Google’s blended results are a fairly recent innovation from the search engine giant, but they may offer a short cut to grabbing those coveted top page rankings. As it turns out, Google indexes video content in content the same way they index regular web content. But since there’s nowhere near as much video your chance of getting a video in a top spot is very high.
If you’re in a category with very competitive keywords, this news is great news as you’ve now got a real chance to gain some ground on your competitors.
Over at Quicksprout.com, SEO guru Neil Patel recently shared some great tips for getting top page rankings using video content and here are some of the very best he had to offer.
Upload Videos to YouTube
It’s not really accurate to say that Google has a preference for its own products, but it’s not really inaccurate either. We know that adding Google Plus factors into higher page rankings, and uploading videos does, too. Patel points out, and we agree, that at the very least you know that Google bots will be indexing their own sites.
Embed Videos
Once you’ve uploaded your video content on to YouTube, you can go ahead and embed it on your site, too. Getting the YouTube version of the video in as many spots as possible is important as Google factors in how many views a video gets when considering rankings. A view of the embedded video on you page is as good a view of the original on YouTube.
Be sure and follow up on the embedded video with a text description and a video transcript, too. These block of content get crawled, too and are another step on the road to the top…of the page.
Give Videos Real SEO Treatment
A lot of webmasters forget a very important point about video content and that’s that it should be given the same SEO treatment as all your other content. That means building backlinks and giving careful thought to keywords and titles. You’ll have a tough time getting a top ranking when you’re not even using basic SEO techniques, like creating a site map.
Create Your Own YouTube Channel
Finally, Patel recommends creating your own YouTube channel with an SEO friendly title. This allows you to upload transcripts of your videos directly on to YouTube. Your transcripts get indexed, your videos get viewed and your page sits neatly at the top of the search results page.
Are you utilizing video content to grab top page rankings? Share your tips and tricks with us on our SEO Forum Pages.