How To Optimize YouTube Videos

Per a list of 2017 YouTube statistics, nearly 5 billion videos are viewed each day and more than 3.2 billion hours are consumed watching every month.

The demand for videos is larger than ever. If you haven’t yet started a vlog or created some form of video strategy, it’s time to hop on the wagon.

YouTube currently has more than a third of the world’s internet users visiting the site.

In this blog post, we are going to show you how to optimize YouTube videos.

With the attention span of people diminishing when it comes to online content, it’s important that you create a piece of content that is going to capture their attention quickly and hang onto it.

One of the best ways to do this is to create a compelling, informative, and/or entertaining video that adds some kind of value to the consumer.

Before we can even think about best practices when it comes to optimizing your video, we first have to understand that the video itself needs to be great. This means that you need to have a solid plan for your video. Here are a few things to consider when planning:

– What is the topic of the video?

– What is the purpose of it/What do you want the user to take away from the video?

– Do you have the necessary equipment to create a clear, professional video?

– What can you do to capture the viewer’s attention within the first 10 seconds?

Once you have answered these questions, created the video and uploaded it, you can now start to optimize.

Here’s how you can jump ahead of the competition and optimize your YouTube videos for search engines.

Include your main keyword in the video Title and Description

If you are making YouTube videos for the purpose of growing your video marketing strategy, the chances are that you already have a digital marketing plan in place. You should have a list of main keywords and phrases that you are targetting.

The first step in optimizing your video should be to include the main keyword you want to target in the video’s Title and Description. For example, if someone is searching YouTube (or even Google) wanting to know how they can find a Financial Advisor, they may type something like how to find a financial advisor into the search engine:

The top videos that appear are the ones that include the keywords financial advisor and how you can find one. So, if you wanted to target people who were looking for tips on how to find or choose a financial advisor, you may decide to optimize using a title and description similar to the ones here.

In your descripton, try to add a Call-To-Action that encourages people to perform an action, such as clicking through to your website or filling out a contact form.

Add tags (but not too many)

Next, you’ll want to add tags to the video to help YouTube identify what your video is about.

However, make sure that you don’t go overboard here. Keeping it clean and simple while including relevant and accurate tags a best practice. For example, using the Financial Advisor scenario, you may want to use your main keyword (financial advisor), city, brand, and industry as your tags. You don’t have to tag several variations of your keyword as YouTube’s algorithm is smart enough to pick up on what you are talking about.

Location, Category, and Visuals

Lastly, doing some further optimization that may not seem as big as the first two steps is still important for ranking.

After you choose a Title, fill out the Description and add Tags, click on the Advanced Settings tab. This is where you’ll be able to define a category for your video, add a location (important for local!), choose the language, enforce age restrictions, and more.

Once you’re finished and satisfied with how things are looking, it’s time to select a video thumbnail. YouTube will automatically select snapshots from your uploaded video for you to choose from. When selecting your thumbnail, try to choose a graphic that will make the searcher want to click through to your video to learn more.

Conclusion

Now that you have uploaded and know how to properly optimize YouTube videos for search, it’s time to monitor its performance! As the views start to add up, you can see what is and isn’t working and make necessary adjustments to boost performance.

Video marketing isn’t going anywhere and neither is one of the world’s largest search engines in YouTube. If you haven’t yet created a channel, it’s time to consider it.

If you want to have us review your website and give you a free 30-minute consultation where we show you how to generate more local customers from your website, click here.