Video SEO for AI Search: Boosting LLM Visibility with YouTube for Video Content Creators

James Dooley: Video SEO in the AI era. Today I'm joined with Anna, who is creating a lot of viral content and a lot of different videos. And video is becoming, in my opinion, the most important kind of content channel for getting better LLM visibility and getting in AI search. So it's a pleasure to have you on. And I want to jump straight in and talk about how important do you think video is in the AI era?

Ani Hoang: It is super important, but not just AI era, but for all users, because now we replace TV with our smartphones. So we still have the same behaviour of watching something in our free time, but instead of big TV shows, now it's all on our smart device. That's why businesses, brands, need to double down on good video content.

James Dooley: Yeah, and obviously you're doing a lot of amazing ads. You're doing quite a lot of ads for us, and video ads for different brands. And I love the depth that you go into with regards to the hook and the actual, literally setting up the videos for advertising on like meta ads on Instagram and on YouTube and so forth. Can you talk a little bit more about that with regards to video and the importance of not just free rolling and not really knowing what you're on about? And how many times you're, there's so many times we created it, it was a video and I was like, oh yeah, that's a good video, it performs well. And then when I looked into the background, you'd done 15 variations and that was the winning video campaign. Why is it so important for people to understand the hook and the scripts and what's needing to be done for video ads?

Ani Hoang: I'll answer it in the concept of paid advertising because first and foremost, the minute you don't test or don't optimise your processes, you are losing money. So that's an opportunity cost by not taking at least 10 minutes of really planning out a piece of advertisement because attention is extremely precious in this today's digital world. So whenever I approach a video idea, I already think of three hooks, but before the hook, there's something that most people already have or actually don't have is a clear offer. So whenever we start a campaign, we always ask the CMO or the business owner, okay, what is the main offer you are trying to sell? Because we are aiming for that click, right? So based on the offer, I don't know, maybe you are offering 50% off on this studio, then now the team can go to the drawing board and think of emotional hooks, visual hooks, audio hooks that can grab that attention for one to two minutes, oh, sorry, one to two seconds and make people stay and watch because most of the time people scroll through it. I think you and I, we just scroll on the phone, but our aim as advertisers now is for people to just stop scrolling for that one second and keep watching and to hear or see what is out there. I've seen a lot of location advertisements, they already put their offer in the first frame. So whenever people scroll through it, they say like, okay, this coffee shop is offering, I don't know, buy one, get one free. This coffee shop is already, I can see the address, the user can already see how far it is from their homes. So those things are really precious to show already to the user. That's why it is important to stop, think and then produce rather than just go ahead and produce.

James Dooley: Yeah, it's crazy because I wanted to bring this up for how different it is to create videos for ads versus how you create, do video SEO for let's say AI search. So moving on to like organic rankings for video and it could be organic social media and stuff like that. Are you preferring to do long form? Are you preferring to do short form videos? Are you of the opinion that you should be omnichannel, omnipresent, should do long form as well as doing short form?

Ani Hoang: As for someone who is a content marketer, I don't have a personal preference. The personal preference solely just for fun. It's always the strategy, it's always the audience, and it's always the offer, right? But many times we see that long form videos is just easier to start with. You don't have to narrow down your thinking into just 30 seconds. You can, you know, we can just sit down and talk. Sometimes the strategy is like really just short form videos. People really want to grow on TikTok, grow on Instagram. The sort of strategy has to be short form only. So now you're thinking as a creative strategist is to, okay, how am I gonna get the attention for those 30 seconds? So to answer your question, I don't have a preference, but for AI visibility, I think it's clear that YouTube videos are really, really, really important to get mentioned in AI overviews and in different LLMs. So when it comes to long form YouTube videos, it's, yeah, I think that's very important to start with long form. And then with regards to video SEO, people might come to yourself who's creating amazing video content. And let's say you're uploading it to YouTube and YouTube's the number one platform. Do you ever think that people should be grabbing that same video and not just sharing the link, but uploading natively that video onto places like Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or other kind of social media channels?

