How to Write an SEO-Friendly Blog Post

Google is perhaps the biggest source of traffic for most blogs and websites.If you don’t optimize your blog posts for search engines, then you’re missing out on high quality blog visitors. On the other hand, if you over optimize or wrongly optimize your blog posts, then your blog might get penalized and lose even its existing traffic. If you optimize your blog post the right way, then it will improve the search engine rankings as well as drive more blog traffic.

Here are 7 steps to write an seo-friendly blog post.

1. Pick a topic
The first step is to pick a topic that is relevant and useful to your readers. If people like your blog post they’ll share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn and spend more time on your site, without bouncing off quickly. This will send social signals telling search engines that your content is valuable, and rank your blog posts higher.

2. Do keyword research
Once you’ve decided what you want to write about, it’s important to come up with a list of high-traffic keywords that you can target with your blog post. You’ll need to include these keywords at different points of your blog post (described below) when you optimize it.

You can use free tools like Google Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas for your topic. Simply type in your blog post topic in Keyword Planner and Google will provide a list of keyword ideas along with their monthly search volume and competition information (low, medium, high).

Pick one high traffic keyword relevant to your topic, as your main target keyword, and 4-5 related long-tail keywords that you’ll include in your post.

3. Write naturally
Before you optimize your blog post, you need to write a great article in the first place. If your content is not good, it won’t rank well, no matter how much you optimize it. So write a blog post naturally, keeping your readers in mind. Will they find it interesting? Will it help your readers? How will they use the information in your post?

This means structuring your content into paragraphs, and using complete sentences.

4. Use headings
Use headings (H1,H2,H3) to break your content into easy-to-understand sections. Headings make it easy for Google to understand the subtopics covered in your blog post and helps improve search engine rankings. Headings also enable readers to quickly scan your post, understand the main points and easily read it.

Generally, the title is displayed in H1 heading, and each subtopic in your post should have its on own sub heading H2. If you need to use H3 sub headings, ensure that they are used after H2.

Use your main target keyword once in your title. Typically, Google shows about 50-60 characters of your Title. So keep your post title within this limit. You can also use your long-tail keywords in some of the sub headings to rank your post for a wide range of keywords and search phrases. However, avoid overusing keywords in headings. Otherwise, you may get penalized for keyword stuffing.

5. Optimize Meta Description
Meta description is the 1-2 lines of text that appears below your blog post title, in search engine results. It helps search engines understand the topic of your blog post, so it’s one of the most factors that affects search rankings.

When you’re adding meta description, you need to provide 1-2 lines of complete and meaningful sentences describing the content of your blog post. Google displays only up to 150 characters of meta description, so ensure that your meta description is within this limit.

Meta description is a great place to include your main target keyword as well as a related long-tail keyword. However, if you try to stuff too many keywords, or use meaningless phrases in it, then Google will simply ignore your description.

Nevertheless, most users look at the title & meta description in search results to decide if they should click the link or not. So ensure that your post title & meta description are not only keyword-rich, but also click worthy.

6. Optimize Images
Images play an important role in SEO – they make your post visually appealing and more likely to be shared. They also make it easier for people to read and understand your post.

Most search engine (including Google) are text-based, and can’t understand images. So you need to add descriptive text, wherever possible, to help search engine understand what your images are about.

When you use an image for your post, ensure that you use descriptive file names. For example, “seo-friendly-blog.jpg” is better than “bsd213.jpg”. If you use multiple images, you can also use long-tail related keywords in their filenames. This will help search engines rank them better.

Similarly, you should also add a keyword-rich ALT tag to your images. ALT tag is basically used to describe your image, and helps search engines understand images better. When you upload your image to WordPress (or other platforms), you’ll see a form with a textbox to enter ALT text. In the above example, you can add something like “how to create seo-friendly blog post” for your image.

7. Add Internal Links
When you write a blog post, ensure that you’re linking to at least 2-3 other articles on your blog. This not only improves SEO score of your blog but boosts the crawlability of those articles.

However, ensure that you’re linking only to relevant articles from your blog. For example, if you’re writing about “how to do SEO” it makes sense to link to posts about “building links” and “doing keyword research”. However, linking to something like “how to install wordpress” is not relevant.

