7 Best SEO Tools to Leverage the Power of Video in Marketing

The visual medium has always drawn people’s attention since prehistoric times as it provides optical stimulation that triggers different emotions in the brain.  

Hence, videos have become one of the most impressionable modes of communication in recent years. From paintings to television and then to internet video platforms; the evolution of the visual mode of communication has seen a rapid spike in an extremely short period. 

Today, online platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and other such video-hosting sites have taken a big chunk of internet space. In addition, with the increase in smartphones and creating videos have become quite convenient. In fact, according to a report, by this year, 80% of the web traffic generated would consist of videos.  

Hence, using videos in your marketing strategy is a great way to increase the visibility of your brand. Given below are some of the best practices that you should keep in mind before incorporating video marketing as a strategy. 

Set Your Goals 

It is crucial to underline your objectives for video marketing, whether you want to: 

• Increase traffic 
• Drive conversions 
• Spread brand awareness 

Understanding and underlining your objectives is the foundation for figuring out the format of your videos. 

Use Videos as a Marketing Vertical 

It has been observed that using videos for marketing can increase conversions substantially. The reason for this is that users get more information in by investing lesser efforts and time when watching a video clip as compared to reading long paragraphs. 

Recommended: Four Type of Traffic-Generating Video Content: It’s all about the Audience

Apart from saving time, videos also hold people’s attention better than texts. Gaining organic shares and links on videos is also easier than on textual content. Videos that attract people’s attention more are those which are: 

• Entertaining 
• Insightful 
• Educational 

The objective is to make the video content engaging enough, for users share, and generate backlinks to help increase the brand visibility of a website. 

There are several trusted SEO practices that can be implemented. Let’s have a look at 7 best SEO tools to leverage the power of video in marketing:  

1. Implement a Responsive Design 

One of the most important things about video hosting is to ensure that it is responsive, i.e. the video can adapt to the device it is played on. We all understand that smartphone is the most prevalent medium which the audience use to watch videos.

Hence, it is crucial to create a webspace or host at a website which is accessible through all major devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops, etc. 

 2. Integrate Metadata 

Just like optimizing a page on a website with properly embedded meta title and meta description, videos should also be optimized so that search engines can identify and rank the video results.

Search engines like Google analyze the video’s data for SEO, such as the title, description, and the related meta tags to categorize videos according to the topic. It is a simple process which doesn’t require a lot of time.   

3. Create a Video Sitemap 

If you’re planning to create a big volume of video-based content and to publish those on your website, you might face challenges sometimes. Here is where you can create a separate sitemap for your videos. The sitemap will help search engines of identifying pages which contain videos and content related to the video. 

4. Share across Various Channels 

The whole point of video-content creation is for the information to reach the targeted audience. Hence, sharing videos across marketing channels such as social media platforms is a no-brainer. 

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are great communities to promote your work organically and engage with your targeted audience. It will also help you get the necessary statistics needed to understand which video content worked and which didn’t.  

5. Engage your Audience 

As discussed before, in order to get successful conversions, we need audience engagement. Even today the most effective and practiced method of marketing is a word of mouth. Sharing posts by others is the same as word of mouth where we are buying a product recommended by someone especially whom we know or trust.  

Hence videos which encourage viewers to like, comment, share and subscribe builds brand-name. Always encourage users by using call-to-action phrases so that they help you promote their video.  

6. Transcribe the Video 

Despite following the aforementioned steps your video isn’t yet ready to go live.  You need transcriptions to provide crawlers with an idea of the overall theme. By providing these transcriptions, crawlers can understand better what the content is all about.  

7. Create an Engaging Thumbnail 

When users come across a menu of different videos, they have a plethora of options to choose from. Generally, users pick the videos from channels they like, but apart from that, they open videos which have a unique and often enticing thumbnail.

Hence, it is very important to put a thumbnail which shows something that catches the attention of the viewers without providing the wrong information.  

While choosing the thumbnail it is important to understand what category your content is in and where can your video feature in the algorithm used by video hosting sites such as YouTube.  

Researching upon and understanding the subjects where video results are scanty can help you understand the points you need to incorporate in your video to keep its rankings high. 

Video marketing can become an extremely influential tool if its true power is realized and unleashed. With the practices mentioned above, combined with fresh perspectives and research marketers can take a brand to new heights. 

Author: Anurag Vats

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