Everybody knows what the world’s biggest search engine is: Google. But do you know what the second biggest search engine is? It’s not Yahoo, and it’s not Bing. It’s actually another one of Google’s platforms – YouTube.
Over 1 billion people use YouTube, viewing an average of 4 billion views per day. That is a huge market and a huge opportunity for advertisers and brands.
If you already have a branded YouTube channel, congratulations – that is the first step. But you may be wondering, how do I get more people to see my YouTube channel?
Optimising a YouTube channel or YouTube video is similar to optimising a website or webpage. It’s all about incorporating the right keywords in the right places, and ensuring that Google views your channel as a source of authority for your target audience.
The first step for optimising a YouTube channel is to perform keyword research. You can get valuable keyword data using the Display Planner in AdWords.
Within your AdWords account, simply navigate to the Display Planner under the “Tools” tab and click on Search for new targeting ideas using a phrase, website, or category. From here, you can enter keywords, categories, and sites that are of interest to your target audience in order to generate a list of related keywords.
When determining which keywords to optimise for, look for ones that have a relatively high number of impressions but that aren’t too competitive. You can check how competitive the keywords are by typing them into YouTube and looking at the results that show up. If you’re seeing videos and channels with a lot of views and followers, you may want to target a less competitive keyword.
Once you’ve determined your target keywords, you need to incorporate those keywords into four key areas of your video: the title, the description, the tags, and the transcription file.
Titles and tags are especially important for YouTube optimisation. Titles should be enticing and should contain your targeted keyword near the beginning. For example, for this video we are targeting the keyword “YouTube SEO” so we’ve made sure to include it in the video title. The tags you enter should be related to the content of your video. In this case we’ve chosen tags like “SEO,” “digital marketing,” and “video optimisation.”
For the description, it is likewise important to include your keyword near the beginning and to use related keywords throughout the body text. Another best practice is to include a link to your website so you can easily convert your YouTube channel traffic into web traffic.
Submitting a transcription file with your video is an easy optimisation tactic that many people don’t take advantage of. When uploading a new video, click on the Subtitles and CC button. Choose your video’s language and select an option to either upload a transcription file or manually transcribe and set timings. After you’ve reviewed the transcription for accuracy, hit Publish and voila – you have a transcription file that contains all the spoken words in your video.
Perhaps the most important way to optimise your YouTube channel is to ensure that you are producing quality, shareable content. Once you’ve acquired a large following, Google will view your YouTube channel as an authority and it will be easier to get any new videos you add to rank.
So keep putting out high-quality videos with optimised titles, tags, descriptions, and transcription files – and before you know it your YouTube traffic will begin to soar.
If you enjoyed this video, you can check out SEO Company Melbourne for more quality videos, blogs and tips and tricks to help you with all things SEO.
