Video search engine optimization (VSEO) is a powerful tool for increasing your website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results. By optimizing your videos with relevant keywords, titles, and descriptions, you can attract more viewers and improve your site’s organic traffic. This essay explores the key strategies and techniques for effectively using VSEO to enhance your online presence and drive more traffic to your website.
Can you define, in a few words, what VSEO is?
VSEO, for Video Search Engine Optimization, refers to the practice of making videos visible and being referenced by videos. VSEO will make it possible to improve its positioning and make its content appear both on video hosting platforms, such as YouTube or TikTok, but also on traditional search engines.
Where can video content appear on Google?
When searching, videos can appear in several ways. The Internet user can exploit the filtering system offered by search engines, and request to obtain only video results, in the same way as for news or images.
It is also possible that Google considers that for a specific query, it is relevant to display videos in an inset, which is displayed in the upper or lower corner of the screen. But it varies extremely from one request to another. Video content may appear every time, as it may never appear. Furthermore, the system is constantly evolving. There was a time when videos were frequently featured in search results. This is less the case today, and I have not noticed any significant development following the deployment of the latest updates.
You should know that today, Google is carrying out more updates to its algorithm over time, and in particular automatically with its internal algorithm. On a request, the video can appear today, and disappear tomorrow. It’s important to check from time to time, as Google may change the search intent, or refine its understanding of the query to change the types of results that are displayed.
How is the contextualization of video content crucial for VSEO and which textual elements should be optimized?
Basically, a video, like an image, is a computer file that is not directly interpretable by Google, since a search engine has neither human vision nor hearing. For images, we are fortunate to be able to rely on alternative text which allows us to describe the image, but there is no equivalent for videos. To contextualize the content of the video, several rules must therefore be respected:
- The environment of the video: a video integrated on a site or in a blog article must be accompanied by several descriptive elements, such as detailed subtitles, a description or a summary. This information helps the search engine understand and interpret the content of the video.
- The choice of platform: the choice of YouTube may be obvious since Google can easily draw on the database of this platform which it owns. By uploading a video to YouTube, the Internet user also fills in numerous fields which will facilitate understanding, such as the title, description, tags, etc.
- Schema.org markup: this is structured data, invisible to the Internet user, but which search engines will analyze and interpret a variety of elements of the video. This markup provides information such as the author, upload date and time, video description, title, and more.
How does Google rate video quality?
The popularity of the video is one of the main criteria. The more a video is viewed, commented on, shared or gets “likes”, the more it increases its visibility both on hosting platforms like YouTube, but also on search engines. Google will also evaluate the credibility of the video by examining the links that redirect to it.
The duration of the video is secondary for Google, which will first evaluate whether the content meets the user’s intention. For example, a tutorial on repairing a lawn mower cannot reasonably be condensed into two minutes. In this type of scenario, the length of the video becomes a factor to take into account, since the issue is expected to be covered in full. The context of the query determines the importance of the duration, but will not systematically influence the positioning of the content in search results.
Can the thumbnail influence the SEO of a video?
The thumbnail has no direct impact on positioning in search results. It can be compared to the meta description of a web page. On the other hand, a well-designed thumbnail can significantly increase the click-through rate, hence the importance of analyzing, on the query, how the thumbnails that appear in the search results are constructed.
On Google, are videos referenced in the same way and according to the same rules, regardless of the platform on which they are published?
Google behaves differently depending on the platform the video is hosted on for several reasons. On certain platforms, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, videos are inaccessible without a connection, which leads Google to simply ignore them. Furthermore, certain platforms are disadvantaged because, as explained previously, Google has privileged access to the YouTube database. This is why content hosted on Vimeo or Dailymotion is less frequently highlighted in Google search results.
At the agency, when we talk with clients, we recommend publishing content on YouTube, in order to ensure maximum visibility. This ensures that Google’s robots will understand the video, but also benefit from the technical power of the platform, in terms of server, bandwidth, etc.
Will the upcoming arrival of the Search Generative Experience encourage more optimization of video content?
Based on tests carried out within our agency or by other SEO experts, we have not observed any particular emphasis on video content in Google SGE. But this observation must be taken with a grain of salt because the tool is still in the experimental phase, its operation can still evolve.
For a brand or an advertiser, what are the main advantages of having good video SEO?
This is a very good marketing tool. Depending on its target and its positioning, the video can facilitate conversion. If people aged over 35 carry out rather traditional searches on the web, the younger generation tends to naturally gravitate towards video content. Some Internet users, for example, do most of their research on TikTok. Video can therefore be a way to broaden your target, but also to produce content with high added value which presents the product or promotes the skills of a company.
