Ft. Hard Knox − Why aren’t my videos getting more web traffic?

Why aren’t my videos getting more web traffic?

Posted January 21st, 2010 by Jenn's Tech Tips

UPDATE 01/30/10: Also see Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online on TechCrunch

So, we’ve produced and posted some amazing videos online. We know they’re amazing, but unfortunately, no one else seems to know they’re amazing, because they aren’t watching them, right? What do to?

First, how do potential find our videos online? Usually either through the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, etc.), or social networking/news/bookmarking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, reddit, etc.). Most potential viewers either receive a link to your video from their friends on these sites, or they find your video by using search terms (keywords). Unless you’re famous, and have long lists of people just dying for your newest video release (in which case you’re probably not reading this post), you’re going to have to join the rest of us in learning how to use the right keywords, so that people can find your videos by content.

Search engines do not crawl the AUDIO or VIDEO portions of videos. For example, Google does not know what is happening in our videos. It isn’t watching our videos, or listening to them. The only way any of the search engines (or search features on the various social sites) are going to know what our video is about is if we tell them. How do we do that? By using keywords in our titles, tags, and the text portions of our posts.

Here are some suggestions on how to make your videos more search-engine friendly:

Post them on a video site that ranks high in the search engines. YouTube is owned by Google (hint, hint), and I also recommend UStream.tv for videos longer than 10 minutes.
Think very LITERALLY when choosing your title and keywords. Use the words people are going to use when searching for the content of your video. For example, if your video is about how to make chocolate pudding, a perfect title would be “How to make chocolate pudding.” (Tricky, huh?) DON’T use the date and time of your video (no one cares), and DON’T use a bumper-sticker slogan that no one is going to search for (“chocolate anyone?”
Consider embedding the video on your own blog or website, in it’s own post/article. This increases traffic to your site, helps you increase your page rank, and gives you better control over the title, tagging, and text used to promote the video.
If your video is a sermon, speech or presentation, consider including the transcript or at least an outline of the sermon/speech in the text of your post -especially if you have opted to embed the video on your own website or blog. This gives the search engines more text to “crawl,” and gives you more opportunity to include more keywords/search terms.
If your video is a song, consider including the lyrics or guitar chords. These are popular searches.

Do you have other ideas?

Also see:

Welcome to the new Church 2.0 category on Ft. Hard Knox. Here, you will find great resources for any Christian wanting to become more effective in online activism, especially in Church outreach.