YouTube is on a roll, especially after the pandemic, also YouTube is the best acquisition in the history of mankind. You must be wondering why?
So it’s natural to be a part of this online revolution either through participating as a creator or through consuming content. If you have a youtube channel this post is for you. Hi, my name is Nicole and I am the head of Growth & Seo at www.smtpservers.co, today I will decode all there is to know about gaining visibility on youtube.
Before beginning, I want to ask if you have heard about SEO on YouTube or how to position your videos on that platform? Yes, you can optimize your videos on youtube to gain more visibility.
Before diving in I want to let you know about some of the statistics about YouTube, of course, to gain your attention:
- According to Cisco data, last year 64% of people connected to the Internet were watching a video online. That percentage is expected to grow in 2020 to 69% and 2021 to 79%.
- According to a study by Tree Motion, 78% of users watch videos online every week and 55% do so daily.
- According to a Forbes study, more than 80% of business executives and directors now watch more videos than a year ago.
If you think that YouTube can help you in your marketing strategy, keep on reading.
The fight for Organic positioning in Video Marketing
Today I wanted to talk about the youtube platform that I find very attractive to enhance the brand image, communication, and attracting new customers: Video marketing on YouTube.
But is it possible to get our videos to appear for certain keywords? or how can we outperform our competition in organic YouTube positioning?
As in Google, there is a video positioning algorithm based on keywords, and therefore, it is possible to talk about SEO on YouTube.
Three more facts:
- Youtube has more than one billion visits annually.
- Every second, an hour of video is uploaded on average.
- YouTube is the second search engine in the world, behind Google.
Therefore, knowing how to position your videos, in the same way, that you position in Google will help you attract qualified traffic and future customers.
Why to do SEO on YouTube?
If the data that I just gave you was not enough, or with the simple fact of seeing every day that you get videos even in the soup – most come from YouTube -, I can still show you more reasons why you should use this platform with the life of its own, with as much traffic as the busiest of social networks.
As you know, positioning is based on content, on adding value to the user. That is what Google values above all else. Surely you have heard the term SEO Copywriting or the typical phrase “content is king”.
The explanation is simple.
For a search engine to fulfill its function, it must show visitors the results that best correspond to their needs and hit the maximum in the search results they offer. That is why, in my opinion, the real king is the user, to whom we must offer quality content to win “their click.”
Therefore, well-written articles, posts, and textual documents that add value to the reader and are written according to the guidelines and parameters of robots have a high chance of reaching the top 10.
The same happens with audiovisual content. A video that adds value to the user and also meets a series of requirements for the YouTube robot to position it correctly, will also have the possibility of reaching the top ten on both YouTube and Google.
Therefore, videos have become a fundamental element of positioning, where far from competing with written material, they go hand in hand intending to curl the loop in the world of SEO.
Also, as you know, YouTube belongs to Google, so it is normal for Google to reward video content and allow the positioning of videos on its platform.
How many times have you searched and the spider has responded with videos?
I hope you know you understand the depth of optimizing your YouTube videos.
Factors and strategies to do SEO on YouTube
Next, I am going to talk to you in detail about all the factors that play a vital role to achieve a good position on YouTube, as well as the strategies to achieve it and some recommendations that never hurt.
Surely I’m not going to give you the key to start making viral videos –among other things because it either doesn’t exist, or no one knows it–, but I can help you get started on this and maybe you will get viral with your videos:
4 Keys to a successful video:
- Arouse emotion from the first moment.
- Connect with the viewer quickly.
- Transmit without using words.
- The image and the music are of very good quality. That always helps.
As in Google, you can implement SEO On-Page and SEO Off-Page strategies to youtube as well, and the idea is to combine them to multiply the results and with them the benefits it reaps in.
We start with what we can do in our own home …
SEO On-Page on Youtube
Before delving further into the matter, I want to emphasize that as in the rest of marketing models, the first thing that has to be done is a deep analysis of all the factors that surround and affect the process, such as competition, the target or the product itself among others.
In addition, it is also necessary to mention segmentation, which weights any marketing strategy; however, despite its great value, it is not as fundamental as it can be in social networks, where it is vitally important to limit the sector of the public to which each message is directed.
Let’s analyze the factors and strategies to achieve the best position –
Study of Keywords to position on Youtube
SEO and Keywords go hand in hand.
They are one of the fundamental pillars of any positioning strategy, so you should analyze them and plan them perfectly for each publication you make.
The keywords tell Google or YouTube what your content is about so that it is easier to classify it and with it, to be able to position it for those search terms.
