5 Video Search Engine Optimization Tips to Keep in Mind in 2020

Written content might be king, but video is about to overthrow the throne.
By the end of this year, 80% of all online material will consist of video marketing. If you're ready to embrace this movement for your own brand, you're making a smart move.
Yet, you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to make sure web visitors click on the videos you work hard to create.
Today, we're sharing five video search engine optimization (SEO) tips that deliver the visibility you deserve.
Ready to learn more? Let's go!
1. Pick the Right Platform
Your first step is to choose a video hosting platform that meets your SEO goals. Before you do so, answer this question:
Do you want to increase your traffic and drive new leads? Or, are you only interested in video marketing to improve brand awareness and establish thought leadership?
If it's the former, stick with platforms such as Wistia, which adds SEO metadata to your video automatically. If you don't care as much about numbers, YouTube or Vimeo are both great options. Once your video is indexed on these platforms, they receive a majority of the traffic, rather than your site.
2. Write a Transcript
The text that accompanies your video is called a transcript. In addition to making your video more accessible to those with vision or hearing impairments, they also improve your video SEO.
How?
Extra content attached to your video equals more material for Google's bots to crawl. When you add indexable text, you can rank for more search queries.
3. Choose an Engaging Thumbnail
Think about it: When you're scrolling YouTube for a video to watch, what's the first thing your eyes land on? The thumbnail image, of course!
Think of this as your first impression. Be selective and strategic when choosing your thumbnail, and make sure it's compelling and interesting enough to encourage visitors to click.
At the very least, it should be a visual representation of your video content. For instance, if you're a lawyer sharing a video on how the criminal process works, a thumbnail depicting real estate law isn't appropriate. 

4. Focus on the Title and Description
Titles and meta descriptions still matter, even (especially) with video. Don't breeze past this step. Instead, think of a dynamic write-up that matches what your target audience is looking for.
Be wary not to overstuff these sections with keywords. They should sound natural but clickable!
5. Embed with Strategy
If you include multiple videos on a page, Google will usually index only one of them, signaling its bots to stop crawling after the first. As such, think twice about which one you put in the top position.
A better strategy would be to stick to one video per page. That way, you can optimize for that specific video and drive traffic right where you want it to go.
Win the Video Search Engine Transformation
You spend hours crafting the perfect blog content and creating informative articles to share on social media. Now, it's time to shake things up a bit.
Video search engine optimization is here to stay. Successful business leaders will be those who can embrace these five tips and put their media content ahead of the rest.
Want to see how your online videos are performing? Check out our Video Analytics Tool for the in-depth insights you need!