Youtube Best Practices

As most of us already know, YouTube is becoming a big player in the world of online marketing. It is a platform that all of us use, or should be using, to reach not only our current customers but all the potential customers who are out there. But the question is, how do we make sure that we are optimising the videos we have on YouTube and embedded on our site so that they are easily found by our audience. Well the answer is simple… Follow our YouTube best practices!

YouTube Algorithm

The first thing to bear in mind is the YouTube algorithm. YouTube uses a number of factors to determine the ranking of your video in the serps. Some of these include:

– How long people view the video on average.
– How many overall views the video has had.
– How many times the video has been embedded on another persons website.
– How often the video is added to playlists.
– How many comments and positive rankings the video has.
– The number of subscribers that you have to your channel.

So now  you are left thinking ‘okay, so I now know what factors affect my ranking, but how do I get into a position where these page possible?’ Well the answer is simple… Video optimisation. The way we do this is by fulfilling as many of the googlebot ‘rules’ as possible, without looking like we’re intentionally trying to manipulate the results. Here are the different categories we would advise taking into account when optimising your videos:

Use Of Keywords

This is a simple place to start. Even with regular content, the use of keywords is essential in helping your page rank better. You need to tell the bots what your content is all about, and the best way to do that is through the use of keywords. Make sure to pick a keyword that is relevant to the video, your industry and your product/service. However, it is also important to check on Google to see if videos are being ranked on the first page of the serps for your keyword. If not, it might be worth trying to find a relevant keyword that does this.

A Title That Will Draw Attention

A title that will grab attention is always useful. However, it is advised that within this title, you use your keyword. Having consistency of your keyword throughout the page helps google to determine what your video is about, therefore the title can contribute as a pretty big indicator.

Tags

Back in the olden days of SEO, we would use meta keywords to help us rank better in the serps. Those days are gone, however not from YouTube. Tags are the equivalent of meta keywords for YouTube. It is important to not only include your keywords in this tags section, but to also consider what your customers/viewers will search for. Make sure to include these too, as another avenue to reach people.

Schema is Growing in Importance

Schema markup is very quickly becoming a major ranking factor for Google and therefore YouTube. You can use schema markup to identify specifics about your video. You can add things like transcripts, who created the video and even offers that exist within the video to give Google a better understanding of the content in the video.