The ability for users to find, watch, and share YouTube videos is easier than ever with the rise of smartphones and other mobile devices. Mix the power of a video as a marketing tool with social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, and the strategy basically writes itself. This powerful marketing tool is of little help though if your target audience can’t find your videos to watch. With proper video search engine optimization (VSEO) your videos can become a hit and can help generate traffic to your site.
VSEO Basics
The first rule of VSEO as it is with SEO is that you have to find those important keywords that will get you ranked on search engine results pages. When it comes to VSEO for YouTube, however, you have to remember that there are character limits for the titles. Try to have a video title that’s alluring to both your target base and to search engines. Use only one keyword or key phrase in the title or else it will look keyword stuffed and could be penalized.
The same rules apply to the description of your video. You want to make sure it has at least one keyword or key phrase in it, but not overstuffed as to detract your viewers from clicking on the link. Usually, you’re allowed up to 160 characters, so if there’s room, add your website in the description as well to boost your backlinks. Tag your videos as well with keywords and your nice phrases.
VSEO Checklist
- Upload your video not only to YouTube but also to your own website and encourage others to embed it on their sites as well. This is best for VSEO because more links means more activity, which means that Google will see that it’s active and rate it higher.
- Include text with the video. Google’s crawlers won’t see the video, only the content that surrounds it. Consider putting a video transcript under the video to help the crawlers see the keywords that you’re going for.
- Create a video sitemap for Google so it knows how to look at your video.
- The transcript can be very important and it can be uploaded under the Captions and Subtitles tab. This will allow for simple indexing of your content.
YouTube is one of most of popular sites in the world today, ranking in 3rd in total views online. They have over 800 million visitors a month that watches close to 4 billion hours of video. Without proper VSEO, your video can easily get lost in the wide mix that is YouTube. Develop connections with others in your industry and share your videos to your followers on social media. This will help boost your VSEO ranking and will get your ranked higher in search engine results.
SearchPro Systems
2024