What Is a Video SEO Audit?

April 26, 2023

When you conduct audits for your brand, you’re holding a magnifying glass up to what you’ve done so far to inform what to do next.

With the insights you glean from an audit, you can maximize results for your business—from improving brand awareness to driving more site traffic to simply revealing initiatives that need your attention.

You may know about content, UX, and technical audits. But have you considered the value of a targeted video SEO audit?

Your brand's videos—both created by your team as well as by your community—are some of your most dynamic and valuable assets. It's critical to understand the scope, performance, and status of videos.

Read on to discover the ins and outs of performing a video SEO audit that will seriously pay off.

What is the purpose of a video SEO audit?

The purpose of a video audit is to take a complete inventory and identify which videos need improvement. They help us establish the order of importance for updates. Audits also reveal new content opportunities.

Audits help us lay out the plan for updating all of our content with the best practices for optimizing each video for search. They provide a complete overview of the condition and potential for improvement. Without video audits, we don’t know what needs to be edited or which updates matter the most.

What should be included in a video SEO audit?

So what exactly does a video SEO audit cover? The main components and recommended practices of a video SEO audit include the following.

Compiling a comprehensive list

Start by creating a spreadsheet tracking all of the existing video content you plan to evaluate. The sheet includes columns with the video title, hyperlink, date created, platform, category (i.e. product review or unboxing), views, length, and more. Add columns for notes on what needs attention for each video.

Referring to keyword and trend research

Keyword research helps you learn which queries users are searching for. This helps us optimize video titles for YouTube and Google searches, attract more views, and increase engagement.

YouTube autocomplete is a free way to identify common and long-tail keywords. Google Trends is a free tool that helps you see how topics are trending over time; which helps you stay relevant by incorporating trending data into your video details.

Third-party tools like Semrush and Ahrefs provide detailed keyword research data.

Conducting a competitive analysis

Referring to what your competitors are doing offers valuable insights about what you need to improve.

A competitive analysis starts with finding videos that are ranking above yours for certain keywords, considering what stands out about their most-watched videos, and understanding the strategies they’re employing that you’re not.

Pay attention to things like video format, length, style, titles, captions, hashtags, and anything else they’re doing that you’re not. Noting what your competitors are doing well helps you create action items for areas to improve on your videos.

Planning your optimizations

Include any next steps you’ve gathered from your competitive analysis, keyword research, and trend research. Create a plan based on the changes that will have the biggest impact. Update the top-performing and most recent content and work your way back.

It’s also important to consider where your videos live and factor this into your plan. If you have an extensive following on a brand-owned YouTube channel, this is a wise place to begin. Each platform may warrant an audit with dedicated deliverables.

Then, turn your attention to secondary channels, like TikTok and Instagram. While the strategy is largely the same, it’s important to recognize how video search works on YouTube compared to TikTok.

Organizing your deliverables

Use a tracking spreadsheet where you mark progress as you work through each video, a prioritized to-do list with assigned action items for team members, and a summary report to share findings.

Highlight the main goals and outcomes of the video SEO audit, such as increased views, engagement, and conversions.

When should you perform a video SEO audit?

We recommend completing video SEO audits at least once per year.

But there’s no golden rule for when and how often you should conduct a video audit. As for embarking on your first widespread audit, we recommend starting as soon as you can.

No matter what, the very first time you embark on a comprehensive video SEO audit will likely be the most time-consuming. From then on, you’ll have a template to refer to—a customized version of the components above—so it will be faster to repeat.

The frequency of auditing also depends on what you’re able to invest time and resources in, and the volume of videos you have.

For instance, an enterprise brand in the beauty industry has more resources to devote to monthly audits, whereas a scrappy fashion start-up needs to plan for a biannual cadence.

Segmenting audits makes them more manageable and targeted. For example, identify a high revenue-generating product and hyper-focus the audit on all videos related to this collection.

Outside of a product-focused approach, segmentation is also effective for honing in on a specific audience or platform.

How far back do you go during a video SEO audit?

In general, we recommend auditing all videos you posted within the last year.

However, it’s fundamental to review your most popular videos, regardless of their age. Relevancy and impact take priority over recency.

Every brand's needs are different, so the scope of your audit will vary. Determine what fits your needs, since in this case, it’ll depend on how many videos you have, the resources you have to devote to this project, and what your priorities are.

Instead of reaching as far back in your video archives as you can, we recommend aligning your approach with your goals.

Even though looking at the most popular or recent videos is standard practice, if you realize a trending topic that relates to your brand or collection of videos, you have a smart reason to start there.

Whether you work newest to oldest, most views to least, most topically relevant to more evergreen, there’s no one right way to tackle your video audit—the most important thing is that you’re doing it in the first place.

How do you make the video SEO audit process more manageable?

Whether you’re planning your very first large-scale video SEO audit or you’re looking to improve your current process, turning to an intelligent platform made for gathering video insights makes your job easier.

The Vyrill platform helps you capture and analyze videos mentioning your specific product or brand. Logging related videos for a certain collection of items or sets of keywords is easier than ever before.

Vyrill scans the audio, images, and text within each video for sentiment analysis, trending topics, ethnicity/age/gender, and brand safety , allowing users to gather insights 95% faster than doing so manually.

Vyrill is here to help you through your video audit journey every step of the way.

Curious? Book a demo today.