Here’s a bonus for those of you who devoured our Video for Social series entry on YouTube. We thought it would be a good idea to follow-up here with a quick piece featuring some simple and practical advice designed to make the videos you post on YouTube as effective (and searchable!) as they can possibly be.
So here are 4 simple steps you can take to optimize your videos on YouTube. What may be most surprising about some of these guidelines is just how easy (and un-mysterious) they are. Isn’t that nice for a change?
1. Start With The Basics: Title and Description
Unfortunately, more than a few video content managers are still putting their babies into the world without a name. Don’t do it! Those Title and Description fields are the ones that show up in search results for Google and YouTube, and that’s the primary way people will grasp what your video is all about…or not. If possible, your Title and Description should also incorporate relevant keyword phrases to optimize them for search engines as well as end users. By using terms that are compelling and descriptive for both people and search engine bots, you’ll get more views for your videos from the (real) people you’re trying to reach.
2. Slightly More Advanced: Extended Description, Subtitles, and Closed Captioning
For these added descriptors, you’re reaching beyond naming and beyond the context of a single type of viewer or audience. Here is what YouTube says about adding Closed Captioning and Subtitles: “Subtitles and closed captions open up your content to a larger audience, including deaf or hard-of-hearing viewers, or those who speak languages besides the one spoken in your video. They also act as metadata that help your videos show up in more places on YouTube.” With that last sentence (the bold type is ours) you already have reason enough for doing this. But don’t stop there. Extended Video Descriptions can also help your video show up prominently in search results. Within your extended description, also make sure to link to any resources that are mentioned in the video, including your own website. Finally, include a call to action and contact information in the description. Hey, we’re not saying that all this typing is fun – but it’s a lot more fun than planning for, paying for, and making a video that nobody ever sees.
3. Next-Level Smarts: Tagging
Tagging helps associate your video content with other relevant topics and keywords. Using up to 10 tags, you can map your videos to other topics and channels, and/or to searches that could potentially give additional exposure to your video. Here’s what YouTube says about them: “Tags are descriptive keywords that help YouTube’s discovery systems surface your videos to new audiences.” So which tags should you choose? For starters: how about your brand name, and a few competitor names? Mix in a few industry-related search terms, and a few how-to questions -- that’s usually a good start -- and you can change and rotate these tags every two months or so. Think of this like an AdWords/search strategy – what keywords are people using that should be mapping to your video content? As of 2014, YouTube became the world’s second most popular search engine, so you can expect LOTS of relevant traffic if your videos are tagged and ready.
4. Bonus option – Buy Your Views:
It is incredible what an AdWords buy can do for your YouTube video content. Probably one of the most cost effective ways to boost the number of views on your video content that demonstrates perceived popularity of a video in YouTube and on social media. Yes people pay attention to how many views a video has in presuming it’s popularity, authority, relevancy or even expertise in the subject matter. A typical example: if someone is looking for “how-to install software” video, which video do you think would get more click throughs - a video with 34 views or a video with 1,034 views? Which would you click? Using paid advertising to gain views helps gain this perceived popularity of your video and with additional targeting you can position your video with your optimal buyers.
Wrapping Up: Starting with these simple steps should be a standard process when any video is added to a branded YouTube channel. If you are interested in particular questions regarding optimization, or you have ideas to share with us – please offer them in your comments. We’ll do our best to address any questions and share helpful observations in our follow-up for this article.
For quick reference, here is a link to YouTube Metadata best practices. And here is more information from YouTube support on all the tips that were mentioned in this article.
Please share your comments below or send them to blog@tongal.com
