video seo services new york

When most people think of SEO, they imagine websites, links, and search engines. It’s not often that you’ll hear the average search engine optimization company talking about video SEO, and this particular aspect of a robust SEO campaign often goes overlooked.

Videos can be both expensive and time-consuming to produce, but they don’t have to be. There are plenty of tools and methods for making and editing videos that cost next to nothing, and when properly planned, a great video can help boost your SEO efforts much more than you might imagine. One problem that people often run into is creating video content that doesn’t actually compliment their SEO campaign. They’ll spend on recording, creating, editing, publishing a video with the intent of supplementing their SEO, yet once it’s all said and done the end results are less than stellar. But with the proper know-how and a good strategy for distribution, video SEO can pay off big time.

HOW DOES VIDEO SEO WORK?

Video SEO works just like any other form of content – the goal is to increase the traffic to your website, and the more targeted the traffic is, the better your results will be. After all, a video is nothing more than content, and content should be informative, tell a story, and engage an audience. A good video that is properly optimized and well-placed can bring in just as much traffic as any other type of content, and sometimes much, much more (just think of the term “viral video”).

PLANNING YOUR SEO VIDEOS

First, planning is key. Since a video takes a bit more time to produce and edit as compared to written content, it’s a good idea to have a solid goal in mind. Who is the audience for this video? What platforms will it be hosted on, and which platforms will it be published to? Is the goal to promote your brand, a product line, or maybe a service? What is the lifespan of this video (in other words, how long will it be relevant)? How is the video going to be promoted and what is the intent for the user – are you seeking views, page likes, new leads, or is the video strictly informational? It’s important to ask these questions and have solid answers before getting started.

CREATING GOOF CONTENT FOR VIDEO SEO

Second is the creation of your content. It must be good, and it must be worth sharing or linking to. A couple methods for achieving these goals is by publishing something unique. If you own a pet grooming service, for example, you wouldn’t want to post a video about “How to Groom a Cat”. While that content might be helpful, there’s an abundance of videos explaining and detailing the whole process already, so the idea is not very unique and is likely to get lost in the mix. However, if you posted a video on “How to Properly Groom an Adult Persian Cat”, or “How to Calm a Nervous Cat Before Grooming”, you might be heading in the right direction towards creating a video that will be beneficial to your efforts. The more specific you can be, the better. While the examples above might appeal to a smaller audience, they’re definitely more unique and will draw more interest – especially in the long-run.

PUBLISHING YOUR VIDEO FOR SEO

The third aspect of good video SEO is hosting and publishing your content. There are almost endless choices for hosting and publishing videos online and while each has their own pros and cons, it’s a good idea to stick with something that’s time testing. For simplicity, ease of use, and the general flexibility let’s just use YouTube as an example. Your video was well planned, nicely recorded, has been cut and edited for cleanliness and you’re ready to roll it out. So how do you ensure that it’s optimized for performance? Here’s a few tips…

• Use an honest video title that is clear, concise, descriptive and representative of the content. Don’t try to stuff keywords into it, and don’t try using tricks such as misleading or exaggerated titles. Remember that you’ll be posting this video to other platforms and it’d be great if the majority of the video title would fit onto the video’s frame.
• Use a clear, informative, and professional video description. Instead of repeating your video’s title or leaving the description blank, try getting into the content a bit. Write a short paragraph or two covering what the video is, how it’s helpful, and any special aspects that might be helpful to the viewer. If the video is longer, include a table/list of time details in the description such as shown in the example below:
• • Why Some Cats Hate Grooming – 0:54
  • How to Calm a Nervous Cat – 1:38
  • Why Taking Your Time is Important – 4:55
  • Short Breaks to Allow the Cat to Destress – 5:40
  • Best Practices for Sensitive/Problem Areas – 6:19
  • Post Grooming Praising and Recovery – 8:15
  • Other Tips and Advice for Finicky Felines – 10:02

Notice that this acts as a table of contents for the video’s viewer. Not only does it simplify things, it also provides a helpful tool so the user can move to a specific point in the video. Furthermore, these types of practices show clarity and consistency.

• Don’t get carried away with tags, hashtags, and keywords. These features are a very useful tool for Youtube to catalog your video, and they also make it more relevant in search. However, don’t tag your video with “#catlovers, #catlife, #catmom, #supercat, #lovemypet, and similar hashtags or video tags. They don’t do any justice for the video and they DO NOT represent the content whatsoever. Stick to the basics and keep it simple – tag your videos only with what’s relevant, but don’t be afraid to mix and match the ordering or using popular tags, as long as they’re relevant to your content. The more you understand this, the more credit YouTube will give you, and that means improved placement.

We could go into much more detail here, but the main points are consistency, transparency, and information. If you deliver them directly, your content will naturally perform better – and that’s just for the YouTube platform itself. You still need to work on the actual sharing and promotion of your video.

SHARING AND POSTING YOUR VIDEO FOR SEO

Once your video has been published, it’s time to decide where, when, and how to post it. Leaving it on YouTube alone won’t deliver optimal results, and you need to have some good methods of dispersion. Let’s take a look at a few ideas for getting your video out there on the web for maximum exposure and performance. You’ll want to consider using methods such as:

• Creating blog posts and including the video as a supplement. The video can be the subject of an article, and the article’s written content can cover the video’s content itself. This is a common practice that works well.
• Using the video in a basic text hyperlink. For example, you might have already created an article for your video, but to promote it from other articles is another sure-fire way to increase your view count. You might decide to write an article about shy or nervous cats, and that would be the perfect opportunity to slip in a link to your video content by saying “a nervous cat can also be difficult to groom, so be sure to check out our video about calming a nervous cat before grooming”, where the underlined text would be a hyperlink to the YouTube video, the original article, or better yet a page on your website where the video is also published which features a call to action, such as ordering one of your grooming kits from your online store, or scheduling a grooming appointment if you own a grooming shop.
• Sharing to social media is another way to use video SEO to your benefit. Everyone uses social media and it can be a great way to grow your audience via organic shares and new followers.

The better your video is and the more you views it receives, the more it will be shared and reposted. After a few months, you might be surprised to discover that 5 or 6 other pet blogs have embedded your video or linked to it from one of their own posts. If your video has a call-to-action within the description, you’ll be seeing new website visits and new leads continue to come in from sources that you never imagined. There’s a lot of opportunities for video SEO and while anyone can do it, your best chances are to have the work carried out by a reputable SEO agency.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH VIDEO SEO

If you have a service, product, or any kind of business at all, chances are good that a few properly optimized videos will go a long way in driving extra traffic that can create more revenue. As we mentioned before, the process doesn’t have to be extremely complex or costly, but it does need to be executed with proper planning in mind.

To learn more about how video SEO can improve your overall rankings on the search engines and contribute to other aspects of your search engine optimization efforts, contact us today for a free consultation. Whether you’ve never done SEO before or even if you’ve had bad experiences with an SEO company in the past, it’s never too late to get started on the right path. Our knowledgeable experts have a deep understanding of video SEO and what it takes to create the content that will get you the extra attention you need to ensure consistent and sustainable growth.