James Dooley: Do you think they should be uploading the video to multiple channels? Are you mainly just a believer that it should just be on YouTube? Or if, obviously, if the team has the capacity to repurpose them into multiple channels, they should.

Ani Hoang: And I have done this many times where I would just make a long form video, cut it up into short form, and distribute it on YouTube Shorts, Facebook, Instagram. I'm not really active on X. Oh, and also TikTok. But here's the thing, I noticed that my watch time and my views were pretty low. So if I was to start again this repurposing journey, I would be a lot more strategic and tactical rather than just put the long form video into, for example, a tool like CapCut or Reverse.fm and just use that short form. It's quick. You get the volume game. But at the end of the day, people will scroll over it. Your account will become a low level account and you're not getting that benefit, that branding benefit that you should.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I love the idea that you are using certain tools and software and AI to help splice up the long form video and it gets it from these different channels to the long form to then watch it again. But I also love the idea of how much depth you go into in making certain that there's so many times we had it where it was being spliced up and it was like maybe getting 200 views. And then you then started to say, you can't just be using CapCut blindly here. It needs to be a specific part here that's got the hook even on the short form, which then gets a lot more views and we're getting so many more clicks now through to our long form. How important is it for someone to be using a professional video editor who understands the psychological part as opposed to just, I'm gonna get a long form, I'm gonna cut it up using AI, using Opus or CapCut or whatever and just run free. How much more, like I've seen you 10x certain businesses. I'm trying to say how much more important is it to make certain you've got the right person to do the video editing?

Ani Hoang: It really depends, again, your strategy, right? Because I think the beginning of the conversation, we split this into paid media strategy and AI visibility. And for AI visibility, you and I know we don't need a, you don't need a professional video editor. And frankly, the professional video editor wouldn't even take the job, like their skillset lies differently. And even for organic viral content, psychology and editing skills are very different. And people, I want to address this. You don't have to hire a professional video editor, like a cinematic video editor to do your organic social media. We see teenagers getting viral content on TikTok. Are they professional video editors? No, no, they're not. So virality doesn't come from the skill of an editor. The virality comes from the trend, the psychology, the watch time. And how relatable something is, right? So, but back to the AI visibility, because that's the main thing. Make the good long-form content and then slice it up the way you do it. So instead of just slicing up the video, you actually take the time to write a good tweet about it. You take the time to write a LinkedIn article about it rather than just like, oh, copy paste YouTube video link to LinkedIn and Facebook. You also take the time to make a good static image and a static caption that is optimised. So those tactics are working for this strategy way more than doing the beginner's work of just slicing up videos and posting it.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And I want to move on now, because we're talking about video SEO, right? And we've created the video and we've got a long-form video. How sharing that video on a podcasting circuit is working wonders for LLM visibility. Can you explain why that is and why people should be getting their videos, if they're doing any sort of long-form content, and be sharing it on the podcasting circuit?

Ani Hoang: Yeah, it takes really little. A podcasting hosting platform or a subscription, like we use Transistor FM, not sponsored. It costs like, what, 10, 20 bucks a month. And you can take the same MP3 file that you extract from your video and then upload it as a podcast. Because podcasts are, yes, it means a lot to people, but at the end of the day, it's an MP3 file uploaded to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora Music, and those are free backlinks to you. And it's valid backlinks because it's from platforms that people use and they have high domain rating. So, and it's such a easy copy and paste at this point level job. Like, I see people missing out on that.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Anyone who's watching this, video SEO has been a massive part of our growth. We're using a lot of the different podcasting circuits using Transistor, like you said. Syndicates out, it gets the backlinks. Some of them are do-follow, some of them are high DR, but it's mainly the branded mentions that I absolutely love in there that's manipulating or seeding the larger language models of places like Gemini, AI Mode, ChatGPT. The video format is working so well. And Ani, I just want to say thank you very much for all the help that you've been doing for us. So, thank you very much.

Ani Hoang: Thank you for having me.