this. For instance, you could write a thorough article on a topic that will attract quality traffic to your website. Then, insert an email-gated video after the first few paragraphs. The video should expound upon the main point in the article, and contain some key data or other insights the reader cannot get elsewhere.

Engaged readers who want to hear what you have to say are likely to be high quality leads, so design your video to entice them. Since you are providing instant value to the reader in exchange for their contact information, requiring an email address to watch a video that contains unique information pertinent to the article tends to work well.

Another way to approach lead capture is with a post-play screen. In this case, the context of the video on the page is slightly less important. Rather, the content of the video has to be on point.

You could get away with a lot less textual content, for example. The idea for this video is to either leave the viewer wanting more, or to be so overwhelmingly impressed (with your company, ideas, services, product, etc) that they are motivated to fork over their email address.

It is worth mentioning that a post play screen can do a lot more than plain old email capture. It could also be a link to a purchase page, another landing page, or to contact a sales rep directly. Here is a thorough look at .

Want to learn how your specific goal for video should guide your path to success? Contact us, tweet at us, or ask us in the comments below.

The post Online Video: The Only Question to Ask appeared first on SproutVideo.

In this post, we explore reasons that make YouTube a poor choice for many small businesses, as well as ways to successfully incorporate a YouTube channel into your online video strategy.

Statistics Don’t Lie

• Nearly 40% of YouTube’s global watch time is on mobile devices
• 80% of YouTube’s traffic is from outside the US
• Top brands on YouTube post upwards of 78 videos per month, or more than 2 per day
• As we mentioned in a recent article, publishing videos on sharing sites like YouTube exposes you to content security risks

In other words, if YouTube is part of your strategy to drive traffic to your site, YouTube’s high percentage of mobile viewers means your site had better be mobile-optimized. In addition, if you are a local business or retailer that does not have international customers, 80% of YouTube traffic is probably irrelevant to you. When posting on YouTube, you have to weigh the risk that someone might misappropriate your videos. Finally, to gain traction on YouTube, you need to post very frequently, probably more often than you are now. Posting videos at least twice per day is a cadence most small businesses cannot keep up with.

So, what does all this mean for small businesses?

YouTube might have a place as part of your broader content marketing strategy, but it should not be your entire game plan, especially when it comes to video. You can certainly publish videos on YouTube, but they should be short, punchy, entertaining and shareable. That is what their platform is designed for. Interestingly, production quality is not paramount, so don’t sweat it if your video isn’t perfect or doesn’t feature a celebrity.

SEO is actually your primary concern on YouTube, or anywhere else you are posting your videos. Never forget that YouTube is a search engine. Align your video title with your video tags, do some keyword research, and take full advantage of the large video description field. Do not be passive, either. You will have to actively promote your content in addition to optimizing it for discoverability.

You can certainly increase brand awareness on YouTube, and using Calls-To-Action within the video, you can direct people to follow your brand on social media or to your website to sign up for an email list. Email remains the best way to reach and activate your prospects, so using video to grow your email list makes a lot of sense, but YouTube does not provide any tools for doing so within their platform.

There are other places in your content marketing strategy that you should be using video than top of funnel acquisition. Think lower in your marketing funnel, and consider your customer profiles. How did they find your website? Why did they click through to your homepage? What information do they need to make a purchasing decision, or in other words, what problems does your business solve for them?

Video is a great way to showcase your products, ideas, real estate, or services, and to answer those critical questions for your potential customers. This is true whether you are featured in the video, or use an animated character or a customer testimonial. In any of these cases, you need a video hosting solution that will not play other people’s videos after your video ends, driving people away from your site, and poking a giant hole in your conversion funnel. You would probably also want additional marketing tools like built-in email capture, customizable pre-play and post-play screens, and an ad-free viewing environment for your audience. If any of that rings true, then you might want to consider a professional hosting provider like SproutVideo instead of YouTube. We can even help you mass-import your videos from YouTube if you decide to make the switch.

How does YouTube fit into your content marketing strategy? Is it working for you? We would love to hear about your experience in the comments below, or on Twitter!

The post Is Youtube Bad for (Small) Business? appeared first on SproutVideo.