Google’s keenness to rank videos higher in SERPs has enabled websites with quality video content to climb up the search ladder fast by scoring well in the Google index. A Forrester Research found concludes that videos were more likely to get an organic first-page ranking than traditional webpages.

In the previous post, we have grasped the various aspects of optimization of key YouTube page elements. The flip side, as described, is that a searcher will directly be taken to YouTube, thus not fulfilling your goal of higher ranking for the parent site. For this purpose, you may create quality video content, integrate it within the site itself (instead of hosting it on the social site) and then see to it that Google finds and indexes it.

Successful video SEO ensures top search engines will include your video content in the top results for specific keywords. Here’s how you can make it possible:

1. With traditional webpages, Google makes use of crawlers to discover and index content. At times, it cannot read Flash well. As a result, video content often is untraceable by Google’s search crawlers. It is wrong to think that since you’ve already submitted the webpage containing a video, the latter is being indexed by default.
2. So what is the way out? Submitting your video to Google with a video sitemap using its Webmaster Tools is the best way to figure in its blended search results. A video sitemap resembles an XML sitemap, albeit formatted specially for video. Ensure you’ve a robots.txt file on each video page, for Google to easily verify the validity of locations that you’ve submitted, and also the fact that they contain embed codes, denoting the existence of a video.
3. In a way, Google is flexible in what it terms video content. So apart from actual video footage, screen captures, animated PowerPoint slides and slide shows can work just as well. Google cannot straightway ‘see’ what’s there inside the video, so it initially relies on title and other meta-data to read and rank your video.
4. On the other hand, see to it that keywords within the video title match the actual content or else you will end up driving away users. Google is going to discover the mismatch at some stage and this will harm your site’s search rank. However, you may re-submit a video with different titles that include potential search terms.
5. Video SEO works better with long tail just like traditional SEO. It is advisable to target more specific (longer tail) search terms. A generic video title is unlikely to deliver a top ranking, whereas a more elaborate description inclusive of specific key terms will more often than not score higher in Google’s algorithm.

By effective implementation of video SEO, a newly launched site with relatively lesser number of pages and linkbacks to it can compete with more established players in the domain on equal footing.