June 11, 2013 E3

SEO Basics for YouTube Videos

People are often surprised to learn that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. We typically think of it as a place to watch cats doing adorable things or people doing incredibly stupid things, but a majority of users are searching this video site for useful information. There is an entire segment of internet users who prefer to consume information through video rather than through text. For that reason, the videos you post should be optimized for search.

In the early days of the site, SEO basics for YouTube were pretty easy to learn. All you had to do was post a video with your keywords in the title and you’d achieve instant rankings. The world isn’t quite so simple anymore. There are tens of thousands of videos being uploaded to YouTube every hour, and knowing how to stand out and get ranked there is just as important as knowing how to stand out and get ranked in Google.

Relevant File Name, Title, and Tags

Having a descriptive title and file name isn’t going to skyrocket you to number one, but these elements are still important SEO basics for YouTube. It is important that you take the time to consider the name of your file, the title of your video and the tags you use.

YouTube doesn’t know what your video is about. The algorithm can’t “watch” your video and determine where it should rank. Instead, it relies on textual data. So, it is important that your file name is descriptive. If you are promoting your health food products, “How to Make Low Calorie French Toast” should be the name of your file. Not MOV05763.AV.

Similarly, the title of your video should clearly state what the video is about. “Susan Makes French Toast” is ok, but if you are trying to target dieters or healthy eaters, they may avoid that video. “How to Make Low Calorie French Toast” is a much better title.

You also need to pay attention to your tags. Do a couple of searches for videos that rank well for your target keywords. You might search “How to make low calorie French toast,” “healthy French toast,” or “low fat French toast recipes.” Pull up the videos that rank well and see what tags they are using, then tag your own video similarly.

Create Quality and Engaging Videos

Here’s a quick tip that most experts won’t tell you. It doesn’t matter how great your SEO skills are, if you are producing boring, irrelevant, or low-quality video, nobody is going to watch and it will do nothing for your business. In order to make your videos work for you, you must spend the extra time (and yes, money) to create videos that people actually want to watch.

That may seem obvious, but there’s a bit more to it. YouTube tracks how long people watch your video. If most users click out of your content after 10 seconds, your rankings will drop. If all users watch the video to the end, YouTube will see your content as extremely relevant to the search queries and keywords that directed users to your video.

Make Use of Closed Captioning and Transcripts

Including a video transcript is an important part of optimizing video for your website. But you can utilize those transcripts on YouTube, as well. All of the extra words on your video page help YouTube determine what your video is about and how relevant it is to searchers.

You can use your transcript to create closed captioning, as well. Not only does this help you expand your audience, but it gives YouTube even more text to crawl to help determine relevancy.

Post HD Videos

Posting HD videos is not just important for quality, but HD videos outrank standard definition videos across the board.  It stands to reason that YouTube would make the assumption that a video filmed in HD is of higher all-around quality and includes better content than videos filmed in SD.

Some YouTube users believe that HD videos are bad because they take up more storage space or use too much bandwidth. YouTube isn’t so worried about space. Time limits placed on videos are to limit the uploading of copyrighted materials, not as a means of controlling bandwidth.

What are some techniques you have used to help your videos rank well? Have you had success with these SEO basics for YouTube? Tell us below.

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