SEO for Videos

[ArthurKay]

I recently signed up for an account at YouTube, and I was curious to know if any studies have been done showing how to optimize a video for search, whether it be on YouTube or another site.

When uploading a video to YouTube, you are asked to provide things like a title, description, category, etc... I would assume Google uses this data to help display videos upon search, but I want to know if certain fields are more heavily weighed than others. Does simply using keyword-rich content effect your rank, or is it more complicated?

[shyampc]

I think that title, description and above all - the tags help much in optimizing videos on a website. Adding specific tags will really help in SEO.

[kgun]

I agree with shyampc. The title and description tags are especially important. The headings you use may also be of value to the SE bots.

Related WPW thread:
SEO by video submision!!!

[mjtaylor]

Shyampc is referring to tags in addition to title and description (though those are important on YT) ... see:
What are tags? How do I add them? and and you may want to look at: YouTube Video Tag Optimization and SEO: youtube videos - getting more hits.

Cheers, MJ

[Webnauts]

Did you think of using SMIL for your videos?

[coolguy27]

I think that's SMO, as a knew strategy in SEO...

optimizing media to promote sites....

[ArthurKay]

Did you think of using SMIL for your videos?

Sorry if I'm a bit clueless, but what exactly is SMIL? I'm not familiar with that acronym.

[Webnauts]

Sorry if I'm a bit clueless, but what exactly is SMIL? I'm not familiar with that acronym.

Here you go: W3C Synchronized Multimedia Home page

[bobchrist]

I think there are lot of scope to add text there, in some videos you can be also able to convert speech to text.

[Volusion]

The greatest way to optimize a YouTube video is to make sure it is relevant. The more it gets passed around, the more free back links you will get.