Youtube SEO: Leveraging Most Influential Channel to Broadcast Your Business

“More than 1 Billion unique users visit YouTube each month and 14% of the entire Internet traffic come from YouTube. Is your Business capturing any of this traffic?“

The Internet never gets bored of watching videos and as you know, the major source of online videos is YouTube. It is the second largest search engine after Google with 100 hours of content uploaded every month. It is the primary way to learn and understand from anything to everything.

Because of being the most popular online video platform worldwide, it has become the goldmine of targeted users for business owners and online marketers. If you weren’t ranking high on this most visited website in the world, it’s the time for you to start thinking about it immediately. To take the full advantage of the opportunities offered by YouTube, you need to optimize it to rank your video content.

But how much SEO video marketing will help you in getting more traffic and high ranking on YouTube? How optimizing the YouTube videos can benefit you? Let’s understand the importance of SEO for a YouTube channel.

1. Search Engine Rankings

As YouTube is owned by Google, video results from YouTube often appear within the organic search results on Google itself. Also, Google wants to show the types of content that are most applicable to user’s query. That means many queries will have video results within the SERP. Google knows that many people find video explanation easier to understand than a standard article. So this means that a well-optimized video can get a place prominently on Google, drawing more traffic and to help you to establish your Brand.

2. A Video is better than a Website

Videos already make 64 percent of total internet traffic. If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video has much more worth. If you are searching for “how to..” kind of information, what would you prefer – read an article or watch a video? Of course, you’ll not make effort to search, read and scroll a website and will prefer a video that will easily explain you the things that too in action with one click. Videos are actually more engaging than text information. This is because much information is crammed into one message thus, consumers can remember videos easily. If we talk specifically about YouTube videos, then you because of very high Domain Authority and already millions of established backlinks, the video will rank higher than a website.

3. Build trustworthy audience

With the feature of subscribing, you can have a collection of reliable people that are interested in your YouTube channel and actually enjoy your videos. These people will come back and explore your website for latest update. Subscribing is also an important user experience signal that YouTube uses to rank your video.

Now as we know the significance, let’s explore how to rank youtube videos on first page of Google to make sure your videos are discovered, watched and shared by your targeted audience.

1. Find Video Keywords

Like web SEO, YouTube video optimization also starts with keyword research. In this, you have to find video keywords i.e. the keywords that have results on the first page of Google.

There is a supercooled trick to choose video keywords.

Consider you optimize video around a keyword that has no video results on google. In this case, you will get traffic only from youtube. But if you optimize your video keywords for Google, you will get the targeted traffic from both Google and youtube to your video.

The best way to find video keywords is to search keywords in your niche manually and through  Google Keyword Planner.

Next step is to check whether the keywords finalized by you have YouTube search results.

Now, you have to the check if the keywords have enough volume. Don’t go for massive volume. According to Brian Dean, 300 searches per month is a minimum for Google. It’s because if you get 300 searches in Google then you’ll get enough searches on youtube itself.

One additional tip is that make your video at least 5 minutes longer.

For example: on finding “local SEO techniques” on Youtube, the videos with time period more than 1 hour are ranking high as compared to other videos.

Longer videos surpass shorter videos on Google and youtube.

Also, don’t worry if your video is getting longer. Go for it. If it’s fantastic, people will see it.

3. Keeping in mind YouTube SEO while uploading it

Filename :- After creating an awesome video, make sure you put the keyword in your video filename while uploading. This will let the search engines know the niche of your video.  For example: If you want to rank for “Height growing tips”, you did want to name it as height_growing_tips_video.mp4.

Video Title :- The Title of the video should be at least of 5 words. This will give a look of natural title and in that way, you can also include your keyword without keyword stuffing.

It will be more beneficial for you if you can put the keyword in the starting of the title.

Description :- This is very important because Google and youtube can’t understand your videos. They actually rely on the description of the video you provide.

Below are the basic guidelines for creating amazing optimized description:

• Add link in the description

• Include your keyword in the first 25 words of your content

• Insert the keyword 3-4 times in the description

• It should be of at least 250 words

   

Tags :- You can skip them as they are not super-important but they also don’t hurt. Just add keywords for the search engines to make them understand what your video is all about.

It will not only rank you for your keyword but will also show up as a related video in the sidebar portion of youtube.

Videos with the similar tag will add you in their sidebar.

