Since video contents are getting more and more popular these days, we also need to up our game when it comes to optimizing our video content’s metadata. Now, blog posts or text-heavy contents really differ from video.

The top trending videos on YouTube

That is why, I made a list of dedicated factors that can help you in optimizing your video content.

• VIDEO TITLE
  • This is the very first thing your viewer will see when they type in a particular keyword. The trick here is to create a title that will entice your viewers to click on the video.
  • You need to make sure that your title is enough to lure in people to watch your video.
  • In that case, make your title enticing, engaging and compelling. Make it relevant to the content itself and please do not bore people with an unbelievably lengthy title.
  • Lastly, it should be short, but enough to pack a punch.
• DESCRIPTION
  • This is just as important as the title. Why? The description is where you give people a head start on what they are about to watch. So, you better make it interesting.
  • You need to keep in mind that only the first few sentences will appear on your description in the search engine results. Make every word count and while doing so, please do not spoil the whole content of the video. Leave some as a mystery for your viewers to discover.
• TAGS
  • Of course, please do not forget to include your tags. List tags that are relevant to your video and list them according to their relevance.
  • It is also advised to include general and specific tags, use sufficient tags to properly describe the video, and update video tags in case new search trends rise.
  • To properly set up tags to index your video, include keywords that people can see from the title of your video.
• THUMBNAIL
  • I cannot put enough emphasis on making sure that your thumbnail is bomb.
  • This is one of the first things that people will see on the face of the search engine so you need to put so much thought into making your thumbnail perfect.
  • If you read my previous post, boring thumbnails could be one of the reasons why people do not click your videos.
  • Thumbnails may seem trivial and unimportant. However, this small thumbnail can give a huge impact on video plays and views.
  • Here’s a little treat: videos with custom thumbnails get a 30% increased play rate than those without customization. That data is according to Wistia.
• TITLE CARD / OPENING BILLBOARD
  • Open your video in a way that will spark interest in people to continue watching the entire video.

 These are all foolproof ways to optimize your video content, but the finishing touch of this is, of course, to maintain consistency in all of your videos. After all, your viewers are after of the video quality. So, be consistent with the color, style, effect, and quality of any content you choose to vlog about.

Make sure you apply every single bit of tips and tricks I have laid out for you to optimize your video content. Once you mastered the basics, the rest will surely be easy-peasy. If you haven’t, catch up on the 4 Reasons Why Your Videos Are Not Ranking Well.

If there is one avenue where you can learn a ton about your website and about your customers, it is definitely on your help desk. Everyone from your marketing team, down to your sales team, and even your customer service representatives can learn a thing or two from your website’s help desk.

Now, depending on how huge your business is and the type of customers that patronize your brand or content, there are various tools to use. In this case, your website might need to make customer interaction easier. You can interact with them through support tickets, online chatting, and sending out online forms.

Here’s a list of few things you can get from your help desk data:

• KEYWORD RESEARCH

  • This part of your system will tell you the most common words, or phrases that people search for in your website
  • There would be commonly used terms that would be visible on support tickets. You could see these terms repeat on the tickets submitted on your website. There is a variety of tools that could help you analyze the most pressing concerns that your customers have about your business in a general sense.

• CONTENT CONCEPTS

  • Once everything is laid out, you can now dig useful data to know : the topic they are interested in, and content they spend the most time viewing.
  • When you need to classify contents, or group them, Google Analytics will help you a lot in terms of organizing your data.
  • Additionally, this will also give you an idea on what you should have or improve on your products and service. Lastly, once everything is figured out, Google Search Console can also give you more useful info.

• THE CHANGE OF SEASONS

  • Not everyday customers ask the same questions. Of course, like the seasons, their queries change from time to time.
  • Some days, customers ask more questions or support and that is why you also need to analyze search and its seasonality.
  • This is to identify the trend of your customers’ search activities.
  • This is useful for you to study the trend and will enable you to forecast any increases or decreases in customer’s search activities during specific dates of the year.
  • Roughly, you can foresee how many agents you should have during a specific time or day, and what content to feature during a specific season. Thus, it is easier to compare and contrast one season from another.

