Now that people are starting to realize that YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine on the web, they are taking the right steps to optimizing their videos. However, while they are starting to capitalize on the basics, many YouTubers still fail to properly optimize their videos. This creates a huge opportunity for those knowledgeable enough to take advantage of YouTube SEO.
2012 SEO Tips for YouTube Videos
The 4 basics are your Title, Keywords, Tags and your video’s Description.
- The more advanced SEO tips are in the form of Video Responses, Building Link-Embeds, View Count & The Embedded Video Article.
1.) Choosing your Video’s Keywords
Pick 2 or 3 main keywords that you want your video to be associated with. These are the keywords that we’ll focus on to make your video appear higher in searches with. Choose your keywords wisely, as you want them to be a the perfect combination of relevance and least competition. You can do a test by searching your keywords in YouTube to see what kind of competition you are up against.
2.) Choosing your Video’s Title
Pick a title that both accurately describes your video and contains your keywords. By being a little creative, you can more effectively use the keywords in your title by including them more than once.
EXAMPLE : If my keywords are SEO and YouTube, then my title could be YouTube SEO – How to use SEO for YouTube Videos.
3.) Choosing your Video Tags
You are allowed 500 characters in your video tags. Start with using your main keywords, then use your keywords again in a few short sentences. Finally, use up the remaining characters to add relevant tags that attach you video to other related popular videos.
4.) What to put in Description for SEO
Use a detailed description using all of your tags and repeating your keywords. While you want load your description with all of your keywords and tags, make sure that you don’t get too carried away. You want your description to look smooth and accurately describe and sell your video do whoever is reading it in a search engine excerpt.
5.) Video Responses – BOTH ways
If you can find related videos that are getting a lot of views to attach to, this is a great way to raise your relevant ranking with YouTube and Google. This can be considered a little spammy so be careful not to do it too much.
Second is having related videos attached to your video. If you can find other YouTube video owners to partner up with, you could help each other out by creating responses to each other’s primary videos. Another way is to find YouTubers on Fiverr or in the YouTube Market Place that will make a personal video response to attach to your video.
6.) Your YouTube Video’s Views
The more views your YouTube video has, the higher it will rank in search engines. The rich get richer. Having lots of views on your video doesn’t only increase it’s ranking, but it also makes it more appealing to the people who are searching thus getting even more views. Think about it, if you were searching for “greatest homeruns in baseball” and 5 videos came up with a similar title and image, which one would you click on?
7.) Embedding Your Video for SEO
While a majority of the people actively involved in the YouTube community are aware of the above SEO tips, many still do not realize the importance of embedding their videos. Every time your YouTube video is embedded, you gain a back-link!
Every video that has gone viral since 2005 has done so by people re-posting and embedding it all over the web. Not only does this get the video lot of views, but it also creates tons of quality back-links sky-rocking its importance in YouTube & Google’s eyes. While having your video go viral is mostly do to luck, there are some things that you can control right now.
8.) Quality Video Embedding
While having your video embedded in as many places as possible is good, finding quality embeds is the secret to success. The best recipe for a quality video embed is what we like to call the “Embedded Video Article”. This is a content rich relative article with your video embedded directly into it.
Find quality sites that you can embed your video on and surround it with relevant content. The more relevant the site, the better. If you can control the content that is written about your video, then make sure you include all of the keywords and tags that you are going for.
While a lot of this stuff might be SEO common sense, you’d be surpised on what you see on YouTube. So many videos with no description, only like 2 tags and a terrible title.
good tips, I like the seo advice about surrounding your embedded youtube video with realative content in an article form.
Hi, This is Mr.Ray,
I run a video conferencing software business (www.peoplelink.in), and have lots of conferencing videos. I was planning to post it in video sharing site, before that I searched the net to get some quality tips, I found your site, it is really providing great content about how and perfectly we should upload a video in these sites.
I have changed my old plans now, and collecting all data following your tips, hope this will boost my videos and business.
Great Tips for YouTube SEO. Thanks for sharing this kind of stuff. youtube monetization is a pretty good way to earn some money from your videos so it’s good to learn a bit of seo to rank better too