Video is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. An estimated 82% of internet traffic will be video by 2022, and YouTube has more than 1 billion users. It’s no wonder why video is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about content marketing, lead generation, or personal branding. With the right strategy and the right execution, video can be your most powerful tool as a small business owner. Here’s how to leverage this incredible resource for your own business SEO strategy.
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Know your YouTube SEO strategy
If you want people to find your videos through Google searches, you need to make sure that you’re using the right search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Here are some tips to help you optimize your videos for YouTube SEO:
1) Include your company name, your website, and your niche in the video description. It’s important that people remember where this video was filmed. Also, leave a link to the original source so that the person can find it again. Videos with little to no description are usually not clicked on by viewers.
2) Include your keywords in your video titles. If you are a car dealer, but most of the people searching for your video are looking for an urban driving course or a luxury car, you are going to want to put ‘luxury cars’ in your video title. This way, you can target the higher traffic keywords with your video title. Find high-performing keywords to seal the deal.
3) Add informative transcripts to your video. If people are clicking on the videos and don’t really get what you have to say, then transcripts can provide additional content for them. Follow Google’s excellent tips on how to add transcription to your videos.
4) Promote your videos through YouTube and other platforms. Having a YouTube channel means you can get about 25-30% of our traffic from it. If people search for your videos there, too, this means that YouTube is associating your videos with the name of your company. If you want to increase the traffic to your YouTube page, then you will need to promote your videos through these platforms.
5) Create a feed for your YouTube channel. If you don’t have a YouTube account, you can start learning how to create one right now for free. This will allow you to create a feed of content for your YouTube channel. Add videos from all areas of your business, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and any other areas you may have. It would be beneficial to have separate feeds for each of your companies. This way, people can learn more about your company by following your YouTube page.
Optimize your videos for search engines with titles, descriptions, and tags
Google is a master of readability, so why wouldn’t they apply it to video results? But why would Google want to rank a page that doesn’t really do anything? By placing content related to your brand within the search results pages (SERP), Google is able to provide users with a good user experience while providing highly relevant information. When viewed on a desktop computer, the YouTube SERP looks like this; where a third of the results show images and the rest are articles: But on a mobile device, the SERP looks more like this; where all of the results are images (except SERP.gov)
That said, search results on YouTube are not mobile-friendly. In order to get all the information an audience may be looking for when watching a video on a desktop computer, the video has to be optimized for search engines. Use a resourceful YouTube video editor that offers help with all your videos to make them SERP-friendly.
Follow the best practices for video SEO
Video SEO is very different from SEO for traditional content. Here are the best practices to follow when creating video SEO:
- Use your keywords in the title.
- Use keywords in the description.
- Include a transcript of your video.
- Link to your video on your website or blog.
- Link to your video on social media. Videos are the fastest-growing content type on the internet.
- Make your videos more visible to YouTube searches using tags and annotations
Why should you be creating them instead of text articles or infographics?
1) Videos comprehensively answer questions. If a user is looking for videos about SEO, they find what they are looking for.
2) Users can subscribe to your YouTube channel to catch new videos on a daily basis.
3) A user can save your video and watch it later. If you answer a related question, it automatically adds to the user’s queue on YouTube. If the user looks for a video about SEO, they can find it faster. Already know the answer, the video displays without an auto-play option.
4) Videos are one of the best ways to build emotional connections with users.
5) Video helps company presentations look professional and professional looks good.
6) Most interaction happens on YouTube, so make sure your videos get discovered quickly.
7) People search for topics in YouTube videos.
8) A user who looks for a business can easily follow you on YouTube if you brand yourself as a “real company”.
9) Google is giving more and more attention to video results.
10) Brands recognize paid viral marketing as an effective way to increase sales and leads. Without YouTube, there would be no way to check out the site I built with my own two eyes.
