Get more SEO juice from your web videos with two simple tricks

Video as part of a marketing strategy

In the video above, Tom Critchlow, Vice President of Distilled makes the case for video as part of a brand’s marketing strategy not just because it is becoming accepted (expected) from consumers, but because of the powerful SEO video can bring to bear, particularly the ability to rank for keywords which Critchlow opines that in some cases is actually easier done with video than blog posts.

“If you’re doing video now, you’re still slightly ahead of the curve,” said Critchlow. “I think by the end of 2012, if you’re not doing video, you’ll be behind the curve.”

Video has value not only because recent reports indicate that video viewing online has gone mainstream, with 84 percent of Americans watching videos online in January, watching 40 billion videos of online video content in the month and that the duration of the average online content video was 6.1 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes. Video ads accounted for 12.2 percent of all videos viewed and 0.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

YouTube still reigns king and in the video above, which is part of a video series put on by social media educators, Grovo, Critchlow outlines many tips and tricks, but two we would like to expound on are (a) using CaptionTube and (b) getting link value from your videos.

The impressive power of CaptionTube

Admittedly, video SEO is no different than traditional SEO in that someone new might have difficulty with the learning curve, but even a layperson can make some impact with some of Critchlow’s advanced tricks.

First, CaptionTube is a way to add closed captions to YouTube videos, which if done with the keywords you’re attempting to rank for, acts as the text that Google reads within the video. It isn’t just for various languages, and it provides viewers with a transcript which is tremendously helpful.

According to the company, they provide “improved precision with a scaleable timeline. You can also make changes to captions and preview them immediately.”

Additionally, for professionals that market to multiple lanugages, each video can be supported with more than one language tracks with CaptionTube, so that Google reads all of the languages, and viewers can see captions in their native tongue.

Getting link juice

Paddy Moogan, also at Distilled outlines how a user can take a YouTube video, add a link to their site, thus creating backlinks when videos are shared, a great SEO boost.

While the process outlined by Moogan is detailed and precise, SEO writer, Sean Lind created a way of automating the process without having to know any HTML, which is a major advantage for beginners that simply seek to improve their SEO with video.

With this process, a YouTube video ends with a link to your site at the bottom, which is especially helpful for brands that have a chance at going viral, but helpful for any brand seeking to boost their SEO.

The takeaway

SEO is tricky, and so is web video, but combining the two is a must for brands in 2012, or as Critchlow puts it, companies may be behind the curve in short order. There are thousands of tricks for squeezing SEO juice out of video, but the simple tips above can make dramatic improvements to your company’s efforts if all you’re doing is uploading videos to YouTube and praying they’ll be a hit.