Step #1: Upload videos directly to YouTube
Google owns YouTube, and they want YouTube to be used. Naturally they will rank videos on YouTube before any other video website like Vimeo. If you wish to use Vimeo for other reasons that’s great, but if your looking to gain SEO traffic with your video YouTube is the way to go.
Step #2: Embed the video onto your website
Embedding your video on your website helps with your sales conversions as well as gets your existing traffic to see the video. The amount of times a video is viewed helps get it ranked on Google.
Step #3: Embed videos on pages with text
Search engines want to know what your content on the video is about. Make sure you have text on the page describing the video. Having some before the video and after will help.
Step #4: Focus on long-tail keywords
The video title is important. It is what Google is most interested in when it comes to the term that is being used for a search. In other words, the title and search term need to match your video title. It’s much easier to rank videos for long-tail keywords like “how to unplug a sink”, so focus on them instead of going after generic keywords like “sink”.
Step #5: Create a YouTube channel
If you don’t already have one, create a YouTube channel. Make sure you create a channel name that is related to your industry. You can even go as far as creating a channel name that has your keyword in it.
Step #6: Build backlinks to your video
If you want to build links to your video, I recommend that you follow these 10 advanced techniques of getting authority links and these link-building tactics.
Conclusion
One advantage you have with videos over conventional SEO is that it is easier to get a YouTube video to rank on page 1 than it is to get a website to rank.
What that means is you can compete for rankings with well-established sites if you have optimized your videos correctly, giving you an equal footing with the competition.
Google’s algorithm to find and index videos will only get better over time…and the competition for these results will obviously get more fierce, which means first-page ranking will get tougher. So, if you haven’t created a video yet, you’d better hurry up.
What other SEO tactics do you use to rank videos on the first page of search results?
