56 | Video SEO Optimisation with Aleyda Solis
I’m honoured to have Aleyda Solis on the show, talking about video and optimising it for search, be it YouTube or Google.
Aleyda is an international SEO **superstar** consultant focusing on SEO. She tends to work with companies who are big brands or on the flip side, with startups that have aggressive goals to grow Organically. Besides doing SEO, she has her own project called Remoters for remote work resources, free jobs board, interviews, how-tos, and so on.
As it’s her own business, this helps her understand the restrictions companies that she consults for might have. For example, there are restrictions and not everything can always be implemented.
In 2019 Aleyda decided to have a new challenge, something new to test and looked at video optimisation. Hence she’s now sharing her findings with us today!
P.S. In 2020 she is focusing on her newsletter growth. >>>Sign up here<<<
Aleyda started with actionable videos and how-tos. She is filming herself speaking, which means lots of control when it comes to lighting, time to record, communicate and she’s able to inform the audience of what she knows.
YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine and – surprise, surprise – are owned by the first biggest; Google.
The more Aleyda was researching, the more she identified with high share of queries that end up as video results in Google, both via thumbnails and carousel. Did you know that Rank Ranger is showing rich results for free?
90% of the videos in the US are coming from YouTube (from SEMrush data for mobile, more than 80% for many markets) so creating videos is a win, win. It’s not just to understand how to rank on YoutTube that Aleyda did this experiment but also to see how she can maximise the video visibility in search results.
Is video a priority for companies?
Depends, because it’s not the first format you think about when starting an SEO process and prioritise the fundamentals. In many cases we can see that videos are included in a much higher rate than before. Also, conversion increases with explanatory videos on landing pages; showing product or services in a visually attractive way. So video is not just for Organic but for conversion too.
How Aleyda showed up twice in SERPs via the same video…
For the same query, Aleyda was able to showcase the same video twice in the results.
She published a video on YouTube and optimised it as usual. For the first weeks she shared and promoted the video in the YouTube platform itself through subscribers and followers. She then republished it on the website and with each video she creates a blog post with the transcription. She embeds YouTube on the blog, adds the text transcription and maximises the relevance for those via the video itself (from title, description and using SEO tools to help with keyword research… more on this later!)
To generate more engagement is the idea because search within YouTube platform is relatively small. Most views are generated through recommendations, from sidebars and homepage. So, this is why it’s super important to optimise for retention and engagement as this affects the popularity of the video.
After a period of time Aleyda then switched her YouTube embed with one from Wistea, after freshness and engagements, the community is no longer interested to view it, so she tried to maximise that first so that YouTube recommends the video. Wistea embed offers structured data by default, just click ‘yes’ and then Aleyda says she saw that Google did not identify the video as the same video due to the new markup from another platform.
She therefore found that she appeared multiple times:
- 1st result was her video on YouTube.
- 2nd position was in the video carousel
- 3rd is usually her website with the transcription of the video.
What Factors work for Video Rankings?
- Relevance of each video via titles and description are the primary optimisations.
- Add links in the description.
- Popularity is given by engagement so shares, comments, likes and views are very important.
- Freshness factor. Many terms that Aleyda ranked for in 2019 first within YouTube but is not any more, she says that the only thing that is changed is ‘time’.
- Retention. Encourage viewers to stay and view until the end. Use storytelling techniques and engage to keep them watching. This tells Google that the viewer is super interested in the content. Next time, other similar videos will have a higher chance of being recommended.
- Tags did not look like they mattered, in Aleyda’s research, but hashtags seem to help as they were highlighted and featured above the titles.
- Adding text into captions are not taken into consideration.
How to Create a Content Audience
Look at all your videos in the channel that are related for any topic included. How have they performed over time and how are they optimised? Aleyda suggests don’t go for those big searches but focus on long tail and niche topics. That’s how she started out. Create an audience that is engaged from the very beginning.
Aleyda mentions an example of when Barry Schwartz was giving away about £10k of SEO tools to gain subscribers for a very specific SEO topic and he was surprised to see a lack in new followers. A fellow Twitter-er replied to him alluding to the fact that there is a limited amount of people for niche subjects. So, Aleyda suggests, if you do focus on more generic searches and ‘mainstream’ videos then you might get more views and subscribers (or might not, due to the high competitive nature.) but in the end be true to yourself and find a balance.
I recommend a book called Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestly. The author speaks about getting an audience – even if small – that’s so relevant to what you’re producing, that they are super engaged and are interested in the value that you’re bringing compared to high subscribers with low engagement.
Video Content Strategy and Keyword Research Tools
- Rank Rangers. Although a typical Google tracking tool, it also offers video tracking. It shows your position and evolution within the carousel as well. You can see competitors and other viewership.
- Keyword Planner Tool. YouTube is owned by Google so surely the queries are very similar.
- Autogenerater on YouTube itself, so when you search on YouTube look at what shows up as a prediction to what you’re typing.
- Keyword Tool has a YouTube filter which you’ll find useful.
- Google Trends also has a YouTube filter. You’ll see the share of searches and trends over time.
Industry Dependant Video Optimisation
Are optimisation factors mentioned and trialled relevant to all topics of videos or specifically dependant to particular niches? (In this case SEO related videos.) This is something that’s still a question mark and Aleyda had more to say on this subject on the podcast so have a listen. Basically, it’s something she’d like to check further.
Aleyda’s Plans for 2020
Continue with the YouTube channel and develop it to experiment with other elements. Such as what will happen when she interviews someone or a group of people in the industry who have more authority than her (is this possible?!). When she did something similar before, it was picked up by Search Engine Journal, Barry S shared with his followers and so on.
Recently she did a video on a trend whilst people were looking for it so she’ll also try more of ‘news-jacking’. It performed well during the time and above the average for Aleyda.
After a conversation with Anton from SEMrush, it seems that only 1 third of video views that SEMrush gets comes from search results. Craig Campbell is even less, more like 1 tenth. The community is critical therefore so to maximise and excel within YouTube Aleyda is growing her newsletter.
- Follow Aleyda’s YouTube Channel: CRAWLING MONDAYS.
- Subscribe to her newsletter HERE. #SEOFOMO (not to be confused with SEOMOFO…)
- Also on Twitter of course; @Aleyda
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Music credit: I Dunno (Grapes of Wrath Mix) by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2017 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/56346 Ft: Jlang, 4nsic, grapes.
