You know search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are critical for your social media presence, but what about YouTube? A lot of people don’t think of YouTube as a social media platform, but it is—in fact, it’s regularly ranked as one of the top five platforms in the US. Searchmetrics reports that 65 percent of American Google searches lead to a video, which means the majority of your customers (or potential customers) are staring down videos when querying your keywords. YouTube videos can perform exceptionally well in search results, but are you giving them the SEO attention they need?
It all comes down to the video information and how you detail it. Remember that SEO isn’t reserved just for your website. It’s a big part in actually driving traffic to your website, and social media (including YouTube) can help. Also remember that Google owns YouTube, so nepotism comes into play. Whether Google admits it or not, it’s only natural that they’d favor YouTube over any other video platform. You have a few SEO options for YouTube: video description, full link URL, video title, and keyword tags.
The “Keys” to Success
The title of your video is the most obvious thing for Google to rank. Use this opportunity to maximize your keywords, long-tail keywords, and themes. Think from your audiences’ perspective and use something that they’d likely query. Utilize Google’s Keyword Tool if you need help. With YouTube, you can also include a certain number of characters as a description—never ignore this opportunity. Use keywords placed organically and make sure it reads naturally (not like keyword stuffing). Just like with meta tags, the first few words will pop up in search results and can reel people in.
There are also URL links to consider with YouTube, and this is where many people drop the ball. A good URL link increases discovery and makes it simple for people to find out more data. To ensure a link is active, it needs to have the http://. This ensures that you can link to your website from YouTube.
Tag! You’re It
Finally, don’t forget about adding tags to your video because this is prime time to keyword stuff to your heart’s desire. These tags are simply keywords that guide YouTube’s system so it can figure out the best results for queries. If someone is searching on YouTube for “fainting goat videos” and that’s exactly what you have, tag it. It can be a time consuming process if you have a lot of videos, but it’s well worth the effort. Otherwise, how is anyone going to find the best fainting goats on YouTube—yours!
Most importantly, remember that YouTube is only one of many social media platforms, albeit a very important one in the US. SEO needs to be utilized everywhere and anywhere your business has an online presence. If you can manage and take control of the content, you can make it work in your favor. Since more and more Americans are claiming they prefer videos and images over written content, shouldn’t your SEO follow that lead?