I know you have a nice looking website, and you have done your on-page and off-page optimization. You are good to go, right? Maybe, but if optimizing your website is the only thing you are doing, you may want to think again.
All businesses are focused on ranking in Google, and for good reason. It is said that the search giant processes 63,000 searches per second. If we stretch that out, we are talking 5.5 billion searches per day, and more than 2 billion searches per year.
WHAT?
Bing averages roughly 873 million searches per day, and Yahoo 536 million queries per day. These numbers say it is not even close.
How about this. YouTube ranks second as a search engine. Check out some stats:
- 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute
- 1,300,000,000 use YouTube
- Around 5 billion videos are watched every day
- 30 million visit YouTube every day
Five billion videos are watched every day….Let that sink in for a moment. Man, it would be nice if we could get some exposure on YouTube.
Oh, wait!
We can create some videos and post on this influential media platform!
If you are a website owner and you are not visible on YouTube, you are missing out on potential customers.
And you know the best part? It does not cost an arm and a leg to get in on the action. Don’t get me wrong, it would really depend on the type of site you have, your average customer value, and a few other factors that will probably determine how much you spend on video creation, but even then it should be a reasonable amount.
Here is a quick video that I put together for a client. He just wanted a short, 30 second video.
Ok, now you have your video ready to go, but what now? I mean, with all of those videos on YouTube, how do you even get your video seen in the midst of all of the content out there?
Well, there are some steps that you can take to optimize that video. The first thing is to make sure you choose the right keywords. This is important because you want the video to show up in YouTube and in the Google search results. Not all keywords will return video results on Google. You can test this simply by typing in a search term, and if there aren’t any videos in the search results, those keywords will probably not work.
Choosing the best keywords
There is a keyword tool out there that can help with this research. Keywordtool.io is a site that will generate video keyword ideas. If you want the search volumes and CPC information, you will have to become a subscriber. You really do not need that right now. It will still give you the actual keyword terms, and that’s what we are interested in.
For an example, I did a search for “gray hair coloring” and these are the results I received:
I then searched for coloring mens gray hair in Google to see if there is a video on the first page. Ok, it looks like this is a video keyword.
Now that we have a keyword we can use. Well, actually we can do a long tail keyword to get more coverage. If you go back and look at the keyword results above, it looks like we can combine three of these terms to create the long tail.
- coloring gray hair at home
- coloring mens gray hair
- coloring gray natural hair
Coloring mens gray natural hair at home
Use this for the title of the original video file BEFORE you upload. This way, you should eventually rank for all three of the terms.
Once you upload the video, it should automatically place the filename as the title. You should then attach 300+ word description, so that Google and YouTube can figure out what the video is about. If the video has narration, you can transcribe and place that text in the description. Just be sure that your keywords are sprinkled throughout the description. You should also have the link to your main site toward the beginning.
Here is a snapshot from an upload from our sister site. The keywords are represented, The website link is at the top, and there are about 700 words explaining what the video is about.
Here is what the bottom of the description looks like:
I have all of my links displayed, and also links to some of my other videos.
Now, here is a nice trick for you: We are going to set up a traffic leak for this video. Those five video links at the bottom are channels that are related to R&B music, more specifically Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, and they have thousands of views. The reason I put those there is because I want YouTube to know that these are related to my video. If you spend any time on YouTube, you know there are related videos on the right sidebar. I am helping YouTube by saying, Hey! I want my video in that section!
Here is a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis video. Look on the right, and you will see my video in the sidebar. Now I should get some traffic that is leaked from this Lecture video.
Cool, right?
So, as you can see, optimization is key. You have to do a little work to maximize your visibility, but if you do it correctly, you can get your video in front of potential customers. There are some opportunities out there to advertise your business, so you might as well take advantage of it.
Let me know if you have any questions about YouTube and your marketing efforts.
So…..One question – Is Your Media Kool?