Estate Agents, video has more SEO benefits than you realise

When considering making videos for your website you have to realise what benefits you’ll be gaining from it. It is great for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), makes your Estate Agents Website more visually compelling, gets your company brand out there and helps build a visual relationship between you and your clients.

Video Search optimisation hasn't been around for very long but is growing rapidly. As more and more users are getting broadband access, video usage levels grow even further. For Estate Agents now is a great opportunity to be able to jump on the viral world and boost your status.

The most common and easiest way to do this is by uploading your videos to sites like YouTube. They are known as video search engine and function only by people uploading videos to them. Other examples include AOL Video, and Yahoo Video but YouTube is generally the most popular.

In terms of SEO, Video Search Engines haven't evolved enough yet to actually be able to look inside the video and tell what the content is but relies on other factors which determine what the video is about.

To optimise your video you will have to follow these steps:

• Think about what keywords you will want YouTube to pick up on (just like the keywords on your website). You will be able to include this in the title, keywords tag, and the description.
• And make sure you add links back to your website in the description tag. This will generate quality traffic.

Other Video Optimization Tips:

1. Provide compelling content in your title and description without this people won't be interested in viewing the video.

2. Make sure the video has a purpose and isn't just there for the sake of it. Here are some examples of videos from Oulsnam Estate Agents.

3. Keep in mind your videos don't have to be perfect they just have to be interesting and you don’t have to use a high quality professional camera, you can just use your mobile phone camera if it's clear.

4. Keep the videos short (5 minutes or less) otherwise you may be running the risk of boring the viewers. There are obviously exceptions to this rule but you'll have to keep in mind that YouTube has a limit of 10 minutes per video.

5. Give your video a keyword rich, but catchy title. The title is the biggest factor in convincing a user to view the video.

6. Make good use of being able to pick thumbnails. Thumbnails are the picture shots of the video you see when searching on YouTube, this is one of the main factors (other than the title) that will help the users decide if they want to invest their time in the full video.

7. Allow Users to rate your video. Search engines will pay attention to this when ranking these videos.

Publicising Your Video

In order to promote your video you will have to put your video everywhere. Exposure is king. Put the videos on your website, on YouTube, on your Facebook and Twitter and any other Social Network that you may have. The more places it is the more views you’re likely to get.

So grab your camera and go start filming, here are some Estate Agents websites that use videos that may help inspire you Robert Williams Estate Agents and Bonetts Estate Agents.

By Luke Stanley

SEO Consultant