Your Facebook feed is flooded with videos because your friends find these videos engaging and entertaining. Most of the Facebook videos are copied or shared from popular YouTube videos.
YouTube is not only a popular entertainment site but there are millions of educational, how-to and business videos available on this site. It is used by marketers and businesses to promote services and products and it is the second largest search engine in the world. Guess who the largest search engine in the world is? Yup, you guessed it, it’s Google! So Google is the largest and they own YouTube which is the 2nd largest. How did it happen you may ask, Google puts YouTube on top of Google and that is how they became #2!
Why do you think they would do this? They already own the majority of the online search space. The reason why is Youtube is video and video competes with television. Television is the #1 advertising spend in the world. #2 is the internet which in the last few years has surpassed radio.
It’s proven that blog posts with video get more shares and in addition videos increase audience engagement. This is why content marketers are complementing blog posts with videos. There are many business advertisement videos which have gone viral and are getting thousands of views.
Now you are wondering, why are your videos not getting views. Second and just as important is the question of how can you increase your views? Whatever your goal is, at the end of this post you will be ready to upload your YouTube videos like a pro.
Just like a blog post, a video also needs to be optimized for search engines. Here is your check-list to optimize your video for search engines.
1 – Titles are Gateway to Your Videos
Spice up your titles with adjectives without misleading your audience. Make it catchy and to the point | Example – Why YouTube Video Marketing Is Effective and Powerful.
Videos are getting shared on social media. It is a very noisy place. That’s the reason why titles have to be tempting to make anyone click on videos.
Start video titles with keywords and keep it short and interesting This increases click through rate (CTR). For example – YouTube Marketing Guide: How to Market Your YouTube Videos.
Title video files properly – “How_To_Title_Video” not “Video_001”.
2 – Add Video Description and Tags
Search engines don’t understand video content and primarily depends on the text. Video description helps search engine to recognize video content. Many people write two to three lines in description which doesn’t add any value to videos.
Tag your videos with targeted keywords and add description to your videos.
3 – Upload Transcripts
Transcriptions add text and keywords to crawl by search engines. It adds CC to your videos which adds a plus point to your videos and differentiates it from others.
Videos with transcripts get more views and most of the popular video marketers always upload transcripts to their videos.
4 – Make It Worthy With Quality and Engagement
YouTube analyses audience retention, abandon rate and many other things. Triggers like subscription and like are strong single of quality content and audience engagement.
Explore YouTube Analytics to get insights on your audience. Analyze your most viewed videos, analyze when people stop watching your videos and why a video is best/worse.
YouTube ranks videos and channels which ones engage their audience. Always produce/create quality videos which increases your retention rate and quality score.
5 – Ask Your Audience to Watch Previous Videos or Subscribe
Many YouTube followers believe annotations help them get more views and assist in the process of getting videos ranked. Always add Call-to-Action and annotations to your videos.
Ask your audience to watch more videos, share your videos and subscribe. These are strong signals which increase your channel and video score.
Bonus – 6 – Keep Your Audience in Mind (Make Videos for Humans Not Search Engines)
Stick to One Niche
Create videos for a niche and build a community of targeted subscribers. Serve to one niche and audience so they subscribe to your channel and watch your videos whenever you upload new ones.
Make Your Thumbnail Appealing
An image is worth a thousand words. An attractive thumbnail increases your CTR and that’s why it’s important to upload custom thumbnail. You can add your company logo or your image for business branding.
Name your image file appropriately – “How_To_Create_Attractive_Thumbnail_Image” rather than image0833. Google image search indexes YouTube thumbnails.
Your videos need a SEO boost to get spread across the internet. Jot down this short list so you always post your YouTube videos like a pro.
These simple tweaks can make a huge difference in video views, likes and SEO. Video Titles, Description, Tags and Thumbnails increase video value.
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