The title is the best hook to attract visitors
You should try, always as naturally as possible, to enter your main keyword in the title of each video; But that yes, do not forget that the title of your videos should describe what the visitors will find when they see it.
Otherwise, you will have a high bounce rate and a very low dwell time in the video, because logically, if the user does not find what they expected for your title, they will leave.
Don’t skimp on words in the descriptions
Naturalness and Keywords are essential for good positioning and therefore, to be successful in your SEO strategy on YouTube. Descriptions are the ideal place to enter secondary keywords and Long Tail keywords.
Do not save words, between 400 and 500 will be fine so that you can also offer another important thing: introduce links to your blogs, websites, or other authority pages that are related to your content.
Tags will make you more visible
The well-known tags or labels will make your videos appear in the same category as a video by others; including the videos of your competition, something that will never hurt
If you can take advantage of the positioning of other videos so that one of yours appears often, the tactic is interesting, right?
Analyze and study your competition
Speaking of competition, analyze it very well and look at their strategies; They can give you many clues of what you should and should not do, keyword ideas, or other tactics that are great for you to overcome them in the search engine results.
The aesthetics of the channel and brand image to conquer the user
A fundamental aspect of positioning is the user it is the most important because search engines try to satisfy their demands with the results in which you intend to place yourself, so try to please them and do not save on aesthetic details, both in the channel as in the videos.
There are three aesthetic tips that will help in your SEO strategy on YouTube:
- An attractive headboard
- Curious and attractive videos
- A thumbnail in each of your publications, such as your brand logo – which you can also use to link to your website from the video itself.
These are details that can be of great help to conquer the public, increase interactions, and with it, the relevance of your channel for YouTube.
If you also add a pop-up window on your channel that offers visitors the possibility of subscribing from the pop-up itself, you will be direct and surprising, something that can bring you many followers.
Subtitles are a plus for the positioning of your channel on YouTube
It can be tiresome for all of us to subtitle each video that we are going to upload to the platform, but it is something that robots value very much.
A literal transcription of everything that is said in the video is not necessary, subtitles can be used to make alternative descriptions or provide other data and information, among other things.
The filename, short but intense
As in the images that are uploaded to a website, the name you give to the file when uploading it to the platform influences your positioning; Try to keep it short and show your keyword at the same time.
Your authority, directly proportional to your positioning
There are many factors that influence your authority, such as your subscribers and the number of comments, likes, and dislikes you receive – and which I will mention again when I talk about interactions – in addition to the CTR, which in the case of YouTube will be based on how long users stay on your video.
As in your blog posts for Google, the bounce rate should be the lower, the better.
YouTube lists as an order strategy
We already know the taste of robots for order.
In fact, more than taste is about ease when doing your job. Therefore, ordering your publications by thematic lists will not hurt you, since it also simplifies searches for your followers.
Frequency of posts and interactions to show activity
To appear in the first positions of the search results, the authority that we mentioned before is basic. This authority is achieved with constant activity on YouTube, as well as in the interactions that you show from your channels, such as likes, dislikes, or comments.
This will allow your publications to also generate more movement from the public, that more people know you and that you can gain more subscribers.
A very interesting option for your videos is the one provided by the platform for you to publish live; something that creates more interactions, more views, more subscribers, and more authority as a result of all this.
Dissipate your content
It is very important to share the content with your subscribers to get fast rankings, you can easily share the content with your subscribers by integrating your youtube channel with either Gmail or Sendinblue, or any other such tool.
SEO Off-Page on YouTube
In the case of YouTube, we could say that an adequate link-building strategy is practically all that is necessary to develop the Off-Page SEO of a channel.
Links and insertions from your website, from social networks, or authority pages related to your topic will make your positioning in search engine results rise like foam, giving you visibility and promoting a process that feeds itself.
Always keep in mind that the links that redirect to your channel or any of your videos must be of quality, otherwise you could obtain precisely the opposite effects of what you are looking for, as happens with your blog.
Conclusions about SEO on YouTube
If something is clear regarding the SEO strategies that must be followed on YouTube to achieve success on the platform, it is to satisfy the user’s intent, and that is a consequence of the search robots having the same purpose.
By following these steps that I propose, and at the same time carrying out a good link building strategy – which, let’s not forget that it must always be combined with a great job of On-Page SEO – you will be opening the doors of success in your channel of the broadest audiovisual document platform on the net. Some tools can help you achieve this, such as, for example, Keywordtool.io or SEMrush, but they are not essential to start on YouTube, so perhaps I will tell you about them later when you have told me about the experiences through the comments. and successes that you have reaped following these tips, and offer me new ideas with your interests for future posts.