A new study shows brands are investing in videos, but they aren't necessarily using the best tactics to promote them in search.

Marketers know video content is one of the best ways they can deliver brand messages today, but they don’t necessarily know how to bring SEO to streaming media. The 2014 Online Video Production Trends report published by the Web Video Marketing council found that 80 percent of professionals in the field are creating content for websites, but over 10 percent aren’t doing any basic SEO.

On a positive note, the survey also showed that a lot of video production teams are doing some optimization to make their work discoverable, but there is still a lot more they could be doing.

  • 73 percent tag their videos with keyword terms
  • 58 percent annotate videos with data about the length and details of the content
  • 45 percent optimize titles and descriptions

However, they’re skipping over a number of practices that are considered an essential part of video integration for websites:

  • 33 percent post videos to the blog sections of their websites
  • Only 20 percent have a video sitemap
  • Just 15 percent transcribe their videos into crawlable text

Knowledge and technical skills may be to blame for unoptimized content, whether on behalf of video teams that are unfamiliar with SEO or marketing teams that find the medium foreign. This may not be an excuse for long because 71 percent of companies plan to spend more on video, and marketers will need to prove those investments are paying off in terms of additional views, engagement and conversions.

Consumers have had a taste of multimedia messaging, and they want more. Companies that can bring their understanding to rising new formats will pull ahead of competitors with results-driven content marketing strategies and leave behind the businesses that continue to run siloed programs.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.