Optimizing metatags for online video search

New technologies, the continuous  growth of  data transfer speeds and increasing broadband availability is leading lead to more extensive use of videos on web-sites.

And using HTML5 technology brings even more opportunities for video placement on websites. However video content is the same as any other content; it should also generate traffic and revenue.

Done properly video on a website will be crawled and ranked - but whether it gets top positions on search engine result pages depends only on how well it’s optimized. Although search engine optimization for online videos is relatively new technique in search marketing, there are key principles that should be followed.

The first thing is that actual footage content cannot be crawled and evaluated. There is no search technology (at least widely used yet) that can say what is on the video. Search engines can do some basic things with videos like determining adult content, detect faces and onscreen text and maybe some more. However, so far there is nothing to help optimize your actual video content for search engines. That’s why other onpage factors, such as metadata, inbound links and anchor text play an important role in telling search engines (and eventually your customers) what a particular video is all about.  

Relevant and unique metadata plays a vital role in video SEO. There is a temptation to abandon or ignore adding correct detail to metadata but you do this at your peril. Adding correct metadata to the video may seem irksome and not important but the opposite is true. Metadata for your online videos is a vital identifying factor.

Here are couple tips what should and shouldn’t do when working on online video metadata.

1. Never repeat the titles of your videos, even though the videos are similar or almost identical.
   
   Unique metadata and content has always been something that search engine liked the most. Even though the content is footage, a unique title identifies your original clip and makes it easier for searchers to find.
   
   
2. Always use words identifying type of your content like: video, clip, footage etc.
   
   Many searchers add these words to differentiate the file type they are looking for.
   
   
3. Use no more than 60 characters for title of your videos, and no more than 120 characters (without spaces) for description.
   
   Put the most important key term at the beginning. Remember that description is scanned very very quickly – and it’s also the reason people will click to your video.
   
   
4. Use clean font code for video metadata.

Title of a video should be marked on a web-page with h1 tag.  Sometimes additional tags designating the title font, size and style appear in title code; clean code is always an issue with search engines.

Using these simple steps will make your online video much more visible for search engines and eventually for your customers. Remember that smart use of video metatags will generate traffic to your website.