Youtube with no doubt is the second most popular search engines in the world. Every minute more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube and research has shown that consumers love to spend more than 6 billion hours a month on Youtube watching videos. As users are found more interested in watching videos, be it entertainment related or commercial related, Youtube marketing has become the most powerful and effective means to drive traffic, bring more engagement and leads to your website. If you want to maximise your business exposure, then, focusing on video marketing would be a great thing started with.

How do you start Youtube Marketing?

Youtube marketing is definitely not a piece of cake. It needs a proper strategy and planning with proper execution. You need to optimise your Youtube channel first and perform video SEO like you do for your website. You will find it quite similar to optimising your website. So, you can make this a lot easier and once you get it done right, the benefits are all yours.

Are you worried how to do that?

We are here with a compiled list of effective ways to perform Youtube marketing and get more traffic to your videos, and yes, to your site too. Now, let’s move on to discover tips and tricks to optimise your Youtube channel and make your Youtube marketing more effective.

Create an engaging Video

Creating a video and uploading it to your Youtube channel just does not end your work. What is the use of uploading a video, if you don’t have views and user engagement? So, video content is the most important thing that you need to take care of. Research thoroughly what type of videos is getting proper online exposure and try to make one. Your video content should be helpful, valuable and user-engaging that fulfils all your audience’s needs.

How-to’s content is found more effective, so use content that consists how-to’s. Keep up-to-date to the news, latest trend and frequently asked questions, you can utilise even the little information and make it to a compelling video.

Find the Right Video Keyword

Keyword research is the most important factor in both website SEO and video SEO. If you have right video keyword and then you will have a place in SERP. A video keyword is the keywords that show Youtube results on the first page of Google. Keywords such as how-to keywords, funny videos, tutorials, reviews, and interviews are found to be used by Google to use video results.

video keyword

Research keywords that are popular in your business niche.  Then check, whether the keywords you researched have Youtube search results as shown above. You can also use Adwords Keyword Planner tool to research keywords with high monthly search rate.

Video Filename

Though it might not sound too important task to be taken care of, but, it surely is worth to give a shot. Once you are done with your video and keyword research, give your video filename a keyword optimised name. For example, if your video is about baking a cake and your target keyword is bake

Meta-Data (Title, Description, and Keyword)

Like you update meta-tags for your website while performing onsite SEO of your website, you also need to work on Metadata of your Youtube video: title, description and keyword tag. Optimising your Metadata helps Youtube to index your video content.

  • Title

Make your video title as catchy as you can. An optimised title with a keyword in it surely helps it to stand out and easily visible to Google bots. Your title should be at least 5 words length and include your target keyword at the beginning as it is the best place to put your keyword. For example, if your target keywords if “Bake pine cake” then, your title can be something like this “Bake pine cake in 5 mins”.

  • Description

Google and Youtube rely on your text description to determine your video’s content as they can’t listen to videos. So, it is the most important factor to ranking and you should take care of it in a wise and smart way. Utilise your target keywords in your video description so that it will help you to rank higher in SERP. Your description should be at least 250 words with your keywords included at least 3 times. To maximise CTR to your site, put your website link at the top of the video.

  • Keyword Tag

Although tags are not so important than title and description, it can still be a help. Research secondary keywords for your videos and include those keywords with your target keywords. These tags can help you with the ranking and also help you to appear in the sidebar as a related video when someone watches a video with a similar tag as your video.

Thumbnails

Your video thumbnail plays a vital role in attracting viewers and compels them to click through to watch you video. Creating a high quality, custom thumbnails that accurately relate your video content can actually work as your promotion poster. Use bright, high contrast visually compelling images that accurately represent your content. It should be clear in focus and be hi-resolution with 640px x 360px min., 16:9 aspect ratios.

Transcription

Are you aware that Youtube automatically transcribes your video? And how good is it? Well, it is true that Youtube automatically transcribes your video but the thing is, it is not good at it. The transcription task done by youtube is horrible. So, transcribing your video yourself with the keywords in it is the best thing to do.

You must be thinking why you should transcribe your video. Well, the thing is Youtube indexes your video’s transcriptions and uses it to rank some of the keywords in your video transcription. And you know very well, how important is to rank the keywords.

Channel Authority

Channel Authority is important because Google uses your Youtube channel authority ass basis for your video rankings. You can easily search a Youtube channel. All you need to do is add the word “channel” at the end of your keywords or search query. Then you will see the channel pop out if there is an existing channel for your typed query.

Optimise Your Youtube Channel Page

Optimise your Youtube channel page in such a way that looks appealing to your viewers’ eyes. Take care of all features such as logos, cover images and organisational tools. Introduce yourself to your audiences well through the about us section. Fill up all the information about you and what your videos really are about. Doing so, your viewer gets some ideas about you and how genuine you are.

Video Sitemap and Schema

Once you have added a video to your website, don’t forget to create and submit an XML video sitemap. Submitting an XML video sitemap will help search engines to find your video easily and index your videos. Adding a video sitemap alerts search engines of any new or updated videos faster. There are numbers of online sitemap generator tools which are easier to use.

The schema provides additional information to search engine spiders and make them easier for indexing your video. The schema is simple HTML markups which can be easily added to most of the websites. Like another schema, a video schema includes the name, description, thumbnail URL properties, embed URL, the location of the video file, etc.

Add Call-to-Actions

If you want people to do something or take some action after watching your video, then you should think of adding a better call-to-actions. A Call-to-Action can be anything, like subscribe now, call now, email us, contact us, etc. It has been proved to be effective in generating leads and conversions.

You can add call-to-actions using annotations in Youtube. If you are a local business and want to generate leads, then you can also think of adding your phone number or your website link in your description section of your video. Another effective way to get calls directly from Google search is adding your business phone number in the title of your video after your target keyword.

Embed Youtube Videos in Your Website

Think about embedding your Youtube videos in your website as it is worth to do so for better ranking of a video on Google or Youtube. Create a rich media content landing page which contains images and content that supports your video.

The next method you can use is, adding Youtube videos in your blog posts. Whenever you write a blog post or guest post, try to find the suitable place where you can embed your video. Make sure that the video is related to your blog post. Embedded Youtube videos on your website can help you to improve Youtube SERP rank.

Social Media Promotion

The main objective of creating any video is getting more views and leads for your business. Promote your video as much as possible in all those social media platforms where your targeted clients are. You can find social share buttons on Youtube from where you can easily share your video. It is very simple and easy-to-use. Youtube tracks these social shares as a user engagement factor. Another strong authority factor for Youtube is getting more user comments and responses. It gives a huge relevance and authority signal to Youtube. So, make sure to give the proper response to the comments you get.

Wrapping Up,

Youtube marketing and optimisation is a vast topic and it includes too many points to cover. There are plenty of other tips available for better Youtube marketing to boost your website ranking. However, in this article, I have tried to keep the points as brief as possible. You can easily kick off your Youtube marketing with the above-mentioned tips.

IF you have any interesting Youtube marketing stories or tips, please share with us in the comment below.