• IDENTIFYING CONTENTS TO LURE POTENTIAL PARTNERS

  • This segment will help you attract potential business partners. Your ticketing data will help you point out the content your future partners will be checking as they think about engaging in an official partnership.
  • You can use these ticketing data in your campaigns or prospect hunting to show your inclination with these partners and that your customers can get something out of your partnership.

• ROADMAPPING

  • If you want to keep your articles visible to crawlers, pull Google Search Console for keyword impression and click data. So, this will enable you to pull in the keyword impression data that is distinct to your help desk.

• DEVICE USABILITY

  • Google Analytics also gives us an idea into how customers are looking into customer support. You will know where exactly there are putting in their queries, may it be in their mobile phones, tablets, or desktop computers.

While you may already know all about search engine optimization, we should not also neglect the very core of it, which is “CONTENT”. Content is a vital part when we talk about search engine optimization. If both of these two factors are combined in perfect harmony, it could give your website a boost to the top of the search engine rankings. Now, isn’t that what we all want, right?

Do more than just shallow content.

That is why the very purpose of this article is elaborate the vitality of content creation, how valuable it is, and how it could give your website a head start from the rest of your competitors.

CONTENT

• We are going to start this off  by defining content. In the online community, content is merely defined as what your work is made of; what we will find should we browse through your website.
• But if we want to give our website a boost though, it is not acceptable to “just have a content”. It should work in a way whereas reader or viewers will find what they see as interesting, informational or fun.
• You also need to consider the fact that your content is the reflection of the overall feel of your website. Your website should clearly show what you are really trying to convey through your work.
• Here is a simpler but more complete definition of content as per the words of Derek Halpern, Social Triggers founder: “Content comes in any form (audio, text, video), and it informs, entertains, enlightens, or teaches the people who consume it.”
• Remember, the very goal is basically to spark interest in the viewers and to create engagement. Why are we discussing this? Because it is important to point out that not everything that we see online is to be considered as a content.
• Not every content is actually relevant or worthy, and that, my friends, is exactly what we are trying to avoid here.

SEO VALUE OF CONTENT

• Now, we shall proceed to talking about how content works in search engine optimization. Google’s mission has always been “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Ever since it was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998, Google has always made sure of that.
• Until now, Google have also been constantly thriving to develop ways to more effectively deliver relevant search results in just one single click. These search results are made possible through the contents that can be found all throughout the internet.
• So, all of these contents are ranked in accordance to its relevance. With that being said,  your content must be helpful to the viewers.  If you want your content to show on the top search rankings, strive for what your users want. That is how content and search engine optimization work in this industry.

To end this discussion, content is valuable in SEO if it can benefit users. In order for your content to be beneficial to your viewers, it needs to be useful and informative, and credible. Most importantly, it needs to be engaging to get your website at the top of the search ranking.

To have a glimpse of the basics of search engine optimization is not really sufficient, you need to know it by heart by now if you want to drive its success. Now after knowing about the basics, and the factors for a successful search engine optimization, we can know indulge in another three important areas to take into account if you really want to flourish your perfect SEO dreams.

These three areas are namely:

• SEARCH EXPERIENCE OPTIMIZATION

  • SEO, obviously as we keep on mentioning it, typically stands for “SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION”. In the most simple words, is a way of optimizing your websites for search engines. But now, SEO stands for another term: SEARCH EXPERIENCE OPTIMIZATION
  • It is optimizing for people in all the mediums or platforms your brand, and content could potentially show up. It is way beyond the fundamentals of optimizing for search engines. According to a 2006 Forrester study, “Ninety-three percent of online experiences begin with a search engine“.
  • That means a search engine is indeed a great help in discovering brands. You have to make the best out of each and every way you can to improve the visibility of your brand/content. Your brand/content will not be relevant if you are not easily visible to your potential viewers.
  • To be tagged as number in organic search would be useless, if you won’t even show up as “first”. There are a bunch of other search features that are far more taken into account first such as News and Social Content, and many more.
  • The bottom line for this is: be visible as much as you can and in any way possible. What better way to promote your content than being out there. Apply not just search engine optimization, but also focus on the improving the users’ experience.