Conclusion
Hopefully, the above tips will help you optimize your blog post to rank better for more keywords and search terms. The trick is to target the right high-traffic keywords, write a super useful & interesting blog post around them, and include those keywords throughout your content. If your blog uses WordPress, then you can use the free Yoast SEO Plugin that allows you to easily optimize your blog post for search engines.

Sreeram Sreenivasan is an entrepreneur & digital marketer who writes for Fedingo Blog about various blogging, marketing & business growth topics.

Original post: How to Write an SEO-Friendly Blog Post

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I’m Back and so Is the Podcast – An Official Update

Yes, it's true. After a three-month hiatus, I'm back, and so is the podcast.

In this (somewhat abnormal) episode, I share what has happened over the last few months with my family and how that will influence what I do over the next few months and years.

Go ahead and listen.

The post I’m Back and so Is the Podcast – An Official Update appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

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Let’s Chalk! All the Latest Video Marketing How-To’s in One Simple Place

Gone are the days of video being reserved for big-budget brand campaigns and social media programs. For many businesses, video is now playing an important role across their digital properties and throughout the entire buyer’s journey. From top-of-funnel campaigns to bottom-of-funnel thought leadership and sales enablement, video has emerged as a powerful tool for boosting engagement and conversion rates.

But being successful with video takes a lot more than just pressing record and firing up a YouTube channel. When used properly, video can help improve your web SEO performance, increase email conversion rates, generate more leads for your sales team, improve the ROI of your next event and much more. Over the last five years we’ve learned a lot about how to make the most of video, and we’re now sharing the most important insights in our new library of Video Marketing Chalk Talks!

What You’ll Find in the Chalk Talk Library

The Video Marketing Chalk Talks offers practical how-to information for the latest B2B video marketing best practices.  From Developing a Video Content Plan to Generating Leads with Video to Crushing Your Next Product Launch, there’s something for every aspect of your marketing organization. It’s not about video production, it’s about how to use video in very specific ways across your marketing team to help you generate better business results. Below are a few examples of what you can find in this new resource library.

Developing a Video Strategy

Most businesses are investing in video as a way to improve marketing and sales performance and deliver a better customer experience. Yet most companies are still taking a reactive approach to video production instead of a proactive approach to a video strategy. In Developing a Video Strategy, we explore how to develop a plan for video content creation, distribution and measurement that aligns with your business goals.

Generating More Value from Your Existing Video Content

Many businesses have built up a library of videos including webinars, explainers, customer stories and product demos. But most aren’t leveraging that content on a regular basis to attract new audiences, generate new leads or boost engagement with their brand. In the Generating More Value from Your Existing Videos discover how to breathe new life into your existing video content to engage more viewers, accelerate more deals and extract more value from your previous investments.

Tracking and Measuring Video Performance

Do view counts really count? In Tracking and Measuring Video Performance, learn how to track a more relevant set of video analytics and audience engagement data to better understand the reach and business impact of your video content. Learn the benefits of tracking video engagement data within your marketing automation and CRM systems and how to use those insights to enable true video ROI reporting.

More Video Marketing Knowledge Awaits!

So, what are you waiting for? Hop over here to check out the entire library of snackable Video Marketing Chalk Talks and walk away with new insights on how to deliver better results with video!

The post Let’s Chalk! All the Latest Video Marketing How-To’s in One Simple Place appeared first on Vidyard.

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5 Reasons Why You’re Losing Twitter Followers

Twitter is an important resource for promoting a blog or other websites but just like all social media platforms, it’s not a place for endless sales pitches, particularly if you’re seeking to build up organic traffic. Obviously, the more followers you have, the better, but it’s the quality of these followers that really matters. After all, your goal should be to increase the number of engaged followers who pay attention and, preferably, interact, with your tweets. If you find yourself losing engaged followers, it’s probably time to make some drastic changes to your Twitter marketing strategy.
 
#1. You’re Shouting, Not Sharing
 
A major function of Twitter is the retweet, which basically means sharing a tweet from one account on another one. Just like all social networks, Twitter is very much about community-building, and sharing is an important part of that. If all you’re doing is publishing your own tweets, particularly if they’re of a salesy tone, your followers will quickly become disassociated from you.

Twitter marketers who automate their campaigns are at a particularly high risk of being seen as spammers, so it’s always important to retain the human element by sharing and conversing.
 
