YouTube SEO ~ MD Internet Marketing Solutions

YouTube SEO

So we have explained how important video is to your local business and how it can be much more engaging than text and bring in new customers to your business. But what good is a video if your potential customers can’t find it, or it doesn’t appear in the searches for the keyword phrases they are using in the searches for your business services?

This is where performing YouTube SEO comes into play.

With a little extra work, you can make it much easier to get your videos found, and your video marketing efforts won’t be in vain.

SearchEnginePeople.com did an article that we couldn’t have done better on this topic:

11 YouTube Ranking Steps

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With more than 300 hours of video content uploaded every minute, YouTube is not only the most popular video-sharing platform online, but also the second most used search engine on the web.

Knowing that you can reach such a large number of people, there are real opportunities for businesses to engage with their audience through online videos. But with so many competing videos and channels in the YouTube space, how do you ensure your videos rank highly in search results?

These are some of the methods we’ve found to help you work the rankings on YouTube.

1. Create A Vanity URL

Start by optimising your YouTube channel (page). There are a number of things you can do to make it more user friendly, which will boost its ranking. If your channel is more than 30 days old and you have 500+ subscribers, you can claim a vanity URL for your channel, which will give you a memorable URL.

2. Link To Your Website

Add your website URL in the ‘associated website’ section in your channel settings. This will help to establish your brand authority in YouTube search results.

3. Make Your Channel Homepage Engaging For Users

Spend some time on setting your home page up correctly and fully. Include relevant keywords in your description. Add links to your website and other social media pages. Use the ‘featured video’ facility to set a video to play automatically when someone visits your channel. You might like to create a special introductory video welcoming people to your page, telling them what makes you unique and directing them to popular videos. Highlight video playlists on your homepage so users can quickly navigate your content.

Happy you’ve got a great homepage? Great, then move on to optimising the videos themselves.

4. Retention Matters

In March 2012, YouTube made changes to their systems in order to prioritise retention time over the view count. With this change, instead of search results showing videos with just high view counts first, the results now take into account how long each video is viewed for before users stop playing or click away. So to get the best results, not only do you need to hook the audience in to watching your videos, but you must also ensure that they continue watching until the end. Continue Reading The Article Here…

A lot of people leave out the vanity URL as well as linking to your website. Granted, YouTube is CONSTANTLY changing, and getting a custom URL isn’t as easy as it was before. Also linking your website to your channel isn’t that easy, especially if you aren’t tech savvy. You may have to get your webmaster to do this for you.

Linking your website to your channel is well worth the hassle though. By doing this it allows you to put clickable links in your videos that can drive traffic directly to your website!

Another article we found that we though would be helpful to you in your YouTube SEO efforts was done by Rizvan Ullah at JohnChow.com:

How To Boost the SEO Value of Your YouTube Video Content

There is no argument the value of videos is very crucial and can lead to enormous traffic generation and brand awareness. However, there has been debate over video optimization and how to leverage the basic SEO skills to boost your videos within search results and posting platforms like YouTube.com. The question is: Can ordinary link building strategies be used to boost rankings of videos within SERPs? Over the years, experts have said “yes”, but have added a twist on the way videos show up in the search results. Over the years, we’ve seen some videos outperform others without doing any SEO, which tells us that link building is just one factor in several others. Either way, it’s important that you consider a few factors when trying to rank your next video.

From my experience, here are the elements you pay close attention to before uploading your next video.

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Relevancy vs. Quantity

When creating a video, pay attention to relevancy, not quantity, because there is no point uploading videos that don’t resonate with people. Just like content, you’ll have a better chance engaging people if you are clear about the audience you are targeting. Many people make the mistake of uploading too many videos that are completely irrelevant, hoping to attract some people to their website, etc. This doesn’t work with content and won’t work with videos because websites like YouTube.com have a system in place to identify relevant videos to a user’s search.

Start by narrowing down your audience then finding out what they are looking for. Pay close attention to their search pattern. Knowing this information will help you stay on track when creating your video. In the end, you’re better off receiving 10,000 visitors from “1” popular video than 10 visitors from 5 videos you’ve created.

Hosting vs. Posting

There is no real answer to this question and it depends on what you are trying to achieve. Hosting means to upload the video on your own site while posting means to upload on sites like YouTube.com. Both can work in your favour and the ROI will depend on your ultimate objective. For example, if you have a following on your blog and want to introduce people to your new product or service, then consider hosting your own video. However, for a growing blog, and to obtain social shares, then posting on popular sites like YouTube.com will be your #1 choice. Here’s my preference…

For SEO purposes, I prefer posting on sites like YouTube.com (because of their popularity). A simple video I publish can receive thousands of videos that trickle to my blog. Next, it will be shared by thousands and can receive link backs from other relevant bloggers. The links will add SEO value to my video, which can help boost it organically within the SERP’s. Another important factor in my choice is the backend SEO work done by posting websites. On YouTube.com, for on-page SEO, I simply add a title and description then publish and it’s ready to go.

If you are going to host your own videos, it’s important to understand that each upload is unique. Make sure you take the right steps to ensure it is indexed by Google correctly. Finish Reading The Article Here…

One thing that we like that he adds later in the article is that “keywords matter”. But we would take it a step farther and say that it not only matters in your Title and Tags, but also in exactly what you are saying in the video.

Now we wouldn’t recommend saying your keyword in the video over and over, but at least would try and mention it in the first part of the video, middle and the end. You can also use LSI keywords for this also.

In our tests we have taken word phrases spoken in our videos and then done a search for them on YouTube, and low and behold our videos appear in the search. That tells us without a doubt that YouTube IS listening to what we say!

Finally we have a video from Brandon Lucero who we respect in the video marketing community with more indepth explanations of YouTube SEO and ranking your videos:

Lots of good stuff in these articles and video.

Be sure and check out all of our other posts on video marketing!

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