YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine in the world. It’s not simply a video platform that used to be great for travel bloggers. Today you can see all kinds of businesses on YouTube.
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However, it’s not impossible to think you searched for videos on them. YouTube is a company owned and operated by Google. It has Google’s algorithm baked inside it to make it easy for you to discover what you’re looking for.
Video presents a big opportunity for you to reach new people. Several studies breathlessly say video is better than text or images. It’s a good way to build your brand, welcome new visitors, and bring attention to your company.
The YouTube Search Algorithm
The algorithm in essence is a feedback loop that builds itself by tailoring according to each viewer’s past viewed content.
Just like your website where you optimize your content, you need to optimize videos on your YouTube channel for better outcomes like its reach, visibility, and new followers gained. Content has similarities be it textual or video based. If you want videos to rank the simple ask is to keep people watching. Start on the right foot with ranking signals.
- Subscribers
- Video Comments
- Impressions
- Thumbs up or down
- Watch times
Video prioritizes all of these to serve the best content to its users.
YouTube Keyword Research
Use keyword research to fixate on keywords people are looking for. Use keyword research to understand what people in your niche are looking for. Create new playlists based on these topics. If you don’t have loads of content on your channel, YouTube allows you to create playlists with the help of other videos to drive visitors to your own channel.
You can use Google Trends, UberSuggest, or other free tools to begin your keyword research.
YouTube’s algorithms are designed to weed out spam. When you publish a video it must have all essential SEO work done. Don’t simply upload it first with the thought of optimizing it later. It doesn’t work that way. In that space, you will lose ground and it will become harder to cover that later.
Use keywords in your header, video descriptions, and inside tags.
It’s possible for anyone to fix poor optimization later on. You can revise tags, and fix thumbnails, titles, or descriptions but the viewership you will gain in the first 48 hours would have been lost by that time.
So here’s the TL;DR
- Title – Use five words with the keyword included
- Thumbnail – should be attractive, and easy to understand
- Description – 250+ words or longer that have multiple instances of the keyword
- Transcript – Include a time-stamped transcript of the video
- Tags – Target keyword with its variations
- Links – Links to Instagram or other channels you’re active on
- CTA – One-click options to subscribe to your channel
This is a list of must-have elements that you must have ready before your upload your video to Your YouTube channel.
Audience Retention
Audience retention is another biggie. You must be able to keep your audience engaged with your content. Videos that have longer view rates generally rank higher on YouTube due to the algorithm favoring the engagement it gets. One of the coolest ways to keep retention high is by keeping true to the topic of the video from the start to the finish. If you can keep this you can direct them to a CTA on another page or site. This will help you get leads from videos.
Video Engagement
Just like how important it’s for you to retain your audience, similarly engaging your audience is of equal importance. Video engagement can play a big role in how well your videos rank. Videos are great as lead magnets, as courses, and more for more things. It includes thumbs up and down, comments, shares, and subscribers you get. The more engagement your video has the higher will its ranking go.
To improve rankings you can encourage people watching the video to share, subscribe, comment on the video, and post about it on different channels.
Secrets of a truly stellar video
Most people think of video as intimidating. But videos don’t generally need a high-octane production team behind them. Most people have good cameras on their phones. So don’t make video marketing about impossible things you can’t do. You can post videos on social media, your site, email campaigns, and more such places.
Think about what makes your business special. Demonstrate that in your video and let your personality shine.
There are dozens of services that can edit videos for you, including an online video editor. Today Mac and Windows PCs come with software that helps you edit your videos for free.