#2. You’re Using Hashtags Excessively
 
Hashtags have long been a powerful and important function on Twitter to such an extent that other major social networks are also using them. Unfortunately, however, hashtags are often abused by unscrupulous marketers desperately vying for attention by using irrelevant hashtags. It also looks bad and becomes difficult to read if there are loads of hashtags in a single tweet. It is especially important to only use hashtags that are completely relevant to the content of your tweet and to any link you might be sharing.
 
#3. You’re Not Tweeting Enough
 
Twitter is a particularly noisy platform where the average lifespan of a tweet has been found to be around 18 minutes before it gets buried and rarely seen again. As such, it’s important to be regularly active to remain visible, and this is precisely why many marketers automate their tweets. Automation can help a lot, provided you don’t lose your voice to it and, consequently, the human element. Of course, you can also tweet too frequently, but neglecting your profile for weeks or even days can take you right back to square one. After all, many users regularly unfollow inactive accounts.
 
#4. You’re Being Too Salesy
 
This point is closely related to the first one, but it’s extremely important nonetheless, and it’s one of the most common mistakes of all among inexperienced digital marketers. People use Twitter to find interesting content, not to be bombarded with cringeworthy sales-speak like that of a typical estate agent or used-car salesman.

Of course, your goal will be to promote your business, but it’s important to do so in such a way that you have something interesting and/or entertaining to offer. Ideally, you should keep self-promotion down to no more than 10% of your tweets.
 
#5. You’re Not Diversifying Your Content
 
An endless stream of boringly similar tweets is a common sign of a fully automated account of the type that most Twitter users just hate. Diversifying your content will help you reach out to a wider audience, though it is important not to deviate too much from your niche to the extent that you’ll annoy your following.

Most importantly, you should remember to share other people’s content and curate other online content to keep your Twitter feed fresh and full of new perspectives. Oftentimes, people will return the favour by sharing your content. Be sure to share different content formats too, particularly those of the visual kind like infographics.
 
Final Words
 
There are more than 300-million active users on Twitter, and while the figure might not be nearly as close to that of Facebook, it’s important to remember that it’s a very different type of platform. For a start, it’s generally much easier to build up an audience on Twitter without paying for advertising. It’s also easier to stand out, provided you make every effort to share and publish interesting content and reach out to the right people. Building an audience, however, is just one side of the story. Retaining valuable followers, by contrast, requires a consistent and long-term effort.

Vairo is an online entrepreneur and founder of WPWarfare.com. His passion is content marketing, blogging and WordPress in general, which is why he dedicates every spare minute he has to writing, hoping to share an arsenal of practical and useful information with others.

Original post: 5 Reasons Why You’re Losing Twitter Followers

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How Technology is Influencing Online Business

Innovation drives the future, and technology is the main catalyst that fuels rapid evolution. High competition to capture profitable markets have pushed entrepreneurs to invest huge sums in developing technologies that baffle all alien life forms. Creative brains have given birth to complex bots and algorithms that interact itself, track, monitor, and analyse trillions of data, all with a persistent ambition to poke and probe the customer, “all to grab their attention”.

Every commercial institution across the world is on a race to equip and adapt with modern technologies that can influence people. Marketing is one in the strand which needs to be addressed. The complexity of analysing and understanding customers lead to the creation of new marketing tool where customers can gauge prices, compare features, customize, ask for a live demo, etc. Advanced robotics and machine learning algorithms evolved to form networks of the cognitive system that helps entrepreneurs to make informed decisions. Yes, we are looking towards a future that will be super ceded by radical breeds of AI enabled technology.

In this article, we will take a succinct overview of how few technologies will influence your online business. Let’s start small rather delve straight to complex technical jargons.

#1 Hyper personalized websites or eCommerce marketplaces

Fundamentally every business is the same regardless of whether it’s offline or online. The biggest change is noted when people start to leverage the unprecedented opportunity that technology accompanied. In a broader sense, new technological advancements started to manifest itself by simplifying people’s life. This main factor persuaded a bunch of tech savvy minions to migrate to comprehensive displays where they stayed for hours, exchanging information and interacting with other minions they find on the platform. Enlightened with the realisation of this incremental shift, where a high populous permeate from offline to online, it became an obligation for businesses to reflect their values in the online realm.