• CONTENT STRATEGIES FOR ACTUAL PEOPLE

  • We should not forget the main reason we are creating contents, and these are our people, our viewers.
  • We should not only optimize for the sake of search engines, but we need to optimize for people. The success of your brand/ content boils down to the sole purpose of creating it, and that is to create content for your customers. Why does content matter? Because without actual content, there wouldn’t be any reason to be visible.
  • Don’t limit yourself with a strategy that only sets out for vague/ambiguous keywords. Listen to your market because they will tell you what content is relevant. Fix your foundation and make sure to cover all what you need to know about SEO.

• VOICE SEARCH ON SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

  • The newest approach for optimization is voice search. People’s new way to searching is through verbal cues, although it is not foolproof yet, it is the future of SEO. You need to be ready for a voice-first era. Make your content searchable on voice-enabled devices like the Amazon Echo, Alexa devices, and other smart audio companions at home.

Search Engine Optimization is a process that is ever evolving. Make sure you are open to developments along the way and make sure that you create contents that are of value to your customers and that are easily accessible. Brush up on your knowledge of the basics of SEO, and the essential SEO success factors.

Ever wonder why when you try to search something on the internet, a lengthy list of suggestions will come up? That is how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION work.

What is SEO?

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. Meaning, it is not just gathering random and irrelevant suggestions for a particular search topic, but accumulating a number of useful, helpful and topic-relevant information.

• Keywords are quantity and quality of traffic. To start off, quantity is about the number of traffic or in other words the number of appropriate people that clicks to your content. The greater the traffic, the better… but that does not mean we need to compromise the quality of traffic.
• Quality means if the actual traffic is really pertaining to your content. One might appear on a search result just because its descriptive title includes a word that is similar to what was search but both might have a completely different context. Even if it does appear as part of the search result, it will be put into vain because the person who searched for that specific title has a completely different content in mind.

Let us try to understand how search engines work first and foremost.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and many more have internet tentacles that gather a bunch of information or data that they can find on the net. They have a wingman that hook them up with information that could be relevant to the content. They accumulate these info and basically form an index. The index is then set out to match the content searched or query. That’s how search engines roll.

Now, to discuss the optimization part. Optimizing search engines is basically maximizing its potentials. It is easy to put up a content out there and you can easily spot contents that can be similar to yours. Optimizing content is just a fancy way of saying “makeover”.  So, this would mean that you need to put out your content in a way that readers or viewers will immediately click on it. Optimization can come in a bunch of different ways and strategies from unique title, title tags and such. Another thing that you could do to spice things up is include or make mention other internal links that are relevant to the topic at hand and could also broaden up your views.

Understanding your users’ journey.

Before going into the details, ask yourself  what and why people search? Understand their intent into why they would search these keywords. Your users might be interesting on the latest Ariana Grande song, they might want to go on a vacation to Maldives, or they want to simply browse for cute puppy photos.

When a user starts to use a search engine, they are starting their journey to finding new information. This is what you call the start of the “consumer journey”. It’s up to you to fulfill this journey by providing content relevant to the users’ wants.

Knowing the basics first.

These are the basic things you need to know about search engine optimization before digging in to the real deal. It could look pretty easy to understand but it branches out to a lot of complex ideas, strategies, and many more. So, before getting to the more advanced part of search engine optimization, it is best to understand the basic concepts at heart.