How To Make a Searchable Video: 5 Key Factors
When a savvy marketer invests in high-quality video content for their campaigns, they will obviously want the content to effectively communicate their message. However, many marketers fail to think of what will make a searchable video. Searchability, defined as the quality of an item being easily located by a computational search, can help to expand the audience that comes across your video. As such, making a searchable video can have immense benefits for your video marketing efforts. We’ve put together a list of factors that, in our experience, make for a highly searchable video.
A good keyword target
Making a searchable video always starts with the identification of a good keyword target. To identify an appropriate keyword (or key phrase), try to think about questions or problems that your target audience might have. For example, if you are making a commercial about your new line of hiking shoes, then think about qualities your consumer might look for, like durability, comfort, and ankle support. Pick a simple keyword, and use it repeatedly in your video title, description, tags, and posts. This consistency will help to ensure that your video will appear on top of a search for your target keyword.
The right hosting service
As you probably know, YouTube is owned by Google. For starters, this means that any video posted on this hosting platform sees preferential treatment from the world’s most popular search engine. Moreover, since it is part of the Google family, YouTube boasts the most powerful search engine of any video hosting platform on the internet. This is augmented by the descriptions and tags provided by the user to help viewers and content creators to connect through the site. Not to mention it’s completely free, and the second-most-trafficked website in the world. One easy way to help ensure that you’re creating a highly searchable video is to post that content on YouTube.
However, that’s not to say that YouTube is without flaws. Content on YouTube is limited in quality and features watermarks and commercials if you are using the free version. The playback interface is good but simplistic. If you want to control the user experience of your searchable video more than YouTube allows, you might instead opt for Vimeo or another platform that still enables search but is less restrictive.
Using your keyword in the right places
While it is important to use your keyword or key phrase as many times as practical in posting your searchable video, it is also to ensure that you target some key places it must be used. These are outlined below:
Title – The title of your video is the most important factor in its search engine indexing. As such, you should be sure to craft a meaningful title that incorporates your keyword.
Above the fold in your description – On platforms like YouTube, you’re given plenty of space to write a comprehensive description of your video. However, this is not indicative of what appears in the search results. Typically, the description is truncated so that only a couple of lines is visible, and viewers must click to view the full text. Search engines put much more emphasis on this text that is always visible (often called “above the fold”). Make sure that your keyword is featured there.
Tags – At one time, tags were considered the most important differentiating factor when posting a searchable video. However, this approach became a problem when posters realized that they could use tags that did not reflect the content they were uploading, so most search engines have devalued tags. However, they do still play a role in making a searchable video, so be sure to include up to about ten tags that revolve around your keyword.
Linking to your video
The most important factor considered by the Google PageRank algorithm is the number of inbound links that a page has. That’s why so-called “link farming” (paying a company to link to your page) is a major concern for search engines. As such, the fastest way to improve the ranking of your searchable video is to link to it from your website, your blog, your social media, and anywhere else that makes sense. While it’s never a good idea to oversaturate your online presence with links, tastefully use of these links can vastly improve your video’s search performance.
Ensuring you get lots of view time
In complicated search algorithms like those used by Google, YouTube, Baidu, and Bing, the more time viewers spend watching your video, the better your video will perform in search results. Note, however, that this does not mean that lots of views will make a highly searchable video. A provocative title, an interesting thumbnail, or compelling description may get clicks, but if viewers don’t watch a substantial part of your video, you will not benefit from improved search rankings. For this reason and many others, it’s important that your video has a compelling introduction and does not stretch on for too long.
What kinds of videos do you search for the most? Comment below and let us know!
