It’s time to take video seriously as an SEO tool. Savvy marketing professionals and site owners are including video driven content as a means of exposing products and services in a fresh, new way. Optimized videos are now finding their way into natural results in search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

If you want to stay competitive and have a better chance of being found in a search, you must keep up with current trends. Video optimization is one solid way of keeping pace – you don’t necessarily need high-level, expensive productions, just short clips that contain useful, relevant information that will create interest and add credibility to your site.

Keep in mind that search engines do not “view” your video, rather they rely on various on-page factors, Meta data within the video file, inbound links and anchor text to determine the content of the video. Here are some helpful tips when considering SEO for video to ensure they will be indexed:

• Give your video a title that contains long tail keywords.
• Use video SEO as a portal to other content on your website – put your videos on a site such as YouTube and provide links back to your site.
• Tag your videos with relevant keywords.
• Use keywords in the file name and URL for your videos.
• Provide HTML transcripts of your videos so that they can easily be indexed by search engines.
• Use a video sitemap that includes keywords in the anchor text links.
• Add a keyword rich description Meta tag.
• Set up your videos so that they can be rated by users, as this will affect how they’re ranked in the search engines. This is also a major part of how they can go viral.
• Use the word “video” in your metadata to increase your chances of being found in a search.
• Make sure the link text to your videos is search engine friendly AND user friendly. Use keywords; avoid using Click Here as your text.

Once you’ve properly optimized your videos, it’s important to take additional steps to effectively publicize them and make them go viral. In addition to search engine optimization for your videos, make sure you expose them wherever you can – including RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites and embedding within other websites. Additionally, it is always recommended that you include your brand with your logo in your videos.

When you’re ready to implement SEO for videos, give Web.com Search Agency a call at 1-877-RANK321. We are leaders in the search engine optimization arena and can customize a program to meet your marketing needs. We can conduct on-point video SEO optimization as part of your campaign