Video marketing SEO: How to rank on search engines

What is search engine optimization?

SEO is a strategy used to increase organic -- or unpaid -- visibility on major search engines, like Google and Bing. This strategy aims to rank on the first search engine results page (SERP) for relevant, strategic keywords because these results receive the most traffic.

For instance, a CRM vendor's SEO team might want its company website to rank first on Google for the keyword phrase CRM systems because people who search that term likely want to buy CRM software. Effective SEO strategies can help marketers create content that ranks highly on the SERP, increasing web traffic and sales.

What role does video play in SEO?

Video content can enhance SEO because it often improves ranking signals, or criteria search engines use to determine where webpages rank on SERPs.

Common ranking signals include the following:

• Relevance. The page contains keywords related to the searcher's intent.
• Quality. The domain has authority, and established sites link to it.
• Page experience. The page loads quickly and offers positive UX across devices.
• Engagement signals. Visitors spend significant time on the page and interact with its content.

Although search engines typically don't use video as a ranking signal itself, video content can improve other ranking signals. For instance, blog articles that include a supplemental video often see greater dwell time -- an engagement metric that tracks how long visitors spend on a page.

Videos can also increase domain authority because it's a highly sharable content format. As reputable domains share an organization's videos, they create valuable backlinks, or links from third-party websites that direct to the company's site.

With the following best practices, marketers can enhance their SEO and content marketing strategies with video.

5 SEO tips for video marketing

Videos generally improve SEO, but irrelevant content and lengthy load times can do more harm than good. Best practices, such as aligning videos with searcher intent and placing video code at the bottom of the page, can help brands rank on search engines.

1. Align videos with searcher intent

Marketers can align their video content with searcher intent -- or the main goal a user has when typing a query into a search engine. This approach helps marketers create videos that address the audience's needs and resonate with their interests. When video content resonates with the target audience, search engines are more likely to rank the content higher.

To align videos with searcher intent, marketers can take the following steps:

• Use keyword research tools. Keyword research tools, like Google Keyword Planner and Semrush, can help marketers learn which search terms their audiences search for every month. For instance, a wine retailer might find that the keyword phrase best wine under $20 has a monthly search volume of 300, which means about 300 people search that phrase every month. These tools can point marketers to topics their audience cares about.
• Identify searcher intent. After marketers find a relevant keyword with search volume, they can search the term on their preferred search engine to identify searcher intent. For instance, if top search results for best wine under $20 are listicles of 10-15 wines, marketers can use a similar format for their articles and videos.
• Prioritize keywords that generate video results. Video snippets can appear on the SERP for some keywords, which indicates that people who search those terms want to see videos. These snippets signal an opportunity for marketers to create wide-reaching video content.

2. Place videos in the right context

Traditional search engines can't directly index or understand a video's content. However, marketers can surround their videos with relevant text to help search engines understand them.

For example, journalists covering a conference might want to publish a video of a Q&A session they conducted with a conference speaker. If the journalists embed the video on a blank webpage, Google doesn't understand the content. Instead, they could add a brief introduction section and place a transcript of the interview on the page to add relevant keywords and improve discoverability.

3. Optimize video titles and descriptions

Although search engines can't understand a video's content directly, they can index -- analyze and store -- the title and description in their databases. This process enables search engines to display the video in search results and can improve a page's ranking on the SERP.

Best practices to optimize video titles and descriptions for SEO include the following:

• Use keywords. Place relevant keywords in the titles and descriptions to help search engines index the videos and accurately map them to relevant queries.
• Front-load keywords, if possible. Place keywords close to the beginning of the title and description to help search engines identify relevant content. However, marketers must also consider readability. If front-loading a certain keyword makes a sentence difficult to read, they should place it elsewhere.
• Keep titles at 60 characters or less. Search engines often truncate -- or cut off -- video titles on the SERP that exceed 60 characters, including spaces.
• Include call to action and link in description. This practice encourages viewers to engage with additional content, such as related blog posts and product pages.
• Check competitor titles. Marketers can review the titles of videos that rank for strategic keywords to gain insight into effective title structures.

4. Optimize thumbnails

Thumbnails are small images that offer a visual preview of a video before users click on it. Marketers can create high-resolution, relevant thumbnails to increase the video's click-through rate (CTR), which is the ratio of clicks to impressions.

Marketers can also use keywords in their thumbnails or offer a brief, descriptive title to help audiences understand the video's content. Attention-grabbing and compelling images can help marketers increase their videos' CTR. Additionally, organizations can use a similar thumbnail style, such as a connected color scheme or one specific font, across all their videos to increase brand recognition.

5. Place video code in the footer

Search engines prioritize sites that display content quickly, but videos can take time to load. Therefore, if marketers want to add a supplemental video to a webpage, they can place the video code at the bottom of the page to improve loading time.

This approach ensures the main content loads first and the video loads in the background while users engage with the page. However, if the webpage centers around the video itself, marketers can place the video closer to the top of the page because those audiences are more likely to wait a few more seconds for the video to load.

Key takeaways

Video content can enhance SEO, as it increases dwell time and backlinks. To achieve these benefits, marketers can follow video marketing best practices, such as aligning videos with searcher intent, optimizing titles and thumbnails, and placing video in the right context on a webpage. These practices help search engines index video content and create positive UX.

Marketers can evaluate their current content strategy to identify video SEO opportunities. Keyword tools and searcher intent analysis can help them reach the right audience.

Tim Murphy is associate site editor for Informa TechTarget's Customer Experience and Content Management sites.