What Is VSEO?

VSEO is simply about optimising your video so that it is indexed and ranks on the search engine results pages for applicable keyword searches. There are many optimisation strategies to give your videos a higher chance of ranking.

When it all comes down to the issue of, “What is video SEO?,” the same fundamental rules are applicable. Videos are a type of content, a popular one at that, and should be treated with exactly the same sort of attention as a blog post or product page.

Although, there’s a catch with VSEO. Bots can’t watch video – they can only view text metadata such as the title and tags. This should mean that they can’t crawl, index as well as rank video content. Right? Well, not quite. While it is true that bots don’t have the ability to watch a video in the traditional sense, the great news is that there’s still a way to get your videos “seen” by search engines.

Video Search Engine Optimisation Explained

How does Video SEO work?

The presence of the video itself affects the most critical SEO ranking factor: content. Video is a demonstration of high-quality content. As a part of a media mix on a website, video helps to send signals to search engines that your page or website contains rich media relevant to search requests.

Why is it important to use Video SEO as part of your SEO strategy?

The fundamentals of SEO are about aligning your internal content strategy with what the search engine’s algorithm is prioritising. And while we don’t constantly have transparency from Google when it comes to knowing exactly what they’re looking for, we really do know that video is an extremely powerful tool for SEO.

So, why does video help SEO rankings? Here’s a bit about what we know about the connection:

• Firstly, we know that when Google displays a video thumbnail next to a search result, which it does for 26% of search results, it is more probable that users will click that listing.
• In addition, we know that Google has been rumoured to prioritise search results with video as opposed to results without video. While Google hasn’t confirmed this idea outright, many marketers agree that their SEO results suggest that it’s true.
• Video helps other metrics which we know Google takes into account for ranking.

Two of the utmost important metrics for SEO are:

• The time which users spend on your page or website, and
• The number of backlinks which refer back to your domain.

Video almost always improves both of these figures. Studies show that individuals spend over twice as long on a page with video than without, and the higher the quality of your content, the more likely you are to get backlinks.

How to increase your video’s SEO ranking?

Video Captions Equals Additional Text

Videos are watched all over: in public, in transit as well as at the office. While transcripts are essential for non-audio scenarios, it’s just as important for SEO. Transcribing videos – and then adding captions – allows the search bots to ‘scrape’ and then index the text. In this manner, the video actually provides additional text and links to relevant keywords on your page.

Video Title and Description

Video titles, tags and descriptions not only transmit helpful information to viewers, in addition they also act as metadata for search engines about what the video itself is actually about. This means that video titles and descriptions function basically just like the search page itself.

While you shouldn’t do ‘keyword stuffing’, it’s recommended to place the primary keyword(s) in the beginning of the video title and include it in the first 50+ characters to appear in the video SERP. The video, when hosted on a video platform, is also a source of additional meta data apart from what is on the page itself – leading to more content indexed and thus featured on the SERP.

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