As the video Web rapidly emerges as the largest video-distribution platform in history, it is imperative that search engines can find your videos as easily as they can find your other Web content.
Because video search is a completely different animal than traditional text search, take these five steps to help video search engines find your clips:
Create quality metadata for each video you post Video-search engines use metadata to index, categorize and rank video content.
The most important metadata are:
- Title — accurately describe your video in 40 characters or less, using upper- and lowercase letters for optimal readability.
- Description — explain exactly what users will see, emphasizing the keywords and terms for which people might search.
- Categories, tags or keywords — specify any and all relevant terms for which users are likely to search.
- Image — include a visually descriptive thumbnail, typically 60-by-60, 80-by-80 or 100-by-100 pixels.
- Publish date — typically the day you actually publish.
- Link — spell out and include the URL where a video resides.
Register your site with video search engines If you create good metadata, any video search engine worth its salt should eventually index your content. However, you can speed things up by registering with specific video search engines.
Create a media RSS feed RSS is the preferred way for most video search engines to index and update your video content.
The media RSS format uses standard fields to categorize content, virtually ensuring quality metadata. When video search engines have access to your RSS feed, they instantaneously get new video content as soon as you add it.
Have a robust library of video content Having a large library of video content, as apposed to just a clip or two, is one of the ways you can set your site apart as a serious video content provider that ranks high in search results.
Post several clips with related video content If you post more than one video on a similar topic, video search engines will leverage your other content to make “more like this” recommendations.
This will help to drive up your overall viewership and bring in more traffic.
Gary Baker is founder and CEO of ClipBlast, Agoura Hills, CA Reach him at [email protected].
