Video Marketing: Smart SEO Strategies To Optimize Your OTT Platform in 2023

Content is the king of your OTT platform. But in today’s competitive digital world, creating quality content is not enough. You also need to ensure that your content reaches your target audiences to help achieve your business goals. And for this, you need to optimize your OTT SEO Wondering what’s that? 

SEO for OTT platforms is the process of optimizing your platform’s traffic through video search engine optimization strategies. Video SEO plays a huge role in increasing the visibility of your OTT platform and growing your audiences.

About Video SEO

Reports suggest that 80% of audiences research a product/service on search engines before deciding to buy it.

And if you are not optimizing your OTT platform for higher rankings, you are missing out on a big deal. Videos are the most consumed form of content online. And businesses that use them experience 41% more web traffic than those that don’t.

By using smart video SEO strategies for OTT, you not only enhance the discoverability of your platform but also maximize your revenue.

Benefits of OTT SEO for Business

To upscale your OTT business, improving your Video SEO is a must. It offers multiple benefits to your OTT platform that includes: 

• Larger Audience Reach:

  By helping your content rank higher on search engines, SEO makes it easier for viewers to find you.

• Strong Targeting Opportunities:

  With the use of SEO keywords, you can target specific audiences looking for the exact content online that you are offering.

• Revenue Growth:

  SEO helps you acquire highly motivated leads, making it easier to pursue them to take action, ultimately leading to revenue growth.

How Live Video Boosts SEO

People crave authenticity online. And live streaming is the key to building it. Live videos are highly engaging and user-friendly, which makes the search engines’ preferred content form.

Live streaming provides a realistic experience and builds a loyal following by creating genuine bonds between creators and audiences. The interactive nature of live videos appeals to the qualitative aspect of search engine algorithms, making them highly valuable for SEO.

By building an online community, live videos help drive high organic traffic from qualified leads.

 

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Top SEO Strategies to Drive Traffic for Your OTT Platform

Optimizing your OTT platform requires a combination of several effective SEO strategies. Here are some top SEO strategies that, if implemented well, can take your VOD platform’s video marketing to the next level.

• Research and Optimize Keywords:

  Keywords are a crucial part of SEO strategy. They are essentially the key terms used by your target audience while searching for something online. By skillfully using keywords in your content, you can increase its visibility on search engines. For this, conduct thorough research on keywords that your audiences are likely to search for. Check the keywords your competitors are targeting. Use online keyword tools like Google Trends, Keyword Planner, etc. The keywords used should be relevant and have a high search volume. An important thing is not to overdo keywords, as Google may penalize you for it.

• URL Structure:

  Optimizing your URL structure is important to improve user experience and SEO for your OTT platform. The right URL structure helps web crawlers index your platform. Utilize relevant keywords in your URL to help search engines find you easily. Avoid dynamic URLs as the same URL for every reload allows search engines to read your platform better. As per recent algorithms, use hyphens in your URL instead of underscores.

• Optimize Anchor Texts:

  Anchor Texts are a great opportunity for users to optimize their SEO. Instead of using the generic ‘click here or ‘read more’ text, use the right keywords to hyperlink the text. It will improve the links’ quality on your OTT platform and provide preference to your keywords in the search engine.

• Optimize Video Metadata:

  Metadata tells the search engine what your content is about to consider its relevancy for similar search inquiries. There are three components to it, which include title tags, description tags, and video tags. The title tag is the first thing that is noticed about your video. So make it catchy and include a keyword in it. As for length, keep it short with 50-60 characters only. Description tag describes your video content and thus can be comparatively longer with up to 160 characters. In the video tag section, you can mention location, brands, people’s names, along with relevant keywords.

• Optimize your Codes:

  Optimizing the site code is important for the VOD website SEO. Ensure that your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS codes are optimized to minimal. Eliminating unnecessary codes will not only improve the speed but the overall user experience of your OTT platforms. 

• Create Video Thumbnails:

  Thumbnails play a crucial role in delivering important information about your video. Use thumbnails that provide a clear message about the video and compel viewers to click on it. The more interesting the thumbnail, the higher the traffic.

• Create Video Sitemap:

  Sitemaps are another important aspect of your SEO strategies that help you rank higher in search engines. Sitemaps allow you to present your video’s title and description in an alternative way with specific information like platform restrictions, country restrictions, live streams, etc. You need to add the sitemap to the robots.txt file. Adding video transcripts also will increase the usability and search engine indexing of your video.

• Secure Video Platform:

  To increase site security, you need to have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. It will help you gain viewers’ trust and authentication from Google for a safe to browse platform. OTT video solutions like VPlayed can help you with this by providing a secured video platform to stream your content.

• Improve Website Speed:

  Your website speed impacts your organic traffic significantly. To improve your OTT platform’s speed, optimize your site’s compression capabilities. It is recommended to keep HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files smaller than 150 bytes in size.

• Create Video rich snippets:

  Video rich snippets enhance your OTT platform’s appearance on search engines. They allow viewers to quickly estimate what’s included in the result, which helps them in deciding whether to click on it or not. To create video rich snippets, upload your video using shema.org markup in the page’s HTML code and submit it to Google webmaster tools. You can also use online tools such as rich snippets for this.

• Stay active on social media:

  Social media is the best way to promote your OTT platform, as video content performs exceptionally well on it. Be active on various social media channels and build a community of loyal followers. Announce new releases, library, or features of your OTT platform on these channels. If your competitors are not active on certain social platforms, take advantage by creating a robust presence on them. You can also gain links from your social media channels, which will further optimize your SEO strategy.

• Build links from other Online Video Platforms

Ideally, you should share your videos on your OTT app. But it is a good idea to also leverage other popular video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo OTT, etc. You can share trailers and short snippets of your videos on them and then provide the link to the full video on your domain. Also, allow sharing and embedding of your videos on other websites to earn more backlinks. 

Conclusion

Optimizing the SEO for the OTT app platform is simple, with a few technical aspects involved. All you need is to present your content as relatable and valuable to search engines and audiences. With consistent efforts and smart SEO strategies, you can successfully rank higher and drive traffic.

Partnering with an OTT solution like VPlayed can help streamline this process using advanced SEO tools. VPlayed helps you crack the dynamic OTT search engine code to multiply your audience and maximize your revenue.