With over a billion people frequenting YouTube each month, it makes sense to make sure you have a strong strategy in place to take advantage of that activity. While the majority of YouTube visitors are millennials, all demographics are consuming and engaging with video content on YouTube and beyond.
In fact, the stats around online video consumption is mind blowing. You can see what I mean here.
In this post I want to focus on YouTube because I think it is a better choice for organic views than Vimeo. And while it is a social network in itself, it is also a search engine. A search engine owned by Google and that will always be important.
The type of content you create is obviously the most important part of getting found on YouTube by the right people. Udemy has a great post on different ways you can leverage YouTube for your business.
But beyond the content you share, YouTube has its own algorithm and there are some things you need to be doing that will help you get more views, exposure and make your video easier to find on YouTube.
YouTube Video Optimization Tips
1. You Need A Descriptive Title
YouTube is a search engine. You need to have the right title to get found for the right things. The title is the most important thing to consider. They should include keywords that you want to get found on their own and that relate to other titles that you want to be shown with. The title should also be strong enough to encourage people to actually click play.
2. You Must Include Keyword Focused Description
This is your opportunity to include keywords and text to help you get found on Google and YouTube. Some people translate their whole video into text for extra emphasis and more keywords. You can do this too. But the most important thing is to add a keyword focused description that allows people to take a quick glance and want to watch more.
3. Don’t Forget Appropriate Tags
Tags like on blogs help you get your content in the right area of YouTube. You need to choose the right ones. I’d be creative here. Choose long tail and short tail keywords as tags so that you can hedge your bet that you will get found for something someone is searching for. Obviously it needs to be relevant to the searcher. If you get too many thumbs downs on videos your video will get buried. The same goes for the category. Make sure you choose the right category or you may be stuck in no man’s land.
4. Never Overlook Links
This is something that too many people forget. You need to have a link back to your site in the first sentence of the description. You want to make it as easy for someone to head on over to your full site to learn more. Don’t burry this!
How do you make sure your YouTube videos are being found?
