Video is among, if not the most, influential conversation mediums today.

Platforms like YouTube, along with smartphone and technology developments, have managed to get easier and less expensive for folks to create video content material.

It really is predicted that by 2019, 80 percent of website traffic will become video. Therefore it’s a no-brainer to attempt to incorporate video into your online marketing strategy.

Understanding a few best practices, though, is fundamental in order to make your strategy a success.

Start at Square One

First, define your goals for video marketing, whether it’s to:

Drive conversions.
Increase backlinks.
Spread brand awareness.
Understanding your goals is a foundational key in order to figure out exactly what you want to gain out of video marketing.

Increasing Conversions
There have been studies by Eye View Digital that have found that using video can increase conversions by 80 percent.

The logic behind this is actually very simple when you think about it.

Users have to expend less effort watching a video clip than they do reading a large amount of text.

Video is a time saver for them.

Gaining Links & Social Shares
The link possibilities with video are powerful.

That is why it is important to create videos that are prime for social sharing, and thus backlinks.

What types of videos are likely to get shared? Videos that:

Entertain.
Provide a solution to a common problem.
Help educate on a hot topic.

The goal is that the content will be engaging enough, that users share it, generating backlinks and helping to increase the overall authority of a website.

When it comes to the nitty-gritty practices that can help your video SEO efforts, there are a few trusted methods that can be implemented.

Let’s dive into 10 tried-and-true tactics for video marketing for search engines.

1. Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is clearly not only a part of video optimization; mobile optimization is the primary focus of web optimization today.

Mobile surpassed desktop views a few years ago and only continues to grow.

In addition, a large portion of video consumption is on mobile devices.

Ensure that your website is responsive and that you are uploading videos to sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

2. Metadata

Just like you would optimize a page on a website with a fitting meta title and meta description, ensure that you have done the same for a video.

Search engines will use this to identify and rank video results.

Search engines will assess the title, description, as well as tags (which should include targeted keywords) to better understand what this issue of the video is.

This is easy to do and requires a short amount of time.

3. Create a Video Sitemap

If you create a lot of video articles and publish those movies to your internet site, but have found it challenging to rank in search engines for them, you might want to create another video sitemap.

This sitemap will give Google an improved notion of what pages have videos and the overall content focus of the video.

4. Share Across Different Channels

Share video articles across various marketing stations, such as social.

Upload video articles to Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram and see what forms of posts garner the many engagements.

Adding video to your interpersonal channels may also help encourage interpersonal sharing, hence encouraging a greater quantity of backlinks that may make your website more authoritative in Google’s eyes.

5. Add the Video to your internet site

Adding video articles to your site, and not just to sites like YouTube and Vimeo, might help enhance engagement and user encounter on your site.

As stated earlier, video content is commonly more engaging.

You can even add things such as video schema to your web page to greatly help crawlers further know very well what the video content is covering.

6. Transcribe the Video

Internet search engine crawlers can’t actually view video content – in the least not yet.

Video transcriptions help provide these crawlers with a concept of just what a video is about, this provides you with them a better knowledge of the content.

7. Create an Engaging Thumbnail

Users have a big pool of options with regards to choosing which video to pick from search.

A video thumbnail is probably the first thing that they will see in those results. This is why it is important to ensure that the thumbnail can stand out from the others in the best way possible and grab a user’s attention.

Generally, you can choose a thumbnail from the video itself or upload a separate image. Make sure that the image reflects the topic of the video well.

8. Video Filename

This may be the most simplistic optimization tactic. Name video files on your computer the same way you would image files. Include a targeted keyword or accurate description of the topic of the video.

9. Keep Length in Mind

This will vary based on industry and topic, but it is important to keep duration in mind. Our attention spans in this digital age aren’t incredibly long whatsoever.

That being said, if you are creating educational content (e.g., a tutorial), then it would make sense for the video to be longer in duration.

However, if you’re creating an entertaining promotional video, you may want to keep it short, including the most important aspects earlier on in order to entice the user to engage with the content.

10. Encourage Likes & Comments

These are probably the most important factors when it comes to engagement.

Encourage users to like and comment on video content, particularly YouTube, by creating a compelling call-to-action.

Don’t Lose Focus on the Whole Picture
While all these practices are well and good for essential video optimization techniques, it is important to not get so caught up in the nitty-gritty of tags, titles, etc. that you lose focus on your actual goal and what the primary purpose of the video is.

A video can have an optimized title, tags, a video sitemap, an apt thumbnail, and whatnot.

But if your video doesn’t entertain, educate, or help a user, is it really a success?

There’s no telling how many occasions a video has a catchy title and a description, but the actual video quality is usually subpar, the graphics don’t speak to the primary topic, or the general message is unclear.

This is not a positive experience.

The job of a true digital internet marketer is to provide a solution to a person’s problem.

This is why the content of the video is crucial.

From the actual message itself, to how that message is conveyed, these are all paramount factors.

There are many things to consider when determining a video content strategy for marketing efforts. A few prominent ones include:

Personas: It is important to establish key user personas for your intended target audience. This helps to determine the overall tone that the video should take.
Stage of the journey: Along the same lines of targeting the ideal persona, you’ll also need to create a video that targets the right stage of the user’s journey and where they are in the funnel. For example, video content for someone in the awareness stage may be a brief, how-to video or motivational video. Whereas content in the concerned phase may include testimonials and compelling CTAs.
Topics that suite video search: It is important when trying to rank in video outcomes, to understand what forms of content, general, rank well for the video to greatly help a user discover your content. Video outcomes notoriously rank well for “how exactly to” or various other research-based queries. Understanding the areas where video email address details are high can help offer insight and assistance for additional content technique ideas.

Video is definitely an extremely powerful advertising tool if found in the right way.

By keeping a couple of technical best practices at heart while also maintaining an apparent and concise outlook on the finish goal, marketing experts have the potential to fully capture an ever-expanding group with their video messaging.