One Goal, Two Methods
Before actually optimizing a video for search one has to decide whether to host it on one’s website or upload it to YouTube. Both options have their advantages and a lot of information about each single option can be found on the Internet. However, there is no information about how to make use of both options for video SEO at the same time. For that reason we would like to give you a brief instruction concerning the optimization of videos in case you want to benefit from using both options.
Option 1: Optimizing a Self-Hosted Video
When optimizing a video one usually employs the techniques of classic SEO. First of all, you should create a keyword optimized landing page with unique content, specific metadata and the corresponding URL. As an alternative to unique content you can also upload a transcript of the video. The internal links should be kept simple and meaningful (master keyword of the video and “video”) and video specific meta data should be used. Furthermore, a video sitemap should be updated and sent to Google regularly. On other websites the classic SEO techniques can be applied as well, which means that the video can also be embedded. (Remember that the anchor text of the backlink must be changed at some time if you add an embed code with a backlink to the landing page.) Finally – and this should not be neglected – you should add social bookmarking share buttons and use Twitter, Facebook etc. for advertizing the video.
Option 2: Optimizing the Google-Ranking
As with option 1, you should apply the classic SEO techniques, i.e. keywords, tags and links (internal and external) for this option, as well. YouTube ranks a video according to user behavior (frequency and number of hits, number and kinds of ratings, number of times watched, frequency of appearance in lists of favorites and playlists as well as number of channel subscriptions and video responses).
Option 3: Publication on YouTube and Self-Hosting
If you want to host the video yourself and share it on YouTube at the same time, you should publish and optimize it on your own website first. Only when it has been indexed by Google you should upload the video to YouTube. Then hard link it to your own website and avoid providing any content on YouTube that is more detailed than the content on your website.
