Video SEO is the optimization of videos to ensure they appear high in search engine results pages (SERPs) and rich snippets. The goal is always to generate the most clicks possible. With a strong video SEO strategy, everything you create adds to a robust collection of authoritative, popular, and traffic-generating content.

To build a successful strategy, you'll need to learn the fundamentals, video SEO best practices, and metrics that measure video marketing success. Once you lay this foundation, you can begin optimizing videos to climb the search rankings.

The importance of video SEO

Search engines have upped the ante for SEO, covering more content types than ever — like video. Optimizing video content so it ranks well on SERPs improves content visibility and, in turn, increases click-through rates (CTRs). This increased visibility and traffic is essential to outrank competitors sharing similar (but unoptimized) content.

To wrap your head around video SEO, perform a Google search for any topic you want to cover. Notice how in the rich snippet results, Google automatically detects key moments and even produces a video transcript that appears on the search page. Optimizing video SEO rankings involves editing your content to work well with these features. If you can do that consistently, Google will surface your videos in rich snippets more often than your competitors'.

8 video SEO tips

Climbing the search results is challenging for every medium, and video content is no exception. Video SEO comes with its own unique obstacles, but the following eight tips can help you overcome them.

1. Identify relevant topics

Start by choosing topics your audience cares about. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Review documentation like marketing personas and psychographic details to better understand the topics your audience enjoys. 
• Leverage tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs to discover audience-relevant topics.
• Look at what successful competitors are sharing.
• Keep an eye on current trends by frequenting the video content platforms your audience uses most.

2. Make high-quality videos that generate engagement

Search engines use a sophisticated algorithm to determine whether your video offers trustworthy, original content. To meet this criteria, your videos must provide a unique take on their subject, and your channel must consistently perform well to establish trust among search engines. 

3. Optimize your title and description

The title and description in your video’s listing and structured data provide critical information that helps search engines determine what the video covers. Select trending keywords and phrases for your title and description to encourage search engines to display your video in a rich snippet. If you need help finding the best terms to include, check out a keyword research tool like Semrush or Ahrefs.

4. Bookmark Google's video SEO guide

Google provides a complete video SEO guide in its search documentation, which details a wealth of technical guidelines you should follow. Among these guidelines are:

• Formatting requirements. Always use an appropriate HTML tag like <video>, <iframe>, or <embed>.
• Hosting considerations. Ensure your video hosting platform allows Google to fetch video files for indexing.
• Indexing requirements. Provide structured data around your video to ensure Google learns enough about it to consider it trustworthy.
• Feature expectations. Mark your videos with chapters and key moments to tell Google which timestamp to send searchers.

5. Upload a transcript

Most video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo allow you to add transcripts of your content. While search engines can auto-generate video transcripts when they index a file, a manual transcript is often more reliable and delivers better search results. To save time, use the auto-generated transcript as a rough draft and touch it up as needed.

6. Create eye-catching thumbnails

Search engines look for high-resolution thumbnail images with low transparency that are correctly referenced in the HTML, sitemap, and structured data. They use these thumbnails to create search results that take up more real estate on the SERP and therefore draw more attention from users, leading to an increase in your traffic.

7. Build website authority

Search engines evaluate the performance of all the videos on your website to determine your site’s overall authority. So, each video you publish must positively contribute to your content library. If any video generates negative impressions or fails to rank well, remove it to prevent it from harming your website’s standing. 

Here are a few ways search engines evaluate video performance:

• Engagement metrics like watch time, CTR, and shares
• User behavior, like whether a viewer spends more time on your site to explore other content after watching your video
• Backlinks, so if other authoritative sites link to your video

8. Embed your videos on relevant web pages

The broader your videos’ online reach is, the more authority and views they produce. Choose relevant web pages where you can add your video content to ensure it finds the widest possible audience. For example, if you're publishing a video series on how to use InDesign, put it on your own website, YouTube, and Skillshare. And to optimize your videos’ load times and track useful metrics, consider using a video hosting service like Vidzflow that can help you host and manage your videos online.

How to measure your video SEO strategy

Video hosting platforms like YouTube and Vidzflow track valuable metrics showcasing your website content’s performance so you can optimize it to drive more traffic and generate more conversions. Here are the primary analytics you should keep an eye on.

Keyword performance

Hosting platforms track the keywords that led viewers to your videos so they know which terms to associate with your content. Your platform will display this information in your analytics dashboard. For example, YouTube stores the data in your Reach Report, filed under Traffic Sources. Monitor these reports to determine which keywords you should lean into.

Click-through rate (CTR)

Every video hosting platform measures CTR to determine a video’s click potential when they appear in SERPs or video suggestions. You can find your CTRs in the analytics dashboard for your channel. For example, on YouTube, it's calculated under the name "impressions click-through rate."

Audience retention

Audience retention measures how many people watch your video content from beginning to end. Videos that retain their viewers throughout appear higher in search results. If you're experiencing low audience retention, try the following tactics:

• Begin with a cold open. Start your video with a candid moment that makes the audience laugh or subverts their expectations in exciting ways.
• Cut it in half. After you write a script, try editing it down to reduce the word count by half. Remove instances where you reiterate ideas unnecessarily or dwell on one topic too long.
• Remove dead space. As you edit your videos, remove as much dead space as possible without making the flow feel choppy. As a general rule of thumb, cut any moment of silence that lasts longer than three seconds.

Re-watches

If viewers are re-watching specific parts of your video, you know you did something right. Find the moments people are revisiting and add chapters and timestamps so search engines can spot them, highlighting them directly in video search results.

Video engagement 

Your engagement metric tracks the number of people who shared, liked, or commented on the content, revealing the impressions you've generated. To build engagement, encourage people to "like and subscribe" during your video and remind them to leave a comment to add to the conversation. 

Support your video content with Webflow

As video content increases in popularity, so does the importance of optimizing your videos to make sure they reach your target audience — no matter what channel they’re on. 

With Webflow, you have access to powerful video integrations to make the most of video content on your website. Webflow’s visual-first web development environment also enables you to build responsive, seamless site experiences that align with your video strategy.

Check out Webflow University’s guide to adding videos to your website to learn more.