The ability to post a video to YouTube is very easy, but anyone can post a video to YouTube. What you need to focus on is what to do with the video once it has been posted in order to increase its visibility to search engines. What YouTube checks when you type in a search are:
- Title
- Description
- Tags
- Number of Views
- Number of Links
- The Ratings
These are the important factors to focus on once you have posted a video in order to fully optimize it for SEO purposes. Remember that the video file isn’t what search engines look at, it is the content that surrounds the video. Here are some tips to help you focus on VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) for your videos:
1. Title Needs Keywords: A title that’s funny or interesting will attract views, however, it might not be attractive to search engines. A descriptive title is better than a clever title. The title of the video is also its meta tag and it is the part that search engines look at first, making it the most important piece of information.
2. Focus on SEO in the Description: In the description is where you want to use the key words and key phrases that are important. If your video’s intent is to attract traffic to a certain website or post, put the URL for that first in order to increase its chance of being seen.
3. The Description Counts: The first 27 characters in the description are what are shown on search engine results. After that, the search engines place an ellipsis and the rest is cut off. This puts emphasis on URL placement if that is your goal.
4. YouTube can Help with Keywords: A little known fact is that YouTube actually has its own keyword suggestion tool that’s like Google’s AdWords keyword tool. Using this can help you find out what users are looking for when it comes to video searches. This can help your VSEO greatly.
5. Tag your videos with Keywords: After using YouTube’s keyword tool to find out your most relevant keywords, make sure to use those keywords to tag your videos. What tags do is take your video and put it in a group of videos that use the same tags. When a user watches a video with a similar tag, your video will show up as a related video and could be clicked through to. Think about how users would type into a search engine and tag your videos in an order that makes sense.
6. Annotations and Captions: These are important as well as they add links to your site and other videos. This is great for link building and for letting your users know about your social media profiles on Facebook and Twitter as well as increasing your VSEO.
7. Location is Important: Google and YouTube now also look at the geographic location of posted videos (as well as everything else on the internet) so it’s important for you to fill out your location when posting your video. Add your location to the description as well so it’s picked up in more than one place.
8. Embedding is Good: If users are taking your video and embedding it on their site as well, this is a great thing as it increases the visibility of your video, and it also counts as an inbound link to your website. The more times your video is embedded, the higher the rating it will get in search engine results.
9. Interaction is Key: You want to encourage viewers to rate and comment on your video. This lets search engines know that your video is relevant and popular which will boost its rating in search results. Use your social media profiles to encourage interaction on your videos.
These tips plus some savvy VSEO know-how will help you increase your videos visibility to search engines which will drive traffic to your site and help you increase your online presence.
SearchPro Systems
2024