Video is a powerful medium to reach users through picture, sound and motion.
The vast majority of company’s host their video on YouTube because it’s easy, free, the second largest search engines.
In order to optimize the performance of your videos on YouTube & other channels, consider the following best practices:
Use Keywords.
Do a little keyword research before adding the Keywords in Title & Descriptions. This is the most vital phase in optimizing videos in Youtube and other Video channels.
Check Search Results on Google and YouTube. Before you check on keywords, it is important to see if there are video results on the first page on Google and YouTube.
Google Trends is a relevant tool to track non-brand keywords. This tool can help you to drive the most traffic sources to your video.
Appealing Title.
With limited plain text for search engines to crawl, the title of your video is probably the most important SEO factor to consider. Titles for YouTube videos should include relevant keywords to ensure high rankings in Google and YouTube search and should be persuasive enough to boost clicks and views.
Keep your titles within 70 characters (including spaces). YouTube has a 100-character limit for titles, anything longer than 70 will be truncated in most search results.
Thorough Description.
Include the same keywords targeted in the title of your video within the description field at least once.
While YouTube gives you 5,000 characters to play with in the Description field, it’s best to keep the first line of your description relatively brief, as no more than the first 157 characters will appear as a snippet in search. In fact, most search engine results will truncate descriptions starting at approximately 100 characters.
Include a link sending viewers back to your website immediately after the first sentence of your description. This can help ensure the URL does not appear as a rich snippet in search
Include Tags.
When it comes to video, tags actually do matter. You want to use important key phrases and keywords as simply another way to let the bots know how your video should be categorized. Think about what your target audience might search for and then use those terms as additional tags for your video.
Sitemaps and Schema.org.
Creating a sitemap is the easiest way to let the bots know you have a video on your website; thus helping them index that video.
Finally, schema.org is also a great way to ensure you have an optimized video. This HTML markup offers additional information to the bots (particularly describing your video), and it will no affect any video sitemaps that you’re already using.
Final Tips:
- Understand that users come to YouTube to learn, watch and be entertained. As such, create videos that feature original content.
- You are the expert on your industry, product or service. Try creating videos that teach and engage the YouTube community on your expertise.
- Keep your message simple and concise. A good benchmark is to try to keep your video to two minutes or less.
- Update your content on a regular basis. The YouTube users who have been successful keep their message fresh with regular updates to their channel.
- Read user comments on your own and similar video and channel pages for ideas.
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