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Posted on August 25, 2010 - by Kwame

How To: Tips for Youtube Video SEO

Online video marketing is one part of content marketing that needs to be taken seriously if you really want to effectively communicate your brand online. The best advice most experts don’t give about online video marketing is, “learn to use SEO techniques in your online video marketing campaigns”. Video is getting big and some businesses have been able to go viral with videos shared around the web, especially on Youtube. We’re going to look at how to achieve a similar fate using video SEO techniques.

Even though we will be focusing on Youtube, the process can be applied on other popular video sharing sites.

Now, let’s begin.

The Best Video SEO Advice Ever : 

When you start uploading a video on Youtube, you’ll see something like this:

 

So basically, you’ll type in your title, in the “Title” column, your description in your “Description” column and your tags in your “Tags” column. These are the three most important areas as far as Youtube SEO is concerned.

When a user searches for a video, results are shown with the search’s keywords bolded in the “Title” and “Description” columns of the results. For example, in the screen capture image below, I performed a search using “flat abs” as my key phrase:

You can see that the search’s term (or keywords) was bolded in the “Title” and “Description” columns of the search. Youtube’s search system delivers results based on the relevancy of the titles and descriptions given to videos, in regard to the keywords or phrases used in the search. This is why it is very important to optimize these areas when uploading your videos.

Your titles, descriptions and tags should contain keywords that are both relevant to your content and also relevant for getting viewers via Youtube’s video search system. This will ensure that you reach lots of viewers to watch your videos whiles staying on topic. It’s a tricky thing to achieve. Don’t twist your titles or descriptions just so you could get lots of views for your videos whiles misleading people with a video that is not directly related to your title and description.

If you find this technique daunting, then the best thing for you to do is to do your keyword research. This will help you find the best keywords relevant to your niche, for your video marketing.

How to find the Best Keywords for your Video:

Let’s make some assumptions here. Let’s assume we’re going to promote a video about getting flat abs and see how we’ll go about doing the research for it. With that in mind, let’s begin.

1. We’ll start by listing keywords that relate to getting flat abs in a text editor. So we’ll have keywords like: flat abs, abs workout, six pack abs, sexy abs, abs fitness, workout abs … etc.

2. Open a tab or new window in your browser and go to Youtube.com

3. Open another tab and go to Youtube’s Ads Keywords Tool

4. Select one keyword or phrase (in our case, let’s start with “flat abs”), then, copy and paste it into the Youtube.com search bar and click on search like so:

5. Next, go to the tab where you opened the Ad Keywords Tool. You can change your country and language settings for more insight and if only you want to target a particular country or language. By default, the country is set to “United States”. Put in your keyword, and then click “Get keyword ideas”. This snapshot will help you understand further:

6. Since I didn’t change any of the settings, this is what I got after clicking on “Get keyword ideas”:

7. From the results, you can see that the search term (or keyword/phrase) is searched 6,200 times a month on average. Mind you, this is the search volume for searchers living in the United States.  6,200 is not a huge number but with the right optimization, you can reap great results from this. Now go to your search results from your search on Youtube.com

8. Analyze the competition by looking at the number of results returned (in the top right corner) for the search term and the number of video sharers using the search phrase in their titles and descriptions. Use this snapshot as your guide:

9. Our results show that there is less competition for the search term as only 5,240 results were generated. Some search terms return millions of results so 5,240 is pretty a good sign that there’s a chance to get many viewers. In the result above, we can see that all the videos have been viewed a great number of times in a short period. Also, we can see that not all the results have the exact search term, “flat abs” in their description and title. An example is the second video result which has just the keyword “flat” in its title and description. Considering all the factors mentioned, “flat abs” is a good keyword.

10.  Let’s move on to our next keyword, “abs workout”. A search for the term on the keyword tool gave the following results:

11.  The results show that 156,700 people in the United States alone search for “abs workout” videos every month. Now if we go to Youtube.com and search for “abs workout”, we will get this result:

12.  Notice the number of times each video has been viewed. Video number one has been viewed over 5 million times over 2 years. The other results are equally as massive. Here’s a snapshot of the competition for this search term:

13. The snapshot shows us that there are 303,000 videos competing for the search term “abs workout”. This is also good (but not great) considering that the term is searched 156,700 times every month in the US alone.

If you want to reduce the competition, and reach more viewers, combine keywords.

The Art of Combining Keywords in Your Video’s Title & Description:

Combining keywords in your titles and descriptions will go a long way to help you get more viewers for your videos. That’s just about how the first video result in our “abs workout” search got over 5 million views in two (2) years. Let’s look at it again and start decoding:

Glancing at the title and description, one will notice that the uploader, “passion4profession” has packed in some keyword combinations. Keywords used in this video’s title and description are: “abs” (US monthly search volume: 613,000. Competition: 422,000 videos), “fitness” (US monthly search volume: 246,800. Competition: 777,000 videos) and “workout” (US monthly search volume: 1,652,800.Competition: 439,000 videos).

Taking a further look at it, examples of keywords that will qualify for search phrase combinations are:

“abs fitness” (US monthly search volume: ? (not available). Competition: 263,000 videos) “six pack” (US monthly search volume: 240,000. Competition: 289,000 videos), “six pack abs” (US monthly search volume: 27,800. Competition:93,100 videos), “abs workout”(US monthly search volume: 156,700. Competition: 303,000 videos).

Now go to Youtube.com and let’s do a little more analysis. You’ll see that when we enter the keyword, “abs”, “passion4profession”’s video shows comes up as the third (3^rd) result.

Also, when we search for “fitness”, the video comes up as the first video result.

Search for the other keywords and you’ll see that the video shows up in the first 20 results. Most of the time, it is ranked number 1.

Having a combination of keywords like that helps spread the competition across different high volume search terms.

Final Thoughts:

• Skim through the suggested keywords to find other words that you forgot to add to your keywords list. You can also use the related search suggestions found right below the search results after you perform a search. Most of these suggestions will do good for your video campaign. 

• Apart from keyword combinations, keyword optimization also works best when you use basic copywriting techniques. This is because your titles and descriptions are just like classified ads and they should sound or look interesting to attract people to view its content.

• Share your website link in your video. Even better, divide the video into two parts: part 1 and 2. Then share part one on Youtube and share the link to part two at the end of your video. This will get people to check out your website, thereby increasing traffic.

• Ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel. This will ensure that you have people ready to view your new videos as you post them.

Conclusion:

Optimizing your video’s titles and descriptions = getting more viewers= getting more subscribers to your Youtube Channel= getting more targeted traffic.  I recommend you start experimenting with your own videos.

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