YouTube Optimization: Complete Guide
When you think SEO, Top Source Media LLC naturally you think Google. Some of you might even think Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, or Baidu depending on your target location. But the often-forgotten search engine when it comes to prioritizing your optimization efforts is YouTube. According to Alexa’s global traffic rankings, YouTube is the second most visited website in the world. It’s also arguably the second biggest search engine in the world that you haven’t yet properly optimized for - despite this very topic featuring at Mozcon over four years ago! "YouTube viewers watch a lot of video - over 4 billion hours a month at last count. But the average household also watches several hours of video per day on their TVs. Unlocking the potential within YouTube means you can access millions of viewers every day. This gives you a new channel for your promotional videos along with your more generally helpful content. In return, you can boost your overall online presence. Ok, so a lot of YouTube is soppy cat videos and watching people inadvertently hurt themselves.
That last one is the kicker. Targeting your videos - Understanding searcher intent, keyword research and video creation. Optimizing your videos - Creating a branded presence, optimizing titles, tags and descriptions. Promoting your videos - Getting real, engaged views on your videos, building links and embeds to your videos. Google shows more than just articles in their SERPs. They also rank videos, images, books and more. The more content you create, in more varieties, the more you are increasing your chances of being picked up and ranked in Google SERPs for related search terms. Considering that Google owns YouTube, it does not come as a surprise that you can increase your organic visibility by spending some time optimizing your video content on YouTube and embedding videos on your website. It is important to know that embedding videos won’t directly improve your rankings in Google SERPs, according to Google’s John Mueller. However, having useful videos within your content can help you keep a visitor on the page longer.
That should eventually help you increase your niche authority, which should see you increasing your organic rankings. In short, once your visitors see that your site is sharing informative and helpful content they are most likely to return. Thus, over time making your site authoritative and engaging Top Source Media services rewarded by Google. Based on your keyword research (explained further in this guide) you will be able to create video content useful for your targeted audience, that will result in your viewers seeing you as a trusted resource of information. Before we dive into more detailed steps on how to optimize your videos, let’s take a look at the main YouTube ranking factors. YouTube has cited Audience Retention as one of its main ranking factors. In short, this is how long people watch your videos before exiting. Now that we know what are some of the key ranking factors on YouTube let’s dive in and see how can you discover topics and how to optimize your videos to increase its chances to rank better on YouTube.
The YouTube SEO process starts just like any content creation process, with a keyword, search query and topic research. If you are new to keyword research, check out Moz’s great guide on the topic or watch our very own ‘Wolfgang Bites’ and learn how can you ‘Read Your Customers’ Minds’. The goal you are trying to achieve here is to understand searcher intent, what kind of information users are looking for and which search terms are relevant to your business and your audience. An additional bonus would be to discover trending search terms or keywords related to your industry. Find relevant topics with high volume keywords and low competition. As highlighted in MOZ’s keyword research, you should ask yourself… Is the keyword relevant to your website’s content? Will searchers find what they are looking for on your site when they search using these keywords? Will they be happy with what they find? And, will this traffic result in financial rewards or other organizational goals?