IRCE Session: Harnessing Video to Boost SEO
This IRCE session is from the Video workshops, and is entitled Harnessing Video to Boost SEO, presented by Stephan Spencer, Co-Author - The Art of SEO and Jamie Salvatori, Owner - Vat19. SEO requires good content. Your videos need to be good, first and foremost. Make them interesting and engaging and keep people coming back. SEO doesn't fix bad content. Make a video worth SEO efforts. It's difficult, it's an art form, not a process, and there's no formula.
Top 100 subscribed YouTube channels (excluding pop artists) average 2,900 videos per channel. Top 100 channels by views (excluding pop artists) average 9,200 videos per channel - you have to produce a lot of videos, regularly.
Tips to creating good video:
- Filmmaking is a profession
- Quality never goes out of style
- It's not about equipment
- It's not about technique
- Treat your art as an ad and you will create an ad
- Hire professionals
- Sell benefits, not features
- Show - don't tell. Don't making it a moving picture version of Powerpoint.
- Match your video to the tone of what you're selling
- Embrace your limitations
- Show the product early - don't hide it
- Don't open video with your logo or jingle - end videos with that
- Obsesses over audio - music is a faster emotional connection than video
- Keep it short
- Concept and content matters more than technical specifications and equipment
- Never give up
Anyone can figure out SEO and SEO really does work - the presenter's daughter, who started at 14, made as much as $1000/month from Google AdSense via SEO.
YouTube is the #2 search engine by query volume. Google searches and YouTube searches are different, so research YouTube keywords. Do your keyword research - target the right keywords, and keywords you can rank on.
Use Soovle.com to search on all the major search engines - pulls realtime suggestions from each major search engine on one page.
There's a YouTube keyword tool you should be using for your product and brand videos. https://www.youtube.com/keyword_tool
Be remarkable - public unique video-based content:
- Podcasts - i.e., Rooster Teeth
- Screencasts - use Camtasia or Screenflow
- Microsites - i.e., Mentosintern.com
- Explainer videos - Crazy Egg Explainer Video
- Whiteboard drawings - i.e., RSA Animate
- Animation - Quantitative Easing Explained - using xtranormal
Seed linkworthy videos from power user accounts - people who have a large fan base or a lot of subscribers who will produce and post content for you.
Your target keyword should appear in your video title, with your brand at the end. Your keyword should also appear in the video description, and there should be a link to your site. Use tags - don't use thruway words like "and" & "to". Use adjectives as well as category descriptors. Tag list is capped at 120 characters. Make full use of this. Tags can be found either in the source code, or using a Chrome extension.
Custom video thumbnails appear in both YouTube and Google search results and can drive a higher click-thru rate than your title.
Keep your videos short - 5 minutes or less.
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