7 SEO Areas To Boost Your Video's Visibility

A well-crafted SEO strategy will improve your video's search rankings and visibility. Allowing it to reach an even bigger audience base. Once you are done crafting an engaging piece of content, it is SEO that will give it an edge over that of your competitors.

If you want widespread acceptance of your message and a marked increase in user engagement with it, video’s your medium. Yet, a piece of content nobody interacts with is of no use.
To keep that from happening to yours, here are a few essential SEO areas you should keep on top of, to guarantee your video content effectiveness.

Keyword Research

A Keyword is a word, term or phrase that potential users utilize to find specific content online. Finding the right keywords is then essential to target potential viewers to whom you want to address your videos.
Generally speaking, there are two types of keywords in SEO: broad-keywords and long-tail keywords.
Broad-Keywords are more generic and tend to have a higher volume of competitors, while long-tail keywords point to specific phrases with less competition. A good idea to get you started is to think back to the type of video you are trying to promote. For example, if you made an explainer video about a product, going for something like “Product Name Explainer Video” should be a great initial long-tail keyword.
Once you have your video, do a bit of keyword research on the most relevant words you should use to promote it. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools you can use to that end.

Choosing a Hosting Platform

What the “right” hosting platform is for your video depends on your marketing goals and target audience.
The most popular and world-known one is YouTube, but there are many other platforms where you can also upload your video to reach your audience.
Also, keep in mind that social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) are also a prime location to host your videos natively. Especially if you already have an established audience there.

Titles and Video Descriptions

Titles and video descriptions hold a lot of SEO value, mainly when they include the right keywords! They also help your audience have a general idea about your video’s content.
Your titles should be concise, searchable and catch your viewers attention. Also, never use misleading titles! They lower view counts and loose user credibility.
Descriptions fields usually break in pre and post jump sections. Prioritize the first few lines to describe your video briefly and include the main keyword. After that, it’s advisable to add information about your channel, social media platforms, links, website, and other video content.

Thumbnails

Each video should have a unique thumbnail! As these are the first referential and visual element that catches your audience’s attention, compelling them to click and watch.
Make sure to develop a captivating design image, with a bit of text relating to the content in big, bold letters. Keeping a similar style between thumbnails can be useful, as it creates uniformity on your video platform.
We count thumbnails as an SEO element because many video platforms prioritize videos and channels where people constantly click, regardless of view time. And thumbnails go a long way toward getting people to click.

Tags

Tags are another important piece on your videos’ SEO puzzle.
There are three kinds: specific, compound, and generic. Tags help a platform's algorithms get a better sense of what your video is about, which can increase your video’s chances of getting seen and its ranking.
In most cases, the first tag has a bit more weight to it, so relate that one as close to your video’s main keyword as possible.

Audience Retention

Audience retention refers to how much of a video someone watches, and most platforms give you a way to track it.
You should constantly keep an eye on this metric, and pair it to user behavior to improve your content’s performance. If most users are dropping out of your video at a specific point, watch your content and avoid whatever it is that's turning them off.
The better the audience retention your content provides, the more relevance the algorithms will give it, helping it place better in search pages.

Using CTAs

A CTA or Call To Action is a standard video device/tool that prompts users to take action after watching your content.
It is often used to prompt someone to continue on to watch another piece of content you made. However, you can encourage potential customers to buy a product, donate, subscribe to your channel or lead them to your website.
The idea behind adding a CTA into your video content is creating a meaningful response which helps you achieve your business goals. Each video should have its specific CTA concerning your content.
You can add it to any part of your video, but you should be strategic about it. For example, you can use a CTA at the beginning of your video considering that usually, users don't watch videos until the end. However, remember that your CTA should not distract viewers from what they're watching, and this is one of the reasons why you should take advantage of the end screen. If you don't want to distract users at the beginning or the end (or not sound pushy about it), you can even add your CTA to your description.

Summing up

A lot goes into adequately enhancing your videos' SEO, but the main idea behind it is to improve its chances of getting seen! As mentioned earlier, the best whiteboard animation out there will do little for your business if it isn’t getting seen!
While not every possible SEO optimization method you can do to your videos, the areas in this piece will ensure your content starts performing better, and your efforts put into making them pay off.
Try them out; you won't be disappointed with the results.