The SERPs of 2024 are certainly not what they were a few years ago, and are set to change even more in the coming months as Google aggressively rolls out SGE.
Defining an SEO strategy to capture SERP real estate has become increasingly complex with recent additions such as SGE, rich snippets, and other features.
Surprisingly, video search optimization, a technique that dominates real estate, remains underutilized.
To really see the SERP advantage of video, let's take a look at a simple how-to search for fitness.
That's reason enough to keep reading, right? There are two main approaches to hosting videos: YouTube and self-hosting, and each requires different optimization techniques.
This article compares YouTube and self-hosted video, highlights the key optimization factors for each, and provides strategies for extending the reach of your video content beyond views.
YouTube video optimization
Start with this option. Because this is the option I recommend my clients use. There's one reason. That's because you get the benefits of organic search on both Googles. and Youtube.
Another benefit of YouTube hosting is that it's easy to upload videos to the platform. Either way, it's much easier than embedding the video in your own media, which you would have to do with self-hosted video.
YouTube also carries the burden of storing your content, but self-hosted videos can have a big impact on your site's speed and processing power.
YouTube optimization depends on a few key factors.
- Keyword research can provide Google with the right signals to show up for relevant queries.
- Optimization of the video page, including the headline (the most important element and should include the top keywords), description, tags, and thumbnail.
- Video structure to enable clock time signals.and
- Optimizing for watch time means that videos with longer watch times are likely to rank higher, so your content must be engaging.
One thing we like our clients to keep in mind for YouTube optimization is to create a good YouTube subscriber list. This allows you to get early subscriber engagement when you publish your videos.
Let's dig deeper: How to audit your YouTube channel for brand success
Self-hosted video optimization
A big advantage of self-hosting your videos is that you have complete control over your branding and cookies, but YouTube hosting requires some compromises.
The level of importance varies depending on your brand's priorities, but in general YouTube's audience is the more important consideration.
Optimizing self-hosted videos relies on traditional SEO practices such as structured data, sitemaps, and making your videos crawlable and rankable in the video search features of SERPs. (explained in the guidelines).
Veteran SEOs are bound to have some issues translating their skills from other content formats to video SEO.
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How to get the most out of your videos
Use to spin out content
You'll notice that I'm not claiming anywhere that creating videos is easy (though AI is certainly creating options to make it easier). If you invest in video (especially long-form videos), be sure to use it to produce all kinds of content.
There are several use cases that I would recommend.
- Choose one of the many free software services that offer video translations (if you use YouTube videos, YouTube will automatically create a transcript for you). Feed the transcript into ChatGPT and ask for some kind of blog content (as always with ChatGPT, you have to tweak the query and ruthlessly edit the results to get what you want).
- Use video highlight clips in individual social media posts and tag your guests to expand your reach. If you have enough quotes to highlight, excerpt them as “{video}Top 10 Blog Moments” and add them to your next newsletter.
In this and similar cases, embed your video in the right place to get more video views.
This can be done on YouTube or self-hosted videos. This creates a virtuous cycle of content (e.g. video content translated into blogs with embedded videos).
Use video in email campaigns
Adding videos to your emails doesn't just make your content more engaging. Users are more likely to check out your content in the first place. According to Covideo, just adding “VIDEO” to your email subject line increases open rates by almost 20%.
Monetize your videos
If it's difficult to track view-through performance and impact with paid media, you can correctly infer that it's even more difficult with organic video.
However, you can use a link (ideally a shortened link using UTM from a tool like Bitly) in any of the following places:
- This is a YouTube explanation.
- Content similar to self-hosted videos.
This helps you find landing pages and product pages that are natural extensions of the user journey. (For example, a running shoe store might create a video about “the best shoes to correct pronation'' and include a link to its best-selling model in the video.)
If your priority is to drive more leads and revenue with your videos, you can always sacrifice essential performance by gating your videos. Alternatively, you can add the entire video to your YouTube channel, write a blog post to include the snippet, and then ask users to email you the entire video link (and help users search YouTube I expect you to do so instead.
Ultimately, the primary function of video will be to increase brand awareness as measured by increased brand searches. While the strategies above can help videos encourage people to buy, a good video campaign typically leads to increased brand searches first, and then conversions.
Looking at things like video views, YouTube search trends (which shows a mapping of video watch time by keyword), related brand search trends and corresponding conversion increases, etc. will give you at least some idea of the impact on your revenue. directional data can be obtained.
Maximize the impact of your videos to improve search visibility
At the end of the day, I think video optimization is a smart strategy to avoid the negative impact of rapidly evolving SERPs.
If you start with great content that keeps the user's eyes on the screen, and then pull some levers to make sure the content appears when the user wants it, you'll worry a little less about the impact of SGE evolution.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
