Video ads are an increasingly important component of digital advertising. A video is an effective way to give potential customers a visual representation of the product or service being sold. Also, the creator can take any number of creative routes to decide how best to showcase what is being sold: telling a story, making a funny recommendation, demonstrating how the product works, etc. However, videos can only talk once someone presses play. First, videos have to be found. That’s where SEO comes in.

“To help viewers find their videos, B2B marketers must maximize the use of text,” says Marcus Sheridan in his article, “How to Maximize Your Reach with Video SEO.” To do this, Sheridan recommends posting the video’s transcript along with the footage online. That way, search engines can pick up on key words when someone performs a search, making it easier for the casual internet surfer to find. To further increase the video’s visibility, enhance your clients’ SEO power by adding more words. Add titles, captions, and descriptions to broaden the variety of words search engines can pick up. The video will then have an even better chance of reaching a greater number of relevant viewers.

Transcripts also aid the potential customer who may not be able to watch a video. The person may not have the time to actually watch the whole thing or maybe they’re someplace where they can’t turn on the sound. Posting the transcript gives people who would potentially pass a video by the opportunity to receive its message through reading.

Another way to increase a video ad’s SEO is to post the content or links to the video on multiple channels. Social media and blog posts referencing the video will only increase the number of media search engines and internet surfers who can find the video, and it's also a good way to advertise the video a bit. In the social media and blog blurbs, reel in viewers with brief descriptions of how the video will be relevant to its target audience. Having a better idea of what consumers will be watching is bound to give the video a higher click through rate.

Sure, there are a lot of advertising media that do just fine on their own, video included. But why not give it a little bit more of a boost to put it ahead of the competition’s ads? Talk with your video advertising clients about their video/​SEO strategies today.