We live in the digital era where having an online presence as a business is a must for the success of a business. Experts suggest that video search engine optimization, or SEO, is an excellent way to boost your online visibility and increase traffic to your website.
Over the past few years, there has been yet another trend in SEO: video SEO. In this piece, we shall know what video SEO is. We will also see how it differs from traditional SEO and how both can be implemented to ensure you get the highest ranking and visitors to high-quality content on your website. The differences and the benefits of each SEO practice will assist you in choosing one that brings more traffic to your business.
How Search Engine Works
Before we delve into the differences between video SEO and traditional SEO, let’s understand what SEO is and how it works. A search engine performs up to 3 fundamental tasks. The search engine identifies and examines various websites and web pages and categorizes the content of individual pages. The search engine then stores those pages with others bearing the same content. Third, it indexes those pages so a user’s search intent can easily find them.
When you type a question into the search engine, it goes back to search and retrieves the most relatable content to your question. While there are many, the search engine picks the ones that make the most sense and displays them on the first page of YouTube search results, the landing or video result page, or the Search Engine Result Page (SERP). The results are shown in order of relevance.
The content is indexed and prioritized depending on the main concepts of each webpage, keywords, backlinks, and many other contributing factors. Hence, you need to consider these factors in your SEO efforts.
What Is Video SEO?
Since SEO boosts the quantity and quality of traffic to your website by optimizing pages for organic search engine results, many factors determine first-page ranking. Ranking factors include video quality and page load speed for video content.
While blog posts and web page content differ significantly from the top video ranking of content, both aim for high-quality videos to increase video searchability. Unlike videos, search engine bots crawl and index your blog post and website content by reading the text. So you might wonder how SEO bot ranks videos if they cannot watch them.
What Video SEO Techniques are Used for Best Results?
1. Video Title Optimization
Video title optimization is an essential aspect of video SEO. Ensure your video title is informative and also keyword-rich. This makes it easy for the search engine to understand where the content is on the video. Ensure the video file’s title is appealing and engaging in video search results. This will attract viewers to click on it and watch.
2. Video Description Optimization
Your video should have a description that provides an in-depth description of the video platform and its content. The description of suggested videos should also have relevant terms and keywords, links to relevant content videos, and a call-to-action so that viewers can interact more with the video.
3. Video Transcription Optimization
Video transcription optimization means adding captions and subtitles to the video to make it accessible to a broader range of viewers, including viewers with hearing problems. Like search engines scan and crawl content, it does the same to video transcripts, which helps YouTube search comprehend and evaluate the contents of the video engagement and other videos in the same video together.
4. Video Thumbnail Optimization
Video thumbnails are images that display the video files on the search result page. Ensure your video below the thumbnail image is high-quality and accurately depicts the video content. It should also be attractive and appealing to entice YouTube users to click on custom thumbnails in the sitemap and watch the entire video.
5. Video Embedding and Backlinks
Embedding videos on websites and creating backlinks to them can significantly enhance the SEO of YouTube Studio or your video hosting platform. It improves the visibility and readability of the videos and increases the chances your YouTube channel will get better search rankings.
Are Videos Important for SEO?
Now that you know video SEO, you might want to know its importance to your digital success. Yes, video optimization and SEO are crucial for your online strategies, and you need to start implementing them to know what you are missing out on.
While you optimize your video, sales may not begin shooting overnight, or your SEO may suffer because you do not implement it. Optimizing videos is essential because probably one or a lot of your competitors are already doing it. Video marketing is advantageous because
- Video helps online buyers make more informed and confident purchasing decisions.
- Users watching online videos stay on a page longer and can purchase easily.
- Besides Google, YouTube is the second-largest and leading video search engine.
What Is Traditional SEO?
When we talk of SEO, we often refer to traditional SEO. As said earlier, this is optimizing a website to increase its visibility and rank high on search engines.
You can use traditional SEO to improve your website’s performance in search engines. Employing different strategies aims to make your webpage more attractive to search engines and improve its ranking on SERPs. Traditional SEO has three main areas: search engine optimization, on-page optimization, and link development.
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is finding keywords and phrases that users will use to search for relevant information about a business or industry. When you find the keywords and phrases that users will use to find your business and use them in your content, your website will likely rank high on the search engine results page.
You can use many SEO audit tools today to find relevant keywords and phrases. Some are paid, while others are free. Use SEO keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz.
2. On-Page Optimization
On-page optimization can improve the structure and content of your webpage/site. You must optimize the meta tag, meta description, title tag, headers, URLs, and text images for inbound links.
You must optimize your page to ensure the website structure is easily accessible by search engines and your users. On-page optimization also helps search engines comprehend your website’s contents and improves the ranking of your site’s position on other search engines’ results.
3. Link Building
Link building is another SEO strategy involving getting backlinks from other websites to link to your website. These links are relevant to your videos’ website as they inform search engines that other websites view your video to change its title and web content as relevant and valuable. Doing so enhances your site’s trust and credibility, increasing your page rankings. You can build links using broken link building, guest blogging, and skyscraper-sized content.
Differences Between Traditional SEO and Video SEO
1. Ranking
Both SEO strategies seek to boost your website’s rankings on search engines, though they use different methods to achieve this goal. Traditional SEO, for instance, uses keyword phrases, keyword density, on-page optimization, video page name, link building, and more.
On the other hand, video SEO focuses on aspects of ranking videos like video description optimization, video title optimization, video transcript optimization, and more. When you do these the right way or hire an expert company to do this for you, your page rankings will go high.
2. Target Audience
The viewer’s aspect is yet another differentiation factor between these two types of SEO. Traditional SEO, for instance, targets users searching for written information online. On the other hand, video SEO targets users who are searching for online video content on sites such as YouTube videos.
Suppose you are a company targeting a younger market. In that case, you should invest more in video SEO because younger people are often more interested in online videos than older people, who may be inclined to watch time by reading content.
3. Content Creation
Both traditional SEO and video SEO strategies share some similarities regarding content creation. For example, both SEO strategies require top-notch content. Content that is informative, engaging, and pertinent to your audience boosts your page rankings on SERPs.
On the other hand, video SEO also requires top-quality videos. In this case, video quality suggests that both the content inside and video quality are high and that videos rank for long. The difference in video hosting platforms is that creating video content is more expensive than written content.
What Is Good for You?
As an avid SEO expert, you understand that there is no size fits all regarding SEO strategy for your business. To be at par or far ahead, you need to combine a variety of tactics. Many tactics will succeed, while others may not like as you had wished and even threaten to send you back to the drawing board.
Therefore, use the best SEO strategies to catapult your business, constantly monitor the strategy, and make adjustments where possible. However, combine both approaches and emphasize what works best for your business.
Conclusion
You should utilize video SEO and traditional SEO, as they significantly improve your website’s ranking. But again, the type of strategy you implement depends on your target audience and marketing objectives.
For instance, if your target audience responds better to written content than visual content, then traditional SEO is what you should consider over video SEO. Always consider your goals and resources to enable you to employ the strategy and your target audience.
Featured Image Credits: Pexels.com