Video search engine Optimisation

Videos, properly submitted, are 53 times more likely to generate a first page Google ranking than traditional SEO techniques, according to a recent study by Forrester Research. However, many companies are ignoring video SEO altogether, only submitting the pages on which videos reside and not the videos themselves, or worst of all, submitting their video assets to YouTube under the misunderstanding that this will generate SEO benefits.

ALt WSI Video Pro we will ensure your Videos are properly optimised to ensure they can be found on the Web

Video SEO Advantages

Google is pushing video to the top of search results, creating a goldmine for marketers. Results begin to appear in days, and some publishers succeed in getting 25 percent or more of their videos to produce first page results. Search engines can't find video content on their own, so getting submission right is critical -- a knowledgeable partner can make this much easier.

The Unfair Advantages of Video SEO

Although video SEO isn't dissimilar to traditional SEO, it has two distinct advantages. First, Google and other search engines work to have a mix of content types displayed in search results (a.k.a., blended search results).

For this reason, they give a higher ranking to video content than other forms of Web content in order to make sure that searches consistently display mixed search results. Second, there's a relative dearth of video content available today, and only a small fraction of the content available is properly submitted to search engines for inclusion in the search indexes.

This combination of disproportionate bias towards video content and the small pool of indexed video content available is a gold mine for publishers.

Getting Video Content into the Search Engines and Getting it Right

Today, almost all search engines will allow sites to submit video content in the form of an XML feed. However, serialization of the feed is unique to each engine, and not all guidelines are published. Sites wishing to do this on their own should contact the individual search engines for specific guidelines on submission, as published guidelines are often outdated or inaccurate. Some sites may have specific guidelines on feed size or pagination, which will also need to be followed if all videos are to appear.

In creating an XML feed, search engines give disproportionate weighting to the title of the video, and ignore most other metadata associated with the feed. Different search engines will choose different thumbnails for display, and if particular thumbnails are desired, sites should take care to include only those thumbnails in the feed.