Sometimes adding videos to your website is a double-edged sword. High-resolution videos are a favorite of web users, but your website may not be optimized for them.

 

This can lead to performance issues. This video optimization guide will show you how to optimize multimedia content. Conversions are increasing instead of driving users away,

Why Video optimization is important.

Multimedia content can be a amazing way to keep visitors engaged. This is why developers are adding more videos to their sites.

Between 2011 and 2017, the average web page was 1MB to 3 MB larger due to an increase in video content.The average web-video file size has increased from 204 KB 729KB in the past two years.

Video optimization is a great way to improve the performance of websites with a lot video content.

What video formats work best on the internet?

MP4 and WebM are the most popular formats on platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo due to their ability compress high-quality videos into small files.  MP4 videos are supported by all browsers, but Google Chrome and Firefox are mainly support WebM.

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WebM files are lighter than MP4 files. However, MP4 videos appear slightly better on mobile devices.

Video optimization for websites: Introduction

It takes two steps to deliver high-quality video content to users. It is important to:

• Optimize the video file to have a minimal impact on page speed
• Optimize your web page for proper embedding and display of video content

Optimization Video file for web pages

These are the best tips to follow before you add videos to your site.

Data compression tools

To compress the size of video files you may utilize Blazemp and HandBrake without affecting image quality Compressing all your media files can speed up the loading of videos.

Do not compromise video quality when compressing videos. Videos that are high quality would build your site appear more professional. However, videos that look like animated GIFs can cause users to leave a negative impression.

Convert to HTML5-supported formats

HTML5 has the advantage that developers can deliver video content directly to their website without the need for a plugin. An online video converter can convert your video files into HTML5 formats like MP4 or WebM.

Remove audio from muted video

To reduce the file size, you can remove audio data from a hero video that has the audio muted. It might be possible to remove the audio from the exported file if you created the video. To remove the audio, you can use FFmpeg or a simple video editor.

Stream directly from your server

Video files could not be viewed until they were fully downloaded to the device. Today streaming technology allows videos in small chunks to be downloaded and then loaded in the browser. Medium offers a useful article on optimizing video streaming for your website with HTML5 tags.

Use a content delivery system

A CDN is a network that stores cached copies of static assets on your site. CDNs improve redundancy and speed up content delivery because the content is served by the closest edge server.

This is crucial for large files like videos. This way visitors does not required need to wait for their videos to download and then buffer. A CDN can significantly enhance the performance of your site

Optimization of web pages for video content

It is important to choose the right format for video and optimize how it gets delivered. However, to ensure smooth user experiences, your website must be optimized to support high-quality videos. Here are some tips.

Define the video size

Make sure you define the width and height for videos in your HTML or CSS so the browser can allocate the bandwidth without extra work.

Do not load videos until the page loads completely

To ensure a smoother user experience, if you have a video that automatically plays when a user visits a page, delay it loading until the page loads completely.

Prioritize mobile users

Websites that aren’t optimized for mobile face a major disadvantages because people are searching the site every day via smartphones and tablets. 

To make your website adaptable for different screen sizes and resolutions, follow the principles of responsive web designing.To properly display video, your website must be able detect the orientation of the device.

Even if your front end development skills are excellent, designing pages that work well on every screen size can be difficult. 

Although you could create a mobile-friendly version of your website, this would increase your maintenance tasks. Mobile users can be accommodated in many different ways.

Let’s take, for example, a video that you have on your homepage, but doesn’t look great on mobile devices. This code can be added to your CSS to prevent your video downloading on small screens.

@media screen and (max-width: 650px) {
    #hero-video {
        display: none;
    }
}

Video optimization for SEO

YouTube and other platforms are great for getting exposure. However, if you want your rank website on Google, you will need to host your video content on your domain. Search engines prefer YouTube videos that include a link to the website in their description. 

It is possible for someone to search for your company name in Google and land on YouTube instead of your website. This is something you should avoid.

• To make it easier for your videos to be indexed, create metadata
• Videos should be descriptive and not generic. Be concise with your titles, but include keywords in your description.
• While picking the right keywords can take some time, any information will increase your chances of being found in search results.
• Make sure to pick the right thumbnail.
• These steps should be completed after data compression to ensure that your metadata isn’t lost.

Self-hosting video content takes more resources than embedding it elsewhere.

If you don’t have the space or are unable to host large video files on your origin server, upload them to an additional storage cluster such as KeyCDN push zones or Amazon’s S3 bucket.

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