How to Compress a Background Video for SEO
Compression can be a quite the undertaking for those who don’t understand
it. Kbps, Multi-pass filters, I-frame, B-frames, P-frames, what does this all
mean? Well that’s why we decided to write a blog post about this topic. A
lot of people will merely upload a video to their site expecting that all is
well or upload the video to a video streaming service like Youtube and
think they are finished. This is not true, instead of simply exporting your
video from your favorite editing software, it’s important to compress this
video file further for faster upload and easier download times for the
visitors watching the video on your site. The bigger the file the more time
it will take to load even on YouTube. So it’s important to follow these
steps below to insure that you are taking the full advantage of
compression for SEO.
Why Do I Need to Compress My Background Video?
Well it’s pretty simple. For SEO purposes bounce rate is well considered to be
a ranking factor. For those who don’t know what bounce rate is, it is the time
it takes for a person to click on your site find what they need and bounce off
from your site to another. So the key for a good bounce rate is to have your
visitors stay on your site for as long as they can. What better way to do this
than through video? Hence, why it is important for your background video to
load quickly and efficiently so that somebody who visits your site is able to
watch it and is not just staring at a load screen.
How Do I Compress My Background Video?
How do you compress your background video, you do it through compression
software such as Apple’s Compressor or video editing software such as
Adobe or Final Cut. The latter not being as flexible as the former. That’s
why we recommend using compression software because it allows you
to dial in certain parameters that you can not dial in on video editing
software. The first thing you want to do in compression is figure out how
small you need your video to be. The smaller the better but with small file
sizes comes quality trade offs. Luckily, there are codecs such as H.265
and newer codecs coming out that help elevate the trade off but still we
are in the days of lossy compression. For background videos I like to
keep them under 5MB. For videos uploaded to YouTube you can be a
little more liberal with the file sizes because the compression it
undergoes in YouTube and because it’s hosted on your site. Keep it as
small as you possibly can without diminishing the quality to a blocky
mess. That might be a little extreme for some but for me, I don’t want things
taking awhile to load. From here I will choose a specific kbps that allows me to
get to the 1MB mark for background videos and an appropriate file size for
my YouTube video.
The next part is how many frames it should process for the compression.
I generally do every 30 frames. NOTE: This doesn’t correlate to how many
frames per second you filmed at, it is merely how many of the frames it
should start the compression cycle. So when you choose 30 frames it
goes and selects the 30th frame runs it’s compress and moves to the
next 30th frame. Usually this is where IPB compression, Long GOP, etc.
comes into play. If you don’t know what that is don’t worry you don’t need
to know, just compress your video every 30 frames.
Viola. Through these simple steps you can compress your background video
so that it doesn’t negatively effect your site’s SEO. If you have questions or
comments please let us know by commenting below.
ACADIA