Search engines consider video content to be a marker of useful websites. To give your website the best chance at ranking well in search, you need to put more video content online. If you follow the 5 tips we’ve included below, you’ll improve your search rank and keep visitors on your website longer.

Here are my 5 SEO Tips for Video Content On Your Website in 2019

1. Metadata really matters

Rich metadata is one of the best methods to increase the ranking of your video content in search. Some companies rely on the smart strategy of including long tail keywords in the metadata.

Hidden tags in the HTML code of your video landing pages are important areas to populate–Facebook OpenGraph tags, Schema.org’s microdata tags, and Twitter card tags can all boost your video content in search.

2. Videos should be easy to browse

This one provides a distinct benefit for the user and your website: Make videos easy to browse by arranging them in an indexed gallery. Not only will users be able to quickly find videos they’re interested in under the proper category and keyword, but by creating separate landing pages for each video, you’re indexing each video so search engines can more easily find and rank the content.

3. Transcriptions are SEO miracles

Transcribing a video is a sneaky-but-smart SEO move that can rank videos that aren’t currently ranking. By adding the transcription of a video, you get a chance to use text keywords to rank your video in search.

Add your video transcriptions right to the HTML of each page where your videos are hosted. Transcriptions let users read your video content if they can’t listen or have a hearing disability. At the same time, the transcription provides a keyword-rich chunk of text for search engines to crawl.

4. Use a Custom Thumbnail image as Your Featured Image on the blog post

Use the same display thumbnail that you have on the YouTube video or create a custom thumbnail with the YT image inside of a computer or tablet mockup, like you would find in smartmockups, dropmock, or canva.

Also make sure to add the same image into the facebook image in the SEO block at the bottom of your post editor. I use Yoast SEO plugin to make it easy to add a Facebook sharing link and image

5. Allow users to embed video content

If you’re creating good videos that bring value to your viewers and make people stick around on your website, chances are, there are lots of people who will want to embed your video content on their own websites. That’s why it’s essential that you make it easy for viewers to embed your video (resulting in inbound links to your website). We call that an SEO win! Include the code for users to embed your video easily.