Seth Godin recited that, Don’t find customers for your products, instead find products for your customers. Great words. Over time, everyone’s taste and preferences changes and your customers are no exceptions. The best example is, consider that you’re a business that caters the needs of infants. Your business model started to proliferate and you started to notice a substantial turnover, all of a sudden, out of bloom you realized that you are not able to make repeated sales. The primary investigation revealed that all the sales were made for infants under one category “kids below 2 years old”. A design flaw on the website created the presumption among customers that the business only caters to one category “baby products – kids below 2 years old”. On the contrary, the child was growing and their needs must be met, forcing the parents to leave your business and look for another one that could cater a wider market.

In the above example, the business entity failed to reflect their business values in totality, limiting them to address only a small segment of the whole market. The best practice for the business would be to use technology to plot the customer needs and create an enticing eCommerce website that showcases their business as a whole. A hyper personalised website that sends a strong message, Hey we are a business specialised in delivering high quality service that caters the entire market, Our business to cater your child’s need from infancy till he grows to a charming toddler. Which beguiles the customer to believe, and drive higher customer satisfaction.

#2 IoT – Continuous coordination and collaboration

Internet of Things, a phrase that echoed in our ears for past couple of years, and still we are not acquainted with. IoT is a network of electronic peripherals that are interlinked to a common network, where they share data and collaborate, to gradually learn individual systems and progress along the experience curve to work as a single unit “a smart system”. The main purpose of IoT will be to present a digital economy that enables smart homes, smart offices, etc.

The importance of IoT in business can be highlighted with a simple example, Consider your online business/ eCommerce store is selling T-shirts. With IoT all devices in your office “Garage” will be able to stay connected and share data with each other with a concordant view to make smart decisions, thereby ensuring a seamless flow of operations. Here the system will work as a single unit, learning the operational flow from one department to another and will cognitively make prudent decisions in-case it finds any flaw in the seamless operation. If the AI recognises that the demand for a particular lenin has gone up, then the system coordinates with the concerned department and will discern the reason behind the increasing demand. Once the reason is analysed with data from the planning /forecasting department the AI will make informed decision to source an order or will notify the reason behind its action.

IoT also plays an important role to present a delightful customer experience. Let’s see how IoT will benefit you as a customer. Consider that one of your friends is having his birthday next week. You getting too indulged in the business forgot your mates birthday. How IoT will benefit you is, it will go through different profiles and connections you have and will intimate you about his birthday. The system will recognise it and will intimate you about your friends birthday and will ping you with suggestions, like what present you friend likes the most, or what he was searching two days back (a bit extreme when comes to privacy breach, Who knows the future), what he was presented last year, etc. Keeping you updated, and offering a plethora of opportunities to strengthen relationship. May be the insights you collect will help you to decide which colour he likes and can present him a T-shirt of the same.

#3 In app marketing the best way your lead gets incentivised

The great news is, In app marketing is an amazing way to keep continuous interaction with your customers. OHhh, forgot to mention the challenge. Stats published on BuildFire.com says that out of 100 apps downloaded 33.3% of them are only open once. Shocking information isn’t it. The main reason is that a majority of them (app’s) become obsolete before they hit the market, and the remaining failed to meet the customer expectation.

Most businesses use the strategy of incentivising in app traffic (usually done with virtual money). A hope to tickle with the curiosity, and expecting that the prospect at one point will convert into paying customers. Yes and No. No, because of your service, regardless of what is not adding value to the user. Then there is a high probability that the user may leave when the incentive gets over.

What when the answer is yes? As a user, he finds value in your business and continues with the service. In most cases, the user finds value with the continuous education and lead nurturing the organization rolls out. So, by the time the incentive gets over he is well aware why he should not send your app to the trash.

Release an app, build an enticing microsite, and drive traffic to the microsite. For eg: your website is selling high end mobile peripherals, in that case, use your app to drive targeted traffic to your micro website. You can always brainstorm and come up with some alluring marketing strategies, to attract interested people/ early adopters to stay tuned and be the first one to buy products on the release date. Frequently send reminders, offers, discounts etc through the app. Make sure the visitor will see value in your business model.

