8 top tips for video SEO and usability

These 8 tips are some best practice that you really should consider when posting videos online. Most are fairly common sense but still easy to forget.

Related post: For more detail on video promotion, keyword optimisation and transcripts (closed captions) see my original 4 video SEO tips.

This is from a presentation (news item 3 March 2009), originally given at the TFM&A conference by Webcredibles. I'll just summarise my notes here, their website has the original PowerPoint presentation (PPS, 7.4MB) with more information and screenshots.

	1	BIG CLEAR PLAY BUTTON I.e. In the middle of the video with the words ‘play video’ (unlike my image to the left!)
	2	Descriptive title and summary a. This is essential for SEO b. It also gives users a reason to the watch the video c. Make the title really obvious and descriptive, the summary also to be obvious and provide more detail.
	3	HAND-PICK a good still image A nice and intriguing still will encourage viewing.
	4	Length of video Include the video length wherever the video is seen – that includes in thumbnail links as well as the video itself – see YouTube results for example.
	5	RELEVANCE & CONTEXT a. Don’t have a separate video section as the primary method of finding video. b. Include video with content – ie. The BBC often have a video at the top of an article. The article will then go on to summarize what's in the video.
	6	Good / professional quality a. It’s a reflection of your brand
	7	Transcript or/and summary a. Essential for accessibility b. Essential for SEO c. Even if it's not a word-for-word transcript a summary will still help. Plus it may be a lot easier to produce than the word-for-word transcript.
	8	Promote your videos a. YouTube channel – put all your videos on YouTube b. Snippets – you could also just put snippets or teasers on YouTube with a link saying go to mysite.com to view the entire video.