YouTube marketing is important not only for the active members of the YouTube community, but for all SEO practitioners, too.
If you own a website that’s not particularly linked to video and you don’t bother producing YouTube videos for the sake of marketing, you’ll have to change something about that.
YouTube is getting more traffic by the day. People are looking for all kinds of solutions, reviews, and recommendations on this platform, sometimes skipping Google altogether.
So yes, creating video content is a crucial principle in modern SEO practices. However, that’s not enough. You have to optimize the content, so people will find it in all that crowd.
You’ll be optimizing video content just like you’re doing it with written content.
How do you get your video content to rank high in both the results and the recommendations? That’s what we’re here for today.
Focus on “Video Keywords”
The first idea that comes to mind when trying to optimize the videos is: “I’ll just target the right keywords.” Yes, you should definitely target keywords relevant to your content.
Google includes YouTube videos in its search results. However, it will do that only for a specific kind of keywords, called video keywords.
For example, try searching for “how to rank” on Google, and see the results:
You’ll see that phrase in all suggestions that appear in the Video section. What does this teach us?
Before coming up with keywords to target, we should simply check out what video keywords work for others.
Then, we should produce cool content and try to rank for the same keywords.
Targeting keywords like tutorial, how to, review or video works quite well for YouTube SEO.
Make the Video Descriptions Perfect
If you’re looking for a proven way to rank your YouTube video higher, you have to include the descriptions in your strategy.
Having long, detailed descriptions helps you rank not only for the keywords you’re targeting, especially if they are long-tail keywords. Using 200+ words is totally fine.
Let’s check one of the videos from the example above. Its description is quite elaborate.
It works! Think about it: not everyone will have the patience to go through a long video if they don’t know if it gives them answers in the first place.
The in-depth description will inform the visitors what the video is about. Plus, it allows you to incorporate a better SEO strategy.
Google is just like a random visitor; it relies on text to figure out what the video is about.
Encourage Action
Keri Michaels, a content marketing expert from BestEssays, emphasizes the importance of high-quality backlinks for SEO: “I’m talking about real backlinks, which result from the quality you provide for the online audience. That’s the kind of authority that improves your ranking on search engines.”
Google has a way of checking the quality of backlinks.
YouTube doesn’t do that, so it’s important to convince the platform that you have great content, which is worthy of a higher rank.
How do you do this? Ask people to subscribe to your channel and like your videos.
That’s the kind of action to inspire!
Attract Traffic from Online Communities
Although this tactic doesn’t have much to do with YouTube, it can still help you get higher ranking for your videos.
Try attracting audience from LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, and communities that are relevant to your niche.
You won’t be doing this just by posting links and inviting people to watch your videos.
That kind of aggressive marketing doesn’t work in these communities of people with genuine interest in top-quality content.
What do you do? You become a valuable member of the communities. You give these people answers and solutions.
When you contribute to a conversation with a great post, you can invite people to watch your YouTube video for more information.
This will drive traffic, subscriptions, and likes to your YouTube channel.
Create Playlists and Develop a SEO Strategy Around Them
Once you publish a significant number of videos on YouTube, you can create different playlists and use keywords in their names.
With this, you’ll make the user experience on your channel much better, but you’ll also get an opportunity to improve your rank.
The playlists keep viewers on your channel for as long as possible.
If your videos are good, that means you’re getting more engagement in the form of comments, likes, and shares.
Naturally, that will affect the way you rank.
It’s a Lot of Work, But It Gives Results
With all tips suggested above, you’ll definitely improve the way your videos rank on YouTube.
Every website owner and SEO expert should be focused on that goal.
If you get your videos on the first page of Google and high up in YouTube’s results, that means you’re doing promotion the right way.
All Images Credit: CC 0; Public Domain. View original image on Unsplash.com.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
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