SEO For videos can it be done?
Video Optimisation and Promotion
Optimising for video search is much like optimising for image search. The video search engines can’t easily see the video content (note the exceptions covered below), so you need to use manual tagging in the video file metadata itself. Use a good title, a good description, and a solid list of keywords.
Using keywords in the file name of the video is also useful. Note that file format you use for your video does not matter, as long as you use one of the standards (e.g. MOV, AVI, WMF). Do be careful to not use Flash only, or use entirely dynamic players. You can run into duplicate content issues if you offer your video in multiple file formats, so make sure to steer away from that by using robots.txt to pick one version as the focal point for the search engines.
Of course, the context of the web page where the video resides matters a lot too. That page should have its own abstract, links to other related content, a supportive title, etc. Anchor text of links to the web page is supportive too.
Promotion starts with submitting your videos to video search engines, placing the videos on readily accessible web pages, and getting links to those web pages. That’s the easy part. You should also create a video site map, and use an H1 tag of “video site map” in that file.
It’s also important to embrace the social web. Having people tag the video, share it, rate it, and comment on it is valuable. For one thing, this type of activity has the potential to go viral, which is one of the beauties of video. Make this easier by providing an RSS feed of the video, complete with appropriate tags and a transcript (or a summary).
Looking Inside Video
Video search engines are starting to look inside the video itself. Here are some of the things that were mentioned during this session:
1. Detecting flesh tones to find adult content
2. Checking for audio match with the sound track
3. Logo detection
4. Face detection
5. Object detection
6. Everything generates a transcript from the audio
7. On screen text recognition
It will be fascinating to see how this marketplace unfolds. As broadband usage expands, and as more and more people become aware of the quality and quantity of videos which are available, this market will continue to grow. Also, technology advances will have a real impact too. As video search engines get better and better at looking inside videos, the quality of their results will improve. This should drive adoption even further.
Victor Quinteros CEO of Sydney SEO Firm Rotapix