#4 Google semantics for prioritising information based on the context

Semantics have paved way for business intelligence systems, International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that by 2020 the amount of data produced from the point of sale system to sensors will reach 4.4 zettabytes. Which comprises a pile of structured and unstructured data. Data, when analysed, gives indepth knowledge about the relationship each data points have with one another, helping us glean compelling opportunities and obtain business benefits. The application of semantics and meta knowledge in the field of IoT has gained worldwide attention.

The future of business is driven by quality, and quality is comprised of deviants. So, how do we evaluate and quantify the reasonings behind an engagement? As a business how do we evaluate sentimental interactions with our business? How could an aircraft manufacturer like Boeing find the intangible reason behind a purchase? Beyond the huge markdown what motivated the airline to consider them over their rival Airbus. Both businesses provide state of the art cutting edge technologies.

With semantics, the entity will be able to deduce the complexity of analysing individual behaviour and will be able to find the reasoning behind a purchase. Semantics give meaning to the whole data available, scrapping intuitions, giving it a clarity, which helps to make precise informed decisions. The aircraft manufacturer can dig deep into data and analyse which variant of their aeroplanes are more preferred my businesses in that region. Why they preferred a 747 over a 737, Is the airline operating long haul services to busy destinations, Have they mentioned any information about their current load factor, How frequently customers mentioned their experience flying in a 747, How customers respond to the airline’s services, social mentions of the aircraft, etc.

What semantics does is, in its core, it will consider all these factors and will use the available bits of information to canvas clarity. With the internet revolution, even the manufacturer will be able to collect, analyse, and suggest the airline, why a 747 will be much better for their business than any other variants.

#5 Automation – To build strong relationship with prospects

With a rapidly evolving digital world, innovation is one strand that we cannot say no to. Why? COMPETITION, a simple but compelling word that exigence the importance of time, making time as one of the scarcest resource available to business. Even with the realisation that there are only 24 hours a day, every entrepreneur is searching for the extra 10 min, which they believe could make a dramatic influence. With technology and innovation, we come to fathom that we are not just a glob that revolves around a bright red hot ball, we are just one among the millions or billions. We are in a course, too busy running around to find the cosmic source which gives birth to the single celled alien that over time transformed into a fully grown sentient with feelings and emotions.

As time is the scarcest resource, we with our hocus pocus created the wonder “automation”. An effective strategy to stay tuned for day to day operations. Technology wants to reduce the distance between people, offering them common platforms where they can continuously interact and exchange information. But what if, you have customers who need your presence halfway across the globe. What in case you need to respond to time bound customer queries? To the least, How will you show your gratitude to a customer who signed up with you late night? The answer lies in this one sentence, Adapt technology and embrace automation. (Note: automation should not be at the cost of compromising your entities value in recognition to a general message. It needs to be a well addressed and a personalized note, reflecting your business values).

Automation needs to be streamlined to that of an efficient marketing machine. Social channels have become one peculiar stop among millennials. Stats published on BrandWatch.com says that there are 2.3 billion social media users, and 91% retail brand uses two or more social channels. This information itself pinpoint the importance why businesses need to stay connected, social media. Social media is an important channel for businesses to stay alive.

Parting Notes:

Technology has changed the way we administer business and wade through our professional life. Don’t take my word for granted. Look around you. You will be able to plot patterns reflecting a transformation, wondering the penetration of technology into our personal lives. Technology is forcing us to showcase an omnichannel presence, making it more mandatory for businesses to keep up with the radical trends and customer shift (channel hopping). Every business needs to incorporate a synergic approach to welcome technology that can productively reduce the distance between organizational values and customers. Once the values converge with the customer’s belief then a business can claim that technology has been used to deliver a purpose.

Original post: How Technology is Influencing Online Business

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What’s the Secret Formula for Creating a Great Video?

The secret formula in creating a great video? It all starts with your story. Maury Rogow, CEO and executive producer at leading video production company Rip Media Group, shares with us the key formula they use to create great video.

Data strays and story stays in people’s memory. A lot of companies think all they need is data points, but really, what they need to have is an emotional touch with somebody’s heart. If you have that, then people will remember you, they’ll share what you created, and they’ll talk about it. But how do you get that magic essence?

We’ve created an acronym that we use all the time in our production room. When we’re creating scripts and concepts, we ask each other, “What’s the STUFF in that video? What’s the STUFF in that script?” What’s the STUFF? It’s what’s sexy, touching, unique, funny, or elicits fear in the hearts and the minds of the people watching.

