youtube seo tactics

YouTube is by far the most popular video-sharing sites today. Your business stands to benefit greatly from a YouTube presence in that:

  • YouTube only comes after Google & Facebook when it comes to daily visits. Billions of videos are viewed every month on YouTube, meaning there is a very high chance that your video will get many views once you post it.
  • You will reach targeted Web traffic. Recent research by Nielsen shows that YouTube gets the most visits from adults aged between 18 and 34.
  • It is free to post a video on YouTube, meaning you can put your advertising dollars elsewhere.
  • Your YouTube campaign will help you get a more targeted mailing list by asking people who view your videos to sign up to your mailing list. People who have viewed and liked your videos are more likely to buy from you (and to recommend your company/products to their friends).
  • You will be able to demonstrate products, which is particularly important if your physical distribution channel is limited.
  • If you want to build a community for your business or the business already has a community, YouTube videos are a tool to engage and share with customers. As an example, you could have video blogs or event footage for your customers if you are a bicycle retailer.
  • YouTube will help you build your reputation as a guru in your field. You could post such things as video tutorials.

Effective YouTube SEO Tactics Include

1) Google’s Universal Search blends videos, images, books, news, and local searches in the search engine’s search results. This shows that Google values videos as much as it does text pages. Videos hosted on YouTube will help you reach many people.

2) The fact that there are millions of videos on YouTube poses a challenge in that you will be competing with very many videos. If you want improved visibility, consider running a YouTube search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. Several SEO tactics will greatly increase the visibility of your video.

3) YouTube allows you to include a video description for every video. Since Google and YouTube cannot listen or watch your video yet, they rely on the description to understand the topic of your video. The description should be keyword-optimized. Take all other precautions you would with other search engine optimized text (such as ensuring the content is unique).

4) Consider optimizing around “video keywords.” Note that although YouTube videos have an edge on Google’s SERP, this is only true for some keywords. These are called “Video Keywords.” As an example, you expect a few video results when you use the keyword “cute cats” (which makes sense since the person who searches for this keyword is most likely looking for a video, not an article on cute cats). On the other hand, someone searching for the keyword “muscle aches” is most likely looking for an article.

5) A proven YouTube SEO tactic is getting your videos to online communities. You can achieve this by sharing your YouTube videos on these communities. Online communities comprise of people who have similar interests and so you will get more high-retention traffic if you find the right community.

6) YouTube algorithm values user experience signals because it does not use backlinks. You should therefore ensure your videos are interesting since subscribing and liking are the most important YouTube user experience signals, in that order. Simply asking people to like, subscribe, share, and/or share is an effective way of achieving this.

7) Consider creating playlists and ensure they are keyword-rich. Organize your YouTube channel and you will realize more YouTube traffic. YouTube gets deeper info about the topics of your videos from keyword-rich playlists.

8) The name of the video should have the word “video” whenever possible and it should include an appropriate keyword. This is because most people search for videos using keywords and include the word “video” after the keyword.

9) You should watermark your videos. The best video editing software programs allow you to place small translucent logos in the corner of your videos. Watermarks help give more credibility to your videos.

10) Advertise your channel on your website, your blog, on article submission directories, and everywhere else possible because the more channel views you get, the higher it will rank in its niche.

11) You could create different accounts and comment on the videos to get things rolling (never attempt to do this using a single account since YouTube considers this a Grey Hat SEO tactic). Consider enticing some drama since people like flocking to conflict.

12) YouTube considers the number of dislikes when ranking videos and you should, therefore take pre-emptive action when you start receiving negative feedback. It might be necessary to bring down your video to ensure it does not give your channel a bad name.

13) Link building remains one of the most effective SEO tactics. You should therefore consider having links to your website in the video description. This not only helps your SEO efforts, but it also gives you targeted web traffic.

14) Give views more options by including audio cues and illustrations over and above video and text. This increases the overall engagement the video receives since you will be catering to varying learning styles.

Other Helpful Tips

YouTube Insights is an analytics feature that gives you such information as demographics and the point at which people stopped watching a particular video. This data will help you produce better videos in the future.

YouTube uses thumbnails to help people who are searching through videos. It takes these thumbnails from the ¼, ½, and ¾ marks. Choose the most appropriate thumbs to display. You could try to manipulate videos (if this will not be disruptive) for you to get the most compelling images at these points. Thumbnails greatly affect the click-through rate.

Combine SEO with other website promotion tactics such as article submission for the best results.

Consider such things as the length and quality of your video as this determines if your audience will watch the video to the end.

Author: Lalit Sharma
Courtesy: seoservicesgroup.com
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