Most business owners are probably familiar with the need for effective website search engine optimization. However, creating SEO-friendly medical videos is also an important component of SEO for doctors.
Video SEO
Video SEO refers to optimizing video content so that it is indexed and ranked on the front page of search engine results for relevant keywords. Video SEO also helps your content get found in searches on social media platforms. A variety of strategies can be employed to achieve higher rankings for medical video content.
Why are social media videos important?
Video marketing has increased in popularity with business owners in recent years because social media and the widespread use of digital cameras have made video content an expectation for customers. The downside to the increase in popularity of video content is that with more competing videos being posted online, it is more difficult to rank well in searches.
Optimizing videos for search
There are a variety of ways to optimize videos to perform better in search engines and on social media platforms. Video SEO should be an important part of your content management for doctors.
Choose the right video hosting platform
The best video hosting platform for a particular video depends partly on what your goals for the video are. Are you trying to increase your site traffic and generate new leads? Is your goal to increase overall customer awareness of your practice?
Some platforms are better for driving traffic to your website, while the search traffic for videos on other platforms drives traffic mostly to the hosting platform. For videos hosted on social media platforms, the search algorithms tend to favor natively uploaded videos over links to videos hosted on other platforms.
Choose an engaging thumbnail image
When people search for videos, the results display a thumbnail image to give users an idea of what to expect in the video. How engaging your thumbnail image is plays a big part in how likely users are to click through to your video. The image you use should be high-quality, interesting, and relevant to the content. For example, if your video is about what it is like to get an MRI test, a thumbnail of a person having a test done is both engaging and relevant, while a photo of the reception area of a medical practice would not give the user a very good idea of what the video is about.
Make the rest of your content relevant to the video
To rank well in search engines, the page you are hosting your video on also needs to be optimized and the content of the page needs to be relevant to the keywords you want the video to rank for. The same is true of social media platforms. Your video will rank higher if the text you post with it is relevant to the video and the keywords you want to rank for.
Avoid embedding the same video on multiple pages
Embedding the same video on more than one page of your site is essentially competing against yourself. Focus on making the content of the page relevant to the video and only embed it in one place. If you want other pages to have video content, create relevant videos for those pages.
Promote your video
Optimizing your videos will help you get views, but do not rely on SEO alone. Utilize other methods of driving traffic to your videos, such as paid advertising in search engines and on social media platforms. Share your videos on social media and encourage your followers to do the same.
Include a video transcript
Video transcripts serve multiple purposes. First, they make your videos more accessible both to viewers who have hearing impairments and viewers who may want to watch your video at work, late at night, or in other environments where they do not want to disturb others by playing audio.
Second, transcripts make your video content more scrapable by search bots, which can help you rank better in search engines. The longer your video is, the more important it is to include a transcript.
Finally, some social media platforms default to playing videos without sound. This makes it important to ensure that your videos are attention-grabbing and make sense without the audio.
Optimize your video’s title and description
The title and meta description of a video factor into how well the video will rank. Make sure you target relevant keywords in both of these areas. However, do not just stuff the title and description with keywords. The title needs to be engaging enough to make the user want to click. The meta description needs to be interesting and do a good job of describing the video content.
There is a lot of competing content on social media. Your video’s title plays an important role in getting your content noticed.
Embed the most important video at the top of your page
Google usually only indexes one video per page. If you are putting more than one video on the same page, make sure the video you want to rank the highest for is the first video on the page. Consider only including one video per page where possible.
Focus your page around the video
Your video should be in a prominent place on the page and the rest of the content on the page should be focused on the video. If users have to scroll through too much text to get to a video, they may leave your page before they get there.
Track your analytics
Keep track of your analytics to assess how well your videos are performing on different social media platforms and your website. This will help guide you on what type of content your customers want to see and which platforms are driving the most traffic.
Let us optimize your videos for you
The team at Doctor Genius knows how to strategically deploy educational videos to attract new patients to your practice. We can help you develop videos that rank well in search engines and on social media sites. Contact us online to find out more about how we can help you optimize your video content.
Doctor Genius, located at 16800 Aston Street, Suite 270, Irvine, CA 92606, provides a range of services for practice success. We seek to meet our clients’ needs by providing a variety of marketing, SEO, practice optimization tools, and coaching to transform the healthcare experience. Though we work to provide the most accurate information, the content found on this website is solely intended for entertainment purposes. Therefore, we cannot guarantee that the information provided is entirely correct. You may not use the information on this site to cure, prevent, or diagnose a perceived medical issue. If you have healthcare-related needs, please speak directly to a healthcare professional. Never self-perform medical treatments discussed on this website. All images displayed are also for entertainment purposes only, and personal experiences may differ. Please note that the business tactics mentioned on this site might not be applicable to your industry or practice.