THE S.T.U.F.F.

Let’s start with what’s sexy. What’s sexy about your brand, or your product, or the people in your company? Now, sexy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a fashion brand or Victoria Secret’s or anything like that. What sexy is, is what sizzles. What’s different? What really makes you stand out? It might not be something that you’re really thinking of that’s obvious, so you’ve got to dig deep. I have an example for you down below, of somebody who was trying to do something very basic and mundane – sell a used car from 20 years ago. But, he put together a video that was absolutely epic:

The real gold in this video is that he made something mundane into something sexy, into something that sizzled. Not only did he get five and a half million views on that video, but he also got over 2,000 offers to buy that car. It absolutely works.

The next point is touching. What’s touching about your product, your service, the people that you’re helping? Think about the results that you’re putting out into the world with your product or service. If it’s touching, think about nostalgia, think about history. Can you share stories of the origin of how you started your company, and why you started your company? If you can touch people’s hearts they’ll remember you. If you take a look below, you’ll see a video that we created for a non-profit organization that really needed help getting mentors to help them out and help more people that were homeless:

What you see in this video is not just live action and animation, but we mixed the two together. What we did was we talked about the results. We had the person that was affected by the program, talk about it in a very unique and different way.

The next point is U, for unique. You can also think of unique as unexpected. What’s unexpected? What’s unique about you, or the way you do things? The world really wants to know because it’s what makes you stand out. The hearts and the minds of viewers want variety. They want something different. They want their day to be disrupted just a little bit, and that makes you memorable. Take a look at the video below, where a big brand did something completely unique and unexpected and they stand out from the pack.

We have sexy, touching, unique. What’s the next? It’s F, for funny. If you go for funny and it works, there’s really nothing better. You will be memorable. For a great example of funny, check out the video below for a huge brand that took a risk and really, it paid off.

The last point is F, for fear. Fear is a very strong emotion that we all carry. If you can bring a little bit of fear, or a little bit of lack of security out of your audience, they’ll respond and they’ll really want to learn more. If you have a look at the video below, it was done for Save the Children. I think you’ll see a combination of fear and touching, combined in a beautiful way:

That’s the STUFF. What’s sexy, touching, unique, funny, or elicits fear in your audience. Those are the five key emotions that you should be taking into consideration for your next production!

If there’s anything we can do to help out, we’re offering a free consultation with our team at Rip Media and we’d love to speak with you.  Just follow this link to book at time!

The post What’s the Secret Formula for Creating a Great Video? appeared first on Vidyard.

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Drive Your SEO Performance with Video

Search engine optimization is all about publishing the right content on your website to ensure you rank highly for internet search queries that match your business or topics and keywords that you want to generate inbound traffic from. Using video across your website can be a great way to boost your SEO performance and give you a better shot at ranking highly with Google, but only if you do it properly.

My name is Tyler Lessard, and in this Chalk Talk, we’ll discuss the latest best practices for using video to drive your SEO performance and more inbound lead flow.

With video becoming a more important part of modern websites, it’s also becoming an important part of your SEO strategy. What’s interesting with video is it can help your SEO plans from a few different perspectives. Consider this for the moment: When somebody goes onto Google or other search engines and enters a search query, they’re presented with a few different tabs of results, which give you a few different chances at bat.

Showing Up in All the Right Places

First, is the All tab, which is going to present all the different web pages that are the a best fit for the search query. The second is a Video tab, which is going to present the videos that Google knows of online that are the best answers to that question.

Using video in the right way can actually give you a better shot at ranking highly in both of these different areas as long as you’re thinking about it in the right way. In addition to ranking highly for video and generally in the All tab, video can also help with your domain authority by driving longer engagement on your site and more back links back to your domain.

So let’s talk practically about how to do this, and make sure that you’re optimizing your SEO results and not hurting your SEO by adding more video to your website.

Video Hosting Matters for SEO

The first thing you’ll want to consider is where you’re hosting your videos. If you’re using YouTube to host your videos, and to then link to the YouTube version from your site, it’s not going to help your website’s SEO at all. Anybody searching for something related to that video are going to be directed to YouTube and not to your domain.

