Marketing with videos is an important part of content marketing today. It’s also a very effective form of online marketing that gets huge results. Your audience is more likely to share a video than a text blog, and much more to comment on it and interact with it too. But, if you want your videos to be found it’s important to understand how to optimize them. Here’s how:
1 – Create Keyword-Rich Titles
The keywords should be within the first three words of the title and should be an accurate depiction of what is included in the video. Don’t try to be clever with your choices of a title so much that it’s confusing. Instead, just be accurate and use words that will help your audience find your video but also create something that is catchy and interesting.
2 – Use Well Thought Out Descriptions
Whether your description is a blurb before you post the video on your blog or social media, or a blurb under the video on YouTube, it’s important that your descriptions are well thought out. They should include what the video is about and consider exactly what the search engines will pick up from the description and display. Make sure you include keywords in the description.
3 – Include Descriptive Keyword Tags
Tags are an important way that users of various video platforms can find your videos. It’s important to use tags on each of your videos so that people can find you. Choose one word or two word descriptions separated by a comma to tag the video.
4 – Choose an Interesting Thumbnail
Usually you can have a choice of shots to become a thumbnail image and it doesn’t have to be the first scene in your video. You can choose something that provokes the viewer to want to click through to watch the video. It doesn’t need to be salacious but it should be interesting.
5 – In-Video Annotations
Annotations are a great way to actively engage with your audience. Speech bubbles, notes, titles, spotlights, interesting pauses, and linkable text are all great ways to get extra attention for your videos and make them more interesting to watch. On YouTube you can do it automatically while it plays and you can also do it using a software program like Camtasia.
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6 – Include a Call to Action
Every video you create should have some sort of reason for being. This leads to what your call to action should be for that particular video. For instance, on YouTube how your videos show up in searches has a lot to do with likes. If you want more people to see your video ask for likes, comments and shares in every video or at least in the description.
7 – Keep Your Videos Short
Super long videos of ten minutes are okay to put up sometimes, such as “how to” videos, recipes and interviews. But, most of the time you want your videos to be about 90 seconds long. That doesn’t seem like much, but if you prepare and arrange things right you can make most of your videos pretty quickly. They’re going to be more likely to be shared when they are succinct and to the point.
8 – Use Rich Snippets on Videos
If you want your video to show up in search results on Google in a particular way, it’s important to learn how to use rich snippets. Even if you are using social networks, if you want your video found then rich snippets help. Use Schema.org to help you get started using rich snippets so that you can have your video show up in SERPS.
Since research shows that images and videos get almost 40 percent more interaction than plain text, it’s clear that you need to use videos in your marketing. Ensuring that your videos are optimized will help even more.