Video SEO

Video is a lethal SEO weapon and some e-retailers are securing top Google spots through highly optimised video content, but how are they doing it? Housing video on your site or linking back to your site from a video content site can earn you valuable traffic if optimised correctly. Unfortunately most video content is poorly optimised and missing simple basic SEO strategy.

Follow my 6-point video content optimisation check list and don’t waste the opportunity for higher levels of traffic.

Video SEO Checklist:

1. Make Sure You Use a Supported Format
   Google sitemaps accepts .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .avi, .asf, .ra, .ram and .flv files. Don’t be silly enough to use an unsupported format.
2. Video Sitemap Submission
   Make sure you submit your video sitemap to search engines via the webmaster tools facility. This will get your video content indexed, fast.
3. Use Unique URLs
   Make each video URL unique. You can separate pages using hash-tags like the one below.
   www.mysite.com/product-abc#how-product-abc-works
4. 4. Use Keywords in Title Tags and Descriptions
   You know this is standard SEO procedure but it applies to video content, too. You will be surprised how many people don’t do this.
5. 5. Set Your Robot.txt Settings Properly
   Google won’t crawl pages where User-agent “Googlebot” is disallowed.  Make sure all pages allow Googlebot access.
6. 6. Use a CDN to Rank Higher
   Slow loading video is bad for SEO. Use a Content Delivery Network to achieve high speed pages and outrank YouTube for your own videos.

Go forth and optimise your video…