Online Marketing : Optimizing Embedded Video
Video Marketing is one of the fastest growing business strategy of online marketing as online video sharing sites rapidly gaining popularity with the availability of fast internet connection like broadband. The basic is, people watch the video, grow interest in the product it’s promoting and purchase it.
This is why, optimizing the video is essential to get high ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing as they show video results along with normal search results if the video is related to the keyword searched. An example is here.
There are several ways to optimize the video for high ranking, I’m going to discuss only two of them which are the most used method.
Video Marketing
1. Videos Hosted in own Website
You can use your own website to host your videos. This way, you have the full control over your videos and how to deliver it to the end user.
- Use of Meta Tags : Meta Tags are the most used technique to describe the video. Since meta keywords are generally ignored by most of the search engines, you have the meta description tag to describe your video. Use it wisely to let search engines know what your video is about.
- Optimized Content : Wrap your video with keyword rich content. This way, the video will rank higher along with the page itself.
- Valid HTML/CSS : Some web players mess up the codes making it difficult for search engines to find out the content and the embedded video within it. Always check your page with the validation tools after embedding the video.
- Video Content : Probably the most important part. No matter how well your rank is, people will not give it a go unless the find something interesting. Keep it in mind while planning the video.
2. Videos Hosted Elsewhere
Videos can also be uploaded and delivered from any online video sharing sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Google Video etc. This gives you very little control over your uploaded video yet, your video stands a change of getting high serp automatically due to the ‘authority’ of these sites in eyes on search engines.
However, you still need to optimize your uploaded video to get that.
- Fill up all the Fields : When you upload a video, say, in Youtube, you’ll need to give your video a name, description and tags. This is where you optimize your videos. Carefully insert your keywords into the title, description and tags. Don’t forget to put a clickable link back to your site in the description field.
- Use Watermark : Watermark your videos so that people watch your video and know about the existence of your Website. This also helps to prevent unwanted usages of the video. And, of course, do not watermark the video in a way which interrupts in viewing.
- Embedding : You can also embed the video uploaded in those sites into your own website. You then, need to follow the tips above to get the best results.
3. Video Sitemap or mRSS Feed
Pages with embedded videos tends to have a difficulty in indexing. You have to use a Video Sitemap to tell Search Engines about it. Here the Video Sitemap comes handy. It tells the search engines about the page and the video. You need to create one or use Media RSS (mRSS) to submit your videos.
