Does Video Help with SEO?

SEO is weird. For some, it’s an unrivaled method for bringing in new leads, for others it’s not working at all, and for still others, it’s an acronym for who knows what (hint: search engine optimization.)

But even experienced marketers often wonder: does video help with SEO?

Here’s the short answer: yes. Video is an extremely effective tool in the belt of any SEO pro. It’s renowned for driving additional traffic, capturing featured snippets, increasing time spent on page, and more.

But here’s the key – not all videos are effective in terms of SEO. There’s a right way and a wrong way to use video on your website. Do it correctly, and you’ll see results. Do it wrong, and you’ll be investing in tons of productions that don’t move the needle.

Here are the four essentials for effective video SEO.

Having a Clear Topic

Before we get into the more complicated stuff, it’s worth making a simple point. Video SEO, in essence, isn’t that different from regular SEO.

If you want your video to perform well on search engine result pages and bring you traffic, then you want to make sure your video’s topic is clear cut.

Is there a specific keyword you could see your video ranking for or is it all over the place?

If the message in the video isn’t clear, search engines will most likely get confused and won’t end up showing your video as a result for any search query. The key is to be to the point and extremely direct – to the point that someone could ask a question and your video could answer it without any additional fluff.

Believe it or not, search engines are getting very good at “reading” videos. They’re understanding more than you might think, so it pays to be on topic in the actual video if you’re hoping to see it rank.

The Surrounding Content

As much as search engines are starting to understand video content better, they still need a little bit of help.

For that reason, it’s typically best to accompany a video with written content elsewhere on the same page. This can help search engines to understand that an entire page is relevant to a topic or search query so that they can be more confident in knowing that the video is likely on topic as well.

Sometimes, it pays to place the video’s entire transcription underneath it. In other circumstances, it’s best to write up an article that summarizes the video. There are plenty of different ways to go about this, but the key is to ensure that there’s synergy between the written word and the actual video itself.

Video Hosting (Youtube, Vimeo, and Wistia)

Putting actual content aside, it’s time to start getting a little more technical. One thing that’s important to know is that your choice of video hosting platform actually does tend to play an important role in video SEO.

YouTube and Vimeo, in general, provide data to search engines in a way that benefits their own sites and drives people to them. They mark up your video and help it to rank. However, the site they’re helping to rank is…YouTube or Vimeo. It will be your video, sure, but not your website.

On the other hand, there are options for self-hosting, such as Wistia, that provide data in a way that points search engines to your own site rather than your video host’s. They mark up your video with all sorts of important data that helps your site to rank – not theirs.

There are many, many technicalities involved in video hosting that are beyond the scope of this article, but it may pay to do additional research about the topic.

Here’s a  great place to get started: Wistia Vs. YouTube.

Video Transcriptions

The last tip on this list is pretty simple – get your video transcribed and attach the transcription to the video you post on your site.

Rather than letting a search engine make an attempt at guessing on the words being spoken in your video with machine-learning, you can use human transcription to ensure that the most accurate representation of your video is being understood by search engines.

Remember, a computer can’t watch a video in the same way a human can. For the most part, they’re considering words (and maybe a little bit of image data) to determine what the video is all about.

Because of that, it pays to let them know upfront!