3 Tips for Using Video to Achieve #1 Google Rankings

Video SEO

Recent and proposed changes to the Google algorithm have meant website owners are paying increasing attention to the content of their websites. Although this may seem like a no-brainer, for many years websites concentrated more on SEO ‘tricks’ to get their website to the top of Google rankings. This often produced unsatisfactory result for Google’s users – and that situation led to changes in how Google ranks websites.

One of the major changes is the importance Google attaches to online video – again reflecting the huge growth in online video viewing. This change is great news for smaller businesses – they can use online video to propel their video websites to the top of Google rankings.

Here are some top tips to achieving this:

1 – Submitting your video to YouTube is not enough

YouTube is a powerful tool, and anyone with online video content should upload to YouTube. But this won’t improve your website ranking alone. However, actioning some of the following tips will help:

• Add clickable URLs to your channel and video descriptions
• Use the YouTube annotations feature to link related YouTube content
• Use LinkedTube to create links to your own website
• Include keywords in your video  titles, description and tags – see our top tips for effective video titles blog
• Have clear a clear call to action on all your video content

Following the above will generate more links and traffic to your website – and improve your Google ranking.

2 – Create great content

The easiest – and hardest – way to make online video work best is to make sure it demands to be seen. That’s not as difficult as it sounds but will take some thought. The online video may be you talking directly to camera – nothing fancy there but if what you are saying is the clearest/best/most up-to-date/funniest/ explanation of a product or service, there is every chance it will be seen and shared.

You can apply this principle across much online video content. Here are other ideas for great online video:

• The best/first/funniest review of a product or service
• Clear ‘how to….’ videos
• Videos that help maintain or prolong the life of a product 

There is nothing ‘difficult’ here in terms of production values – just clear, concise content that ‘adds value’ to their person downloading it.

3 – Long tail SEO

Like all web content, you will have greater chances of achieving #1 Google ranking with targeted, niche SEO keywords and tags for your online video. Don’t forget the rules of SEO just because you are using video: include your keywords in titles, tags, URLs and descriptions.

There is a much more level playing field for ranking online video. Websites rankings are partly determined by their age and quality of the external links. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities – and following the above tips will give them a great start.

Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of online video marketing blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Pro Web Video Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ProWebVideoOnline. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Pro Web Video on Twitter https://twitter.com/AlexisProWeb. And we also now have an Pro Web Video YouTube page live at http://www.youtube.com/ProWebVideoOnline.