Video Marketing Optimization: Best Practices for Speed and Search Performance

The Role of Video in Modern SEO

Now more than ever, video content plays a critical role in engaging visitors by educating them about your services and showcasing your industry expertise. Like any digital marketing technique, there are best practices to follow, which we will explore further. Whether you’re uploading your video to YouTube or embedding it on your website, there are ways to optimize overall performance.

Optimizing Video Content: Titles, Tags, Descriptions, and Tracking

After creating a video, the first step is to upload it to a platform like YouTube, which provides video hosting and visibility for search opportunities on both YouTube and Google.

Once uploaded, it’s essential to include a detailed, keyword-rich title, description, and applicable tags. Don’t forget an engaging thumbnail image, which attracts users to click and watch your video.

[PRO TIP] If you add links to your website in the video description (which we highly recommend), be sure to incorporate UTM parameters into the link. This allows you to track which specific video is driving referral traffic in Google Analytics.

Balancing Performance: Video Embeds Without Sacrificing Site Speed

Embedding a video directly from YouTube or other platforms is the most common way to display video content on a website. However, this method can negatively affect your web page’s load speed.

Fortunately, PaperStreet has techniques to defer the loading of video resources. This includes delaying the thumbnail image and video player code until the visitor chooses to interact. This approach allows you to feature videos without compromising web performance.

Enhancing Search Visibility: Structured Data for Video Embeds

Another way to increase your video’s exposure is by using VideoObject structured data and schema markup. Structured data is a standardized way to organize and label information on a webpage, while schema markup is the language used to communicate that information to search engines.

In simpler terms, adding this additional information to your webpage helps search engines understand that a video is featured, along with details like the name, thumbnail URL, upload date, description, duration, and more.

All this information can be useful to search engines when deciding whether to feature your video directly in search results.

[PRO TIP] After implementing structured data, use a validator tool to ensure there are no warnings or errors in your code.

Strategic Placement: Video Gallery and Embeds

With all the previous steps in place, it’s time to feature your videos on your website. We recommend a twofold approach to maximize exposure:

A featured video gallery, typically accessible from the main navigation.
Embedding videos within relevant pages and blog posts.

The gallery lets visitors engage with all your video content in one centralized location. This keeps visitors on your site longer, offering an opportunity for them to further educate themselves about your services or experience.

To support search visibility, we recommend creating stand-alone pages for each video in the gallery, complete with a transcript. This allows Google to index the spoken words in the video, increasing relevance and SEO.

[PRO TIP] If you anticipate having many videos, we recommend incorporating categories with filtering functionality into your gallery to improve user experience.

At last, strategically embed videos on relevant pages to ensure they complement the surrounding content. Unlike a gallery, videos within content provide more value by directly addressing visitors’ needs, enhancing engagement, and supporting the conversion funnel.

Questions or Feedback?

We would love to hear your feedback on whether this blog post has been helpful for you. Please feel free to let us know in the comments below. If you need any help regarding video marketing, we are here to help. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance.

Further Learning

Are you interested in learning more about legal marketing? Head on over to our SEO Guidelines & Best Practices page. Our guide will teach you the dos and don’ts for law firm SEO along with what we include in our internet marketing plans.