Using a platform like Vidyard or other video hosting platform, you can instead embed videos directly on your website, and this is going to give you all the domain juice related to that video content. Once you start doing that, there’s a few things you’ll want to consider each time you publish a new video.

The first very important step is the metadata you want to add to your web page. Every time you add a video to an HTML page, you’ll want to go in and update it with the Video Object schema type and add in the different tags related to that video. This is what tells Google and other search engines that there’s a video on this page and the related information about it.

The title, the description, the length, and so on is going to give Google the information it needs to understand that content and give you a shot at ranking in the Video tab. Once you have multiple videos on your site, you’re going to want to create an XML document called the video sitemap. The video site map gives Google complete information about all the videos across your website and it’s basically an aggregate of all this various video metadata. So it gives Google one place to know what you have, where it lives, and other metadata about those video assets.

What’s important here is that you can upload your video sitemap to the Google Search Console to make sure Google is always up to date and properly indexing your video content. Now if you’re using a platform like YouTube, you’re going to have to do much of this manually. If you’re using a platform like a Vidyard, some of this can happen automatically, so that every time a video is added, the metadata is automatically published to your page and a video sitemap is automatically updated and submitted to Google to keep you up to date. That’s going to help your with ranking in the Video tab and giving Google an idea of where your videos are. But equally important is using video to drive your master SEO and driving more traffic in general to your web pages, not just the video itself. And this is where transcriptions come into play.

Adding Transcriptions to Your Site

Transcriptions can be defined as transcribing the audio from your video into text format and placing it within the page so that Google can crawl all of that text, just like it does other text on your site, to identify key words and give you an opportunity to rank highly for search queries.

Now what you’ll want to think about here is two different types of transcription approach, depending on how you’re embedding your videos. First, if you’re embedding videos as a complementary part of a page, you can do the audio transcription, but just embed it in the metadata, so that Google can crawl it, but it doesn’t show up as text on the page and clutter up the information on the site. But if you have pages where you’re embedding just the video, say it’s a video blog, what you can also do is add the transcription as copy to the page. And what this allows you to do is to tweak the content a little bit, but to add header tags within the page throughout the content that’s going to give Google, again, a better idea of what those keywords are and what this page should rank for.

I always encourage that if you’re doing video as the hero on the page. If you don’t want all the copy cluttering up the website, then you can use CSS and Javascipt to hide some of that content, which is what we often do. So you can see the beginning of the content, but then you have to click a button to expand it and read more. This gives you the best of both worlds, the abilities to get all that information indexed, the headers in there for Google, but the ability for someone to expand it and actually read it if they choose to skim that content.

Video for Domain Authority

In addition to the metadata and the transcriptions, what’s also interesting to think about with video is how it can help you build domain authority. If you share your videos with third parties and they embed those videos on their site, they’re going to link back to you and build domain authority. This only works if they’re hosted natively on your site, not linked to from YouTube. If you can drive high engagement in your video content, if somebody comes to this page, watches a video for three minutes, and stays engaged on that page, that’s going to give you higher domain authority because Google see that as an indication of high value content.

People stay longer on pages with good video content, and this isn’t about just driving more traffic to the video, it’s about boosting your overall domain authority because of the richness and quality of the content that you’re delivering. In that regard you’ll want to think about how you optimize your click through rate. If somebody lands on the page, last thing you want them to do is bounce, so optimizing your thumbnail image to make sure they’re clicking through into the content. You can do that be testing different versions of your video or with a platform like Vidyard, it has integrated A/B split testing so you can figure out what’s working the best and then choose the most optimal piece to make sure that you reduce the bounce rates on that page.

The second thing you can do is track engagement. And any videos you find where half the audience is dropping off after thirty seconds, you know that that’s content you need to improve, or perhaps replace with something else to continue to ensure that you’re driving high engagement time. This is going to signal to Google that you’re an authority on that topic and give you a better shot at ranking highly from an SEO perspective.

These are a number of different ways in which you can leverage video content from an SEO perspective to not only drive people to watch your videos, but to boost your overall domain authority and improve the SEO of your web site across the whole thing, but you can’t do much of this with YouTube. So, think about how you’re going to leverage the right tools and the right video platforms to enable this and hopefully to automate much of this to ensure every time a video is posted, this stuff happens all by default.

My name is Tyler Lessard, and this has been a Vidyard Chalk Talk.

 

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