In this post, I am going to take you through a few key hygiene & strategic steps that you shouldn’t ignore while building your 2020 YouTube Strategy.
It will help you build purely organic traffic!
Here are the 2 key themes which we will be further exploring in this article:
- Keyword Research & Implementation
- SEO Optimization
Keyword Research
With more than 400 hours of content being uploaded every hour! It is not only important but critical that your content is keyword-oriented.
A comprehensive Keyword Research is the first thing I get down to before releasing any of my client’s videos on YouTube.
YouTube Search Bar
This the most simple yet most powerful way to generate relevant keywords for your video. This simple strategy helped me to boost my client video traffic by 100X!
Step 1:
Generate a list of keyword ideas. A mix of short-tail & long-tail keywords. For example, if I provide educational video for kids I would try:
- Educational videos for kids
- Kids learning video
- Science videos for kids
& so on
Simply search for each keyword from the list of keyword ideas and save the top suggested keywords
Step 2:
To generate more popular keywords that can help you generate more views click on the top suggested keyword in YouTube Search bar.
Check out the top suggested videos and look for keywords in the relevant places like Video Title Tags & Video descriptions.
You are ready to roll! Go to your Google Ads account and add these Keywords to your Ad group!
Google Search
This is a mistake a lot of Digital Marketers make but don’t worry you won’t!
Simply relying on Youtube Keyword will help you target the YouTube traffic but you will be missing out on a large portion of Pie. Your videos can get upto 5x views if your keyword mix also includes Google based keywords.
The trick is to optimize your video around keywords for popular videos in Google Search.
Once you have completed your research take these keywords to Keyword Planner (Google Ads) and choose keywords that have the traffic of at least 1000 visitors.
Tip: Try to include long-tail keywords starting with “How to”, “Tutorial on”, “Videos On” etc.
Keyword Research Tools
There are many free Keyword Research tools specifically and a good keyword research tool is like a cherry on the cake!
I am listing two free ones which I often use:
TubeBuddy : TubeBuddy is a FREE browser extension that integrates directly into YouTube to help you run your channel with ease. https://www.tubebuddy.com/
VidIq : vidIQ is the tool that helps you learn how to get more views and subscribers and is the video creators platform. https://vidiq.com/
The Ultimate SEO Kit
Do you know which is the 2nd largest search engine after google? It’s Youtube!! YouTube has climbed to the top with over 4 billion videos being viewed every single day!
Today we’ll explore several ways to optimize your YouTube channel to ensure your videos are being discovered, watched and shared!
1. Video metadata should be optimized and well researched
So, what is metadata? Metadata is all the information you enter about a video to help clearly define the subject of a video.
Optimizing the metadata diligently helps to rank your videos on google as well as YouTube.
This includes: –
· Title your video correctly
· Add tags to videos
2. Make use of Annotations
There are six different types of annotations to help drive further interaction with your videos, each with a different purpose for optimizing your content.
In the annotations dashboard you can scroll throughout your video, selecting the timeframe where you wish to add an annotation from the add annotation drop down menu.
3. YouTube ranking factors
· Watch time: How long a user watches your video (aka how long they stay on the page as the video plays).
· Video length: Quality content often means longer content. Videos that surpass 10 minutes in length tend to rank higher because they provide topical relevancy and satisfy user intent.
· Number of subscribers: YouTube channels with more subscribers send stronger authority signals to search engines.
· User interaction: Sharing, commenting, liking, subscribing, linking.
4. Use channel keyword tags under Advanced Settings
These tags serve the same function on your site as they do on your YouTube channel, yet not every marketer places as much emphasis on meta tags as they could. Again, the purpose here is to allow YouTube and Google to index your site for search, so the more relevant, contextual information you can provide, the better.
5. Brand Your Page Consistently
Many features for branding your YouTube channel are free and should be taken full advantage of. Customizing the background of your channel, showcasing your other social networks and creating a custom header are just a few ways to brand your presence on YouTube.
6. Customize video thumbnails
A newer differentiator that is becoming more common on YouTube SERPs is creative video thumbnails. Just last year, thumbnails were static images, but they now automatically animate when cursors hover over them.
The best part is that YouTube makes it super convenient to optimize your channel with little web dev or SEO knowledge.
So head on over to your business YouTube channel and optimize it wisely
Link Building (Backlinks for your videos)
Building YouTube backlinks can help drive new traffic to your website. By creating a YouTube channel, inserting the appropriate URLs, creating great video content and then monitoring that backlink activity through Monitor Backlinks, your SEO can skyrocket and help your site rank higher than ever before.
You can build the backlinks yourself by promoting on social media, creating Web 2.0 accounts (Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr) contact the other webmasters, marketers and blogger to publish and share your video on their web properties, or a lot of times, if the video shares some great content or high value, the video start attracting backlinks itself from various bloggers, marketers, or social.
I have to say that backlinking tactic would be more useful for websites. But for the YouTube video it would be better to use social signals.