SEO friendly YouTube videos – a first step to promotion!
YouTube
is one of the most searched websites in the world today, with over 800 million individual and unique visits each and every month. This is second only to Google, which makes it a great place to market your business, promote an online course or providing information to your target audience.
Just as there are strategic techniques to use to optimize a website for search engine rankings, there are also specific techniques that can be used when publishing your YouTube video. To maximize your position on the search engine rankings for YouTube and through other search engines, including Google, use the following:
- Title – this is really no surprise as it is similar to SEO content for a website. It will be important to use the keyword or keyword phrase in the title of the video. Also, be sure to create the file name as the title, but separate the words with hyphens.
- Title length – try to keep the title of the video to approximately 50 characters. Cut out a lot of the descriptive words but use the keywords. Long titles or titles that are not associated with the content will negatively impact SEO rankings.
- Add tags – when uploading your video be sure to take advantage of the option to add tags and categories. These should be the individual keywords that represent the main information in the video, and they may also be in the title.
- Link to your website in the description – with the description of the video section you will have 160 characters. Make sure to use a link to your website at the front of the description. Create a description that is going to generate interest but also closely matches the content of the video. Think of a short summary of the highlights to use as the description. This is a good place to use both the keyword and high-level secondary keywords as it makes sense.
- Link through annotations – within the video you can add annotations that may include discussions or additional points as well subtitles or create pauses while a text box presents a link to your website or to another video you wish to highlight. This creates traffic that will improve SEO rankings.
- Group your videos – if you have a few videos on different subjects it is a good idea to group similar videos into playlists. It will naturally lead viewers with an interest in a subject to click through related videos, boosting your SEO.
Finally, if you have more than a few playlists or groups of videos and a good following, starting your own YouTube channel is a sound idea. This will allow greater control over the entire channel and also allow for easy cross marketing through social media and your website.
