Views are a fundamental metric used to measure the success of video marketing. Whether your goal for creating videos is to sell a product, generate leads or create exposure for your brand, you need views to succeed. If you publish a video on your website but no one actually sees it, you won’t accomplish your goals. Thankfully, you can attract more video views by optimizing your website.
Search Rankings and Traffic
Optimizing a website for more video views begins with understanding the correlation between search rankings and traffic. If you typically click a first-page listing, you aren’t alone. Studies show that the top four organic listings in Google account for a collective 69.9 percent traffic share. Therefore, you should optimize your website to achieve a high search ranking. As your site’s ranking increases, more people will watch your videos.
Host on YouTube
You don’t have to upload videos directly to your website. An alternative, more Google-friendly method is to host them on YouTube. After uploading your video to YouTube, copy the embed code and paste it into your website’s code. YouTube will continue to host the actual video though visitors can watch it from your website. Web pages featuring embedded YouTube videos typically rank high in the search engines, especially Google.
Create Title Tags
Create a unique title tag for every web page on which your videos are located. As explained by Moz, search engines display this HTML element as a clickable headline in their search results. An effective page title should accurately describe the core content of the page. If the page’s main content is the video, use the video title.
Keep in mind that Google only shows 50 to 60 characters for the title tag. If you go over this limit, the headlines for your listings may get cut off.
Include Social Sharing Buttons
Include clickable sharing buttons for all of the major social media networks next to your videos. Granted, visitors can share your videos on Facebook or Twitter without these buttons. Including them, however, makes the process a little easier. Instead of opening a new tab and logging in to their social media account, for instance, visitors can click a button to instantly share the video with their friends or followers. And each time a visitor shares it on social media, your video will generate additional exposure and visibility.
Mobile Friendly
When optimizing your website, use a mobile-friendly design to prevent device compatibility problems. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, visitors attempting to watch your video on a smartphone may encounter errors or functionality issues.
The use of internet-connected smartphones and tablets has exploded. About 71 percent of all U.S. internet traffic comes from mobile devices. This is in stark contrast to just four years ago when desktop internet traffic surpassed mobile. The bottom line is that your website needs to be mobile friendly; otherwise, some visitors won’t be able to watch your videos.
Transcribe Videos
Transcribing your videos promotes higher rankings by providing search engines with readable text. Neither Google nor any other search engine can decipher audio with 100 percent accuracy. Translating the audio into text with a video captioning service helps search engines understand what your video is about. And using this information, they’ll have an easier time choosing an appropriate ranking for it.
Quality Matters
Perhaps the most important optimization tip is to produce high-quality videos. If your videos offer real value, visitors will take notice by watching and sharing them. In turn, search engines will raise your site’s rankings, resulting in more traffic and video views.
Website optimization is just one way to generate more video views. However, it’s also one of the most effective. Use the tips outlined here to optimize your website videos for maximum visibility.