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6 Ways to Search Engine Optimize Your YouTube Videos

 In Social Media, YouTube

Does this sound like you? You got your email campaign cranking and now it’s time to integrate your latest product information video into your latest e-newsletter.

So you’ve created a channel on YouTube for your business. You uploaded your logo, added your bio, and customized the color scheme and it’s looking pretty slick. You’ve uploaded a few video clips, you’re excited to share them with the world  and you sit back and wait for the leads to start generating. A little time goes by, your clip views are in the single digits, and you ponder with a giant question mark over your head, “what am I doing wrong?”

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Like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube is another great community to tap into when you are looking to promote your business and attract new clients. Creating short, informative video clips is an excellent way to familiarize people with your business and the products and service you offer. The trick to making your YouTube channel an inbound marketing success is to properly optimizing your videos clips for the search engines so people will find them.

Here are six ways you can search engine optimize your YouTube videos today to get them a top ranking in Google. For each video you’ve uploaded, edit its setting in the following ways:

  • Title – Use descriptive keywords in your title: Your video clips will rank higher if you use descriptive keywords in the video’s title rather than filler words or quirky titles. For example: How to Search Engine Optimize Your YouTube Videos is better than Get More People To See Your Stuff.
  • Description – Write an informative description: Write 2-3 sentences describing your video clip and be sure to include relevant information such as names, topics, events, etc.
  • Description – Bonus tip! Link to your website: Funnel traffic from your YouTube video to your website or blog by including the URL, (including the http://), in the video’s description. Place it at the very beginning of the description so it’s always visible to the viewer even if the “more info” option is collapsed.
  • Tags – Add tags: Tags are the keywords people are searching for when they are trying to find a video clip.  Use up to ten keywords or keyword phrases to describe your video.
  • Annotations – Include video annotation: Video annotations allow you to add interactive commentary to your clips. Though this feature doesn’t necessarily help your video with regards to the search engines, your annotations can link to your other video clips, further increasing their views and allowing viewers to easily find your related clips.
  • Create keyword rich links – Link to your YouTube video clips from your website, blog, emails, and social media accounts by using keyword rich anchor text. This will give your clip relevance with the search engines.

So just like your email campaigns, creating a YouTube channel can be a valuable part of your marketing strategy if executed properly. The most important thing to remember when posting video clips to YouTube is to provide content that is valuable to your viewers. Get your content in front of the right people by putting these six tips to use today.

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