Updated January 11, 2023
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Recording Record SEO Performance
YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine. So, find out why you need to create content for it and how you can get it to their front page.
YouTube is incredibly popular. You probably use it to look at movie trailers or to check out that new Justin Beiber video. But did you know that YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine behind Google? In fact, Google has over a billion users and provides all sorts of information on almost every topic you can think of. So, are you creating video content that YouTube will rank?
From how to build your website, to cooking tips, to meditation ideas. With the increase in smartphone screen size, viewing video on the go is also becoming more and more popular so, if you’re not creating video content and posting it regularly on YouTube, then you’re missing out on a lot of potential searches.
Making The Front Page of YouTube
So, with 400 million hours of video uploaded per minute important to stand out. Follow these steps to find out how:
1. Video Quality: 720p will rank better than 320p, and 4k better than that. The better the quality the more likely it is that YouTube will promote your content. If you’re uploading your old home videos, don’t expect them to rank very well…
2. Fill in all the information: Make sure you’re giving YouTube all of the information it needs. If there’s a field to be filled in, fill it in! Title, title tags, thumbnails, links, description; make sure you get data in each one. Also, don’t be tempted to keyword stuff either.
3. Take time to find the right keywords: As with anything SEO related the key is keywords. Research them like you would for PPC or SEO, don’t just add them as an afterthought. Getting the right keyword will make sure you get good views.
4. Get viewers engaged: Encourage it with competitions and interactive content. Ask people to respond in the comments, and engage with them there. Create Q and A videos addressing viewer questions. Anything that makes things more interactive.
5. Add a video transcript: Much like adding Alt text to a photo, adding a transcript to a video will help search engines read your content and understand it, giving it context that may be missed when you’re adding keywords or filling in data fields.
6. Promote it: Creating the video and posting it on YouTube isn’t enough. Make sure you’re promoting it on other social networks and linking to it from your blog. After taking the time to make the video, give it as much attention as you can.
7. Link your YouTube account to your GA: If you’re not doing this then not only might you miss referral traffic, but you’ll also be losing valuable data about the people who have viewed your videos. The biggest problem with online marketing isn’t finding information about your customers, but organizing it. So try and make your life as easy as possible by joining systems together.
8. Create content consistently: Last but not least. Consistency. Just like creating a blog or updating your website, try to regularly upload content to YouTube. If you do this YouTube is more likely to promote your channel, which will turn into more views and more engagement, which will make you want to create more videos for YouTube. And the cycle goes on…
Photo credit – Top: Mark Jensen
Photo credit – Bottom: Joe the Goat Farmer
Content Optimization Checklist