In this two part blog series we are discussing the different actions you can take to improve the search engine ranking of your online videos. This guide will help you optimize your online videos for search engines, improving your web presence over time. In part 1 we discussed the importance of your video quality and supporting content. Today we will be talking about online reach and video analytics for SEO.
Reach
The more popular your video is across the web, the more popular it will be in search engine results.
Your Website
If you are not hosting your video on your website, you will still want to embed it there either in a video library or blog post. This way your website can receive the traffic whenever you promote your video elsewhere.
YouTube
YouTube is a great place to host your video if you do not have the bandwidth to do so on your site. As the 2nd largest search engine, it offers great potential in terms of reaching fresh eyes. While the official formula to how rankings are made is unknown, there are at least 4 factors that seem to have an impact: number of views, video title, video description and video ratings (likes, dislikes).
Facebook video is growing in popularity with more and more people watching online videos on the social networking site. Embed or upload your video to Facebook to reach new prospects. Also, be sure to share your video across other social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
Analytics
Monitoring the analytics of your video will help you to understand how well it is performing across platforms. In the end, its performance is directly correlated to its ranking in search engine results.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free online tool that tracks the traffic on your website. Offering a slew of information down to the duration of a visit on a particular page, Google Analytics can offer a lot of helpful statistics about your video’s SEO. By adding the Google Analytics code to your website, you can see how many people visited the page your video is on, how long they stayed, and where they went after (for example, your contact form).
YouTube Analytics
YouTube also offers analytics to help you understand the performance of your online video. Here you can see how many people viewed your video and for how long. YouTube ranks videos based on their performance so it is good to keep track of yours.
Social Media Analytics
For each social media site that you share your video on, you will want to track the performance in the analytics section. Most major social media sites offer analytics, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Report and Modify
As you review all of these analytics on all of the different platforms, you will want to generate reports. This will help you keep track of performance overtime so that you can modify and adjust your strategy.
Overall, the reach of your video plays an important role in your SEO and monitoring your analytics will help you make necessary changes over time. If you have questions about online video, search engine optimization, or would like a quote for an upcoming project, contact Informatics.
Read Part 1 of A Guide to Online Video SEO: Quality and Content
