The longer the video is, the less likely it is it will be watched. Everybody who gets to deal with website promotion in the search engines knows how challenging it is these days. Since competition in Google search results is immense, it takes a lot of time and efforts to get there with standard optimization methods.
Many marketers ignore video promotion as a method to surpass competitors in the search results. However, in website promotion video has several advantages:
- low competition so far
- links to videos stand out sharply against the standard text links
- creating a video is not so difficult and expensive as it seems
- people readily share links to good videos.
Video topic
Video topic should be really interesting; otherwise people will not watch it. Below are several examples of video plots and titles:
- a dialog with an expert/or celebrity: “Interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates”
- educational video: “How to build great abs” (is good for fitness-center advertisement)
- demonstration videos work well for sport, tourism, household appliances, or mobile devices: “Nokia Lumia 920 vs Samsung Galaxy S3”
- how to use complicated product or service: “Quickbooks software”
- product reviews: “iPad 3 Review”
- specialists’ comments on news or events.
By the way, video size matters too. The longer the video is, the less probable it is people will start watching it and watch it to the end. That is why it is advisable to make videos no longer than 3-5 minutes. If the topic is broad, make a series of short videos.
Name is a destiny
Another important factor is a video title. When writing a title, try to choose two or three keywords which your video potential viewers might type and then append the “video” word to it. You can use Google Keyword Tool for this purpose.
Make sure to test your video potential title — put it in quotes and search for such keyword on Google. For example, “how to choose the right tires”. Use only unique titles for your video; unique title is more important than the title stuffed with right keywords.
It is better if video title sounds useful and intriguing: “7 ways to…”, “How to…”, “…-step by step”, and so on. Limit the title length to 55- 60 characters – in this case the user will be able to see it in full in the search results, which in turn will increase CTR. Usually links with cut titles receive fewer clicks.
Search engine optimization
Apart from keywords research for the search engines, you can also use special tags containing important queries. For example, for iPhone testing — “iPhone 5”, “smartphones”, “Apple”, “testing”. This will help search engines understand what your video is about and rank it higher than similar videos of your competitors without tags.
Natural look is surely above all. You shouldn’t squeeze in tags all the possible commercial queries which you believe to be winning. Your video can be considered as a spam then and be simply deleted. Moreover, users will not be happy to find out the video doesn’t match their search queries.
YouTube allows publishing text subtitles to the video, and here you can freely incorporate keywords along with company name. During its ranking process Google prefers pages with large chunks of useful and unique content.
Where to upload?
Whether to upload a video to your own website or opt for popular video hosting services such as YouTube or Vimeo?
There is no definite answer to this question. However, using video hosting services has some advantages. Firstly, cost saving. If you have a lot of videos and user stream is considerable, you may need very expensive hosting resources.
Secondly, if to type in several search queries, it becomes obvious that “common” websites share is extremely small in comparison with YouTube. There is explanation for it: YouTube service belongs to Google, besides, it has what optimization specialists call “trust”. That is why even in the beginning YouTube video has some advantages.
There is only one drawback when you promote video on YouTube service: users will have to make several additional steps to get to your website: click the link in the You Tube video description, type the URL showed, and so on.
That is why it is more preferable to use other video hosting service simultaneously interacting with the audience by gently offering your services and inviting to the website.
How to attract users to your website
If the video is located on some hosting service, how to make the user who has watched the video to click through to your website? If possible, mention your company name at the beginning and at the end of the video. If not, show your logo. The best option is to have your site name and/or address displayed during the whole video.
It is important, however, not to overload video with logos and links, as it will distract the viewer and make the video too pushy and promotional.
Some large video hosting services, such as YouTube and Vimeo, allow embedding your site link into the video description. If on top of that you have your own video channel on these websites, make sure it contains your brand name.
Do not disallow comments to your video and try to respond to the users’ feedback. Personal touch is very important and if applied skillfully, can drive the audience to your website. If you have time, comment on other people’s videos from the same category.