4. Working on Video Views 

To rank for competitive keywords, you need to work on views. Views are directly proportional to the rankings, more the views more the ranking will be. But the views should be real because youtube can catch fake views. To get the genuine targeted traffic, you can follow these techniques. Video link in email signature People email you when they like you. As many of us get a huge number of emails daily, you can add the link of your latest video in your email signature. Links in the email signature generates higher CTR. Quora and other Online Communities Quora, Yahoo Answers, and other Q&A are the most popular sites on the internet. Posting links to these sites where people are so much desperate to get information can generate an extremely huge traffic but that doesn’t mean that you spam these websites. They will ban you. What you have to do is just search a question related to your video topic. Then thoroughly answer the question and add a link to your video. You can also embed your link in the answer.

This will instantly get your video a few hundred very high-quality views. Now, as you’ve uploaded and shared your video, it’s time see who is actually watching your videos. We can use Youtube Analytics here… It will help you in understanding your audience and how they are engaging with your audience. Go to your Youtube channel page and click on views on the top.

Click on views to go to  analytics directly.

This is the overview of your analytics. It has default settings of showing data of 28 days but it can be changed. For a quick snapshot of your performance, the overview section is the best place to go.

Each category has on the overview page has its own dedicated page with a more detailed explanation.

• Watch time:

See which video of your channel is watched for how many minutes. Not only this, you also the views, You tube Red watch time, Youtube Red views, their geography, date and much more.

• Audience retention:

It will let you know how much video of yours is being watched out on an average. It also shows the last column of average percentage viewed according to video, date, and geography.

• Demographics:

Other than views, you can also see the demographic breakdown of your audience along with the watch time. Currently, it is divided into three insights: gender, age, and geography. For a local business, it can provide you with a helpful look into whether the videos are reaching the right audience of your business or not.

• Playback locations:

It is one of the best features that you can find out that along with youtube, where your videos are embedded along with their views and watch time. People can share the videos on their websites and blogs. This is a great way to find the sites on which your videos are being viewed.

• Traffic sources:

You can easily find out how people are finding your videos through youtube analytics. Common types of sources include YouTube search, YouTube suggested videos, YouTube search, and YouTube advertising.

• Devices:

This report will let you know the devices and operating systems that people are watching your videos on. Common devices are the computer, mobile phones, tablets, TV and Game console. You can also dive deep in their own breakdown.

• Engagement reports

After building an audience and sharing content on YouTube, you’ll wish to have an awareness of the type of engagement generated by the videos. Below are the different Engagement reports available in YouTube Analytics:

• Subscribers

This is a great measure to calculate the success of your video content. It will let you know how many people have subscribed and unsubscribed to your channel. You should get more subscribers by thinking about what people are searching for and then creating a valuable content for them.

• Likes and dislikes

It will help you to know the response of the people to your videos – both positive and negative. The interesting videos are supposed to get the most amount of likes. Other may not generate the same amount of likes but may play an important role in YouTube Strategy.

• Favorites

It is a great indicator of engagement for your video. This report will let you know when the video is marked as a favorite and also when it is unmarked. After marking up, it will become a part of their favorite category on their personal YouTube profile.

• Comments

Count how many comments you receive on each of your videos. It can be a great way to interact with the targeted audience. It will be best for you if you respond quickly to them. Try to avoid arguing in a comment thread as it will make you more professional.

In the end, it’s up to you on creating and optimizing YouTube videos. You should focus on your targeted audience to increase the level of relevancy. Make sure you ask your viewers to like, comment and share your videos in the end. You can also embed your videos within the blog post as it will help you in getting more traffic. You will definitely see a hike in your YouTube video visitors if you religiously follow the above SEO tips. If you know any other SEO hack for YouTube videos or another innovative benefit of YouTube SEO, feel free to share with us via comments. Also, don’t forget to share this useful resource with your YouTuber friends on your Facebook and Google plus profile.

Rahul Vij

Co-founded WebSpero solutions about a decade ago. Having worked in web development- I realized the dream of transforming ideas sketched out on paper into fully functioning websites. Seeing how that affected the customers’ generation of leads and conversions, I wanted to delve deeper into the sphere of digital marketing. At Webspero Solutions, handling operations and heading the entire Digital Marketing Field – SEO, PPC, and Content are my core domains. And although we as a team have faced many challenges, we have come far learning along and excelling in this field and making a remarkable online reputation for our work. Having worked in building websites and understanding that sites are bare structures without quality content, the main focus was to branch into optimizing each website for search engines. Investing in original, quality content creation is essential to SEO success in the current search climate. Succeeding in this arena ensures the benefits of producing visitor-friendly content. Directing all our teams to zoom in on these factors has been a role that I have thoroughly enjoyed playing throughout these years. linkedin