10 Tips and Tricks for Optimizing Your Online Videos

Any time you can add a video to your website, you are adding huge value. Well-done, well-placed videos significantly improve the user experience. You probably have multiple purposes in mind for your video, such as:

Increased brand awareness
More traffic to your site
More conversions on your site

Speaking of how videos can lead to online marketing success, who doesn’t love an infographic?

At this point, distinguish between optimizing your video for search engines and optimizing it for the user experience. Both are important, but making videos more user-friendly will (ironically) also improve your SEO value.

Here are some tips to help you optimize both the actual video file and the site where the video is located.

SEO-Friendly Tips

1. Keywords

Think of your video as being SEO-friendly instead of keyword-optimized. It’s not productive to try to “rank” your video for a single keyword anymore. However, your video can add value and traffic if it falls under the same keyword umbrella as your other marketing efforts. The video file should include a keyword in several places only if it’s relevant:

File name
Video title
Tags
URL

This is only because you want search engine robots to understand what the video is about when they crawl it. Use keywords sensibly with the next five tips.

2. Title

The title tells robots and users what the topic of the video is. Its primary goal should be to engage viewers—to be catchy, exciting, and descriptive. If one of your campaign keywords happens to fit the topic, then great.

3. Tags

Think of the video tags like image tags. You shouldn’t plug in any old keyword as an image tag no matter what the picture actually contains—that’s spam. Tags should describe what the media is about. Instead, quiz yourself by saying, “This video is about…” How to paint kitchen cabinets? Fixing a leaky drain? Affordable lawn care? There’s your tag.

4. Transcript

Type out the text of the video. The purpose of the transcript is nothing more than content that robots can crawl for information. It doesn’t need a lot of keywords; it just needs to mention relevant services or products. Users care more about the transcript than whether it contains a couple of keywords.

5. Links

Make the video a portal of information. If you post it on YouTube, link back to your site. If you post it on your on-site blog, link to other blog posts and then back again. Include a visual of your website URL directly in the video. Include a clickable link at the end of the video telling watchers what to do and where to go next now that they’ve watched your awesome video and want a piece of your greatness.

User-Friendly Video Tips

Think of creating your online video the way you would make a shirt. No one’s going to buy it unless it catches the eye, fits, feels great, and serves some need (like wicking sweat or getting you access into your favorite fast food restaurant.) So, you make a shirt for the person first, then you add the tag with a barcode so that the system can read what it is your selling. So far we’ve mostly talked about the tag. Most of your focus should be on the shirt.

1. Content, Content, Content!

If you only have time to worry about one way to optimize your video, it should be content. Content needs to be super-focused, engaging, and relevant to your brand. It needs to have a good video flow. Read it out loud. Play it over and over again. Is it memorable? Does it make you want to take action?

2. Branding

Content and design should work together to create a strong brand presence in your video. Does the content reflect your company’s distinctive “voice” or personality? Does the video use colors, icons, and logos that create a memorable impression of your company? Give the logo an unforgettable appearance, such as on the last slide of the video.

3. Pacing and Length

Some have suggested online videos should be five minutes or less, but the ideal range for website videos is actually between 30-60 seconds. If you can’t say what you need to say in 60 seconds, break up the video into shorter segments, and post them as “part 1” and “part 2.” Furthermore, if the video has a voice part, keep in mind that somewhere around 125-150 words per minute is ideal. Viewers need to hear pauses and white space.

4. Re-purpose

Re-purposing is a great way to maximize your videos. Post to your site, then a week later, post it to your blog. Break the videos up into chapters to get multiple blog posts that link to each other and keep viewers clicking through your site. You can also re-purpose a video by taking screen shots and posting them on social sites.

5. Sharing

Don’t post a video to your site without sharing it on your social networks. That’s where it will get shared and garner the most attention. Here are some more reasons why you should consider hosting the video on YouTube.