With Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and the like having taken off in terms of social media marketing, everyone seems to have their hand in the proverbial cookie jar. In fact, running a business without the status quo Facebook page is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, as millennials seem to be turning ever more to social media when researching a product or service. All in all, social media is becoming less of a way to stand out and more of an expected avenue of marketing. So, you’ll need to go above and beyond the usual daily posts if you want to be sure your message reaches your potential customers. Video is a great way to accomplish that, and for optimal search engine traffic, we’re recommending YouTube. After all, the video-sharing powerhouse is owned by the world’s most powerful search engine.
It’s true the company has been around since 2005 and can’t exactly be called trendy, but take a look at the numbers. The service reaches more 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the U.S., and its viewing numbers are up 40 percent per day, year over year since March 2014. All of the top 100 global brands have run TrueView ads on YouTube, and TrueView grew by 45 percent in 2014. What we’re seeing is consistent growth across a wide range of markets. So while this article is about promoting your YouTube video, not placing an ad, there’s plenty of data supporting our recommendation to utilize the streaming giant.
Optimize Your Keywords
The old faithful SEO strategy of keyword optimization is still relevant today. Strong on-page SEO is never going away, so utilizing it across your platforms is a must. Keyword optimization on YouTube is fairly standard, with a few quirks specific to posting videos as opposed to blog posts.
First off, your Youtube profile page, as well as all your video pages, should have descriptions that contain keywords relevant to the video in question, or relevant to your business. As a small business, we recommend starting out with long tail keywords, letting users find your specific niche without competing against the likes of Walmart and other large companies.
When creating keywords, it’s important to remember that Google and YouTube are the same company. Specific searches within Google will yield YouTube video results before all other results. Searches such as How to “….” or Tutorial “…..” will always return video results first, so keep that in mind when tailoring keywords. Specifically, make sure your video title is something people associate with these kinds of searches.
Our final keyword advice is to pay attention to video metadata. After recording, you can add video tags, a description, and tailor the filename of your video to your keywords. Google looks at all of these things, and they’ll be retained after you upload to YouTube.
Video Content
This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many people create the wrong kind of content. People don’t come to YouTube for a sales pitch. They come to be entertained or gather knowledge. However, just because your product can’t be classified as entertainment or a textbook, doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Create content that is relevant or within the realm of what you’re selling. The more helpful your video is, the more likes, shares, comments, and views it will receive, and the higher it will rank on Google.
In addition to fulfilling the consumer’s needs, video creators should also pay attention to video length. The total number of seconds someone watches your video influences its Google rank. But this doesn’t mean a very long video is going to be a hit. Videos also need to be made with mobile platforms in mind. For the sake of striking a balance, we recommend videos somewhere in the 5-minute range.
Build Links
Another classic tactic, link-building falls into the category of off-page SEO. We’re not breaking any records for innovation with this one, but to exclude it would be to exclude half the SEO battle. YouTube videos have an advantage over most content, when it comes to backlinking. Not only are they more likely to go viral on social media, a hotbed for backlinks, but they also can be posted on your company blog and your own social media platforms for free backlinks.
As always, we hope what we’ve shared with you today is informative and has given some insight into how to get your YouTube video ranked in Google. If you have any questions for us or would like to get your own business started on social media, contact us here.
Awesome article. There are also some other tips for youtube search engine optimization, like: 1) find profitable keywords, which you can find in KeyWord Planner, not just the keywords you like, 2) good quality of the video, 3) proper custom thumbnail with a high quality picture, 4) call to action at the end, and some others. And as research shows it’s extremely important to watch the video in youtube during the first two hours from different IP addresses, it lets you be the first. There is also infographics as an addition to your topic 🙂 (https://mobilunity.com/blog/youtube-video-optimization-for-better-ranking/)