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How To Optimize Your YouTube Video For SEO

If your business isn’t using video as a tool in your marketing repertoire, you’re missing out on a key opportunity to get your content out in front of potentially millions of potential customers.

When Google first began adding “blended” results to the search result page, the addition of video and image results meant that these two mediums now had increased SEO value.

However, just uploading a video to YouTube isn’t a guarantee that it’s going to get traffic. Much like other content on the web, a YouTube video must be tailored to be SEO-friendly.

In this blog post, you’ll discover how to optimize a YouTube video for SEO. If you’ve ever edited tags on an image, you’ll find the process very similar.

Once you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, select “Info and Settings” on the video page.

You’ll get a number of options that you can edit. There are two sub-categories under this heading: Basic Info and Advanced Settings.

Basic Info:

  • Title text: The title text field for a YouTube video works in a similar way to title text anywhere else. Carefully consider which keywords are likely to get you the most traffic and use those keywords that are most descriptive of your brand. Remember that you only 99 characters to utilize here, so be as concise as possible.
  • Description: The description field really allows for you to exercise your creative muscles. You have 5000 characters with which to work, so don’t skimp on the content here. Include as much data about the video as you can. Pay attention to keywords here as well.
  • Tags: Having the proper tags on the video can be extremely helpful in getting views. Make sure that you select as many RELEVANT tags as you can. This will ensure that the video shows up as a suggestion when people watch other videos that share tags. YouTube will even suggest tags based on what’s listed in the description and title fields.
  • Privacy: There are three options here: Public, Private, and Unlisted. The only real purpose of the Private option in this context is to keep your video from being viewed until it’s ready. Think of it as an “Under Construction” sign. Once you’ve got that video optimized, set it to public for the big reveal.
  • Category: Make sure you select whichever category that most closely represents your product or service. This will help people who are searching find your video.

Advanced Settings:

  • Comments: Comments are a double-edged sword. While they give your customers a place to discuss your brand and products, they can also become a place that fosters negativity due to the anonymous nature of the comment system. If you decide to allow comments, be sure to set the drop down to “Approved” so you or an associate can approve any comments that are posted to the video. If you choose to allow comments, make sure you enable Video Responses. Video Responses can help boost views because they are automatically back-linked to your original. If someone who has a popular channel were to post a video reply, your video would likely get many more views.
  • Embedding: Now that Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates have been rolled out, we know that social media has become the backbone of any successful SEO strategy. Creating quality content that is shareable is a major goal. Allowing embedding makes it simple for users to share your video to both social media sites such as Facebook and also to their personal blogs.
  • Video location: This information can be especially helpful if your audience is concentrated in a certain area. If someone searches for the topic of your video in your target area, your video result may get precedent because of the locality.
  • Syndication: Keep this enabled.

Now what?

You’ve got your video posted and all the tags and fields have been optimized for SEO.

You’re done, right? NOT YET!

Here are some things you can do to give your video a “leg-up” until it’s discovered by your audience:

  • Make sure to link to your video from your company’s home page or a designated landing page focused on that specific topic.
  • Post your videos to all of your social media outlets. The four most authoritative are Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+. That should be the minimum spread.

I hope you find this tutorial on how to optimize a YouTube Video for SEO helpful.  If so, I’d love to hear your feedback.

Please feel free to post your question and feed back in the comment box below this post.

All the best,

Phillip Brooks

Phillip Brooks is the Digital Content Strategist for Stream Companies

SEO