You’ve decided that now is the time to start including videos on your website. Good for you. To be sure, it is the perfect time. And it’s never too late to get started. But how do you optimize your videos?

Here are three specific methods for video optimization that you should use when implementing your on-site video marketing campaign:

• Keyword-rich file name: This is one of the most important video optimization techniques for any website. Don’t just name your video something generic like video1 or video-of-me-and-billy. Instead, give your video a keyword-rich file name. For example, if you sell chocolate truffles on your website and you are adding a video of your manufacturing process, give your video a name like the-chocolate-truffle-making-process.wav. This is a keyword optimize file name that will give you a big search engine optimziation boost in the search engines.



• Include a text description: Unlike image optimization, videos don’t use alt tags. However, you can use a text description below or beside the video to give it an additional SEO boost. The description should be 2-3 sentences. And you should use your keyword a couple of times in the description to ensure that the search engines understand what the video is about. For instance, for the chocolate truffle video above, you might say something like “United Chocolate Truffles, Inc. spends 4 hours on each box of chocolate truffles in the manufacturing process. The video above shows our chocolate truffle team at Station 2 (the mixing station) adding our special ingredient, a trade secret that makes our chocolate truffles 30% richer.” Make your video descriptions keyword rich.
• Include a share button: If you allow your site visitors an opportunity to share your video with others on their favorite social networks or send the video by e-mail to a friend you’ll increase your traffic to that page dramatically. Increased traffic can lead to higher search engine rankings, particularly if you have a low bounce rate (and if people are watching your video you’ll have a low bounce rate).

Video optimization is not rocket science, but there are some specific techniques that will boost your SEO efforts. These three video optimization techniques are some of the most important that you should know.