The complete checklist for your video SEO strategy

• The top five organic results on Google’s first page garner 67.60% of all clicks.
• In contrast, only 0.78% of Google users click on results that appear on the second page.

Now, let’s ask: What is the role of videos in improving your search engine rankings? How important are they? How much can they help? Again, let’s leave the answer to the data. In this case, this statistic leaves no room for doubt:

• On average, videos have a higher organic search engine ranking that is as much as 50 times better than links that contain only text. 

In this post, therefore, we will include the points for a comprehensive video SEO checklist in order. Warning: In many ways, YouTube can also be considered a real search engine. It’s also the second most visited site worldwide, behind only Google. Here are 13 points for a complete video SEO checklist. We have broken it down into 3 parts:

• The strategy.
• Technical details regarding individual videos.
• Commentary on an increasingly central theme: the importance of being data-driven.

1. Always have a medium- to long-term point of view

When it comes to SEO, companies must employ medium- to long-term strategies. When it comes to content production, search engines always reward consistency and continuous updating. In short, it’s much better to post a large number of videos over a long period of time than to post them all at once. It’s better for Google and it’s better for your users, too.

2. The importance of the context in which the video is placed

When you upload a video to your site, it’s not just a matter of choosing the right content. Content that is effective, engaging, and with the correct technical specifications (we will return to these, as promised, later); in fact, you have to pay the utmost attention to the context within which the video is uploaded.

So, you also have to take care of the textual part (also to be optimized in SEO), as well as for other types of visual content. Here, the key word is consistency. In fact, Google’s algorithm can recognize the consistency of a video’s inclusion in the context around it and consistency is always evaluated positively.

3 Prioritize Q&A, How-tos, and Educational videos

Think about your own search engine experience. How many times have you “asked questions” on Google? Intercepting these questions with videos can be an extremely effective strategy for improving your ranking. So let’s talk about Q&A (Question&Answer) videos, How-to videos, but more generally, the area that can be labeled “Educational.”

The algorithm highly values these types of videos, and it’s for a very simple reason: because it is highly valued by users.

4. First and foremost: the video title.

This primarily applies to YouTube placement. It’s essential to include your keyword in the video title. Make sure that you keep this title relevant, understandable, and attractive.

5. Next, the video description

The same reasoning for the title applies here. The keyword should also be included in the video description: it’s the second most obvious element on YouTube. Again, this short text should not give the impression of being written specifically and only for SEO. It is crucial to leave these more technical mechanisms “behind the scenes,” otherwise, they risk alienating viewers.

6. Choose video tags carefully

The argument is the same as in the previous two points. But here, the “technical” part takes on a much more important role. The keywords that you will include in your video tags must be chosen carefully. Of course, you’ll want to conduct extensive research into Google and YouTube trends. Make sure that you always consider your own identity and goals when selecting them. (For example, a restaurant will want to do SEO research around restaurants in general and around those in a specific geographic area. Here, the most-searched Google keywords will largely be irrelevant to your SEO strategy.)

7. The importance of the thumbnail

Thumbnails are the images that serve as previews for videos on YouTube and beyond. In short, they are the business card, the first showcase of your video. Therefore, they are a crucial factor in getting a user to click “play.” In addition, for some time now, Google is showing these thumbnails in the results page. This kind of results attracts the attention of users, and a good thumbnail helps direct traffic to your video.

8. Upload subtitles

This does not apply to all types of videos. But it’s an essential in a comprehensive video SEO checklist, for at least two reasons: the first is that subtitles make your video more accessible. On social media, for example, 93% of people prefer to watch videos without audio from their smartphones. The second has a direct impact on SEO: search engines will be able to track and categorize the text embedded in subtitles.

9. Keywords…even in voice

It’s not just a matter of text and subtitles. Google and YouTube algorithms are becoming more and more refined, and today they are able to intercept the words spoken in videos (think about automatically generated subtitles for example) with increasing accuracy.

So, to increase the relevance of your videos, it is good practice to pronounce the keywords present in the title and description in the video itself.

10. Adding the video to a playlist

Adding your video to a playlist is a simple and effective way to make it more easily found, thus increasing the number of views. But that’s not all: since videos in playlists are automatically played one after the other, it will also increase the average viewing time of your users (and this is another key point, which we return to below).

11. The importance of length

The search engine algorithm tends to reward pages and content where users linger the longest. In fact, the average user time is recognized as a significant metric, a signal that the content is actually interesting to its recipients.

So, it is good practice to create videos that aren’t too short.

Beware, however, that there are drawbacks: brevity, in the online world, is almost always a value. People are constantly bombarded with stimuli through many devices and channels and often do not spend too much time on a single piece of content. Moreover, in marketing, we want to be able to get our messages across in just a few seconds, attracting our viewers’ attention and even more important, being memorable. In short, it’s a matter of balance: the goal is to try to lengthen viewing times without losing user interest and engagement. And it is on this balance that the challenges of storytelling are played out.

12. Watch out for the very first few seconds!

This point ties in with the previous one.

A famous Microsoft study found that people, on average, end up losing attention after just 8 seconds.  It is in this very short amount of time that the user decides whether to continue viewing (until they get to the call to action), or to move on to something else.  So: making the very first seconds of your video effective, making it intriguing, and triggering a certain narrative tension, is the best way to keep viewers watching your video, with the benefits we have already isolated above.

Importantly, all of this also allows for lower bounce rates. And, again, low bounce rates are rewarded by algorithms.

13. Publish on multiple platforms

It’s always good to expand the visibility and reach of your video. This is also positively rewarded by search engines. The channels for video are diverse and constantly multiplying.

For example: a video that you originally uploaded to YouTube can be repurposed on social networks, and—even better—incorporated into one’s website and blog.

As we wrap up this post, we want to quickly dwell on a very decisive point.

The best way to get great search engine rankings is to learn about the tastes, preferences, and behavior of your audience.

How? By leveraging data analytics and embracing a data-driven perspective. You can even go as far as personalization, that is, producing interactive videos that are designed based on the characteristics of your target audience.  This is precisely the focus of specialized companies like Babelee.