Are you planning to create a YouTube SEO strategy for your business? Firms can easily use the platform for reaching audiences with targeted advertising. Statista’s data suggests that YouTube’s 2.1 billion users worldwide watched a total of one billion hours of video daily in 2020.
YouTube is the world’s second most preferred search engine. People search for recipes, music, interviews, podcasts, TV shows, and many other things on the platform. Product reviews and description videos are in great demand.
Here’s everything that you should know before developing your YouTube optimization strategy:
- Understanding YouTube ranking algorithm
Just like Google search, YouTube also has a complex ranking algorithm. It analyzes various aspects of the video and ranks the same in search results.
YouTube has never disclosed how ranking algorithms work. However, there are some basic guidelines.
What experts know so far:
- Videos are recommended based on the user-relevance
- The meta description and video description is analyzed to check if it matches user interest
- The number of videos watched by the visitor on your channel
- User’s watch history
- The overall number of channel subscribers
- The number of channel subscribers who watch videos as soon as they are published on the channel
- Crucial factors to focus in YouTube business channel strategy
Your team should be able to produce engaging, high-quality content to ensure video SEO works. If you don’t have an in-house team, let Youtube SEO services firm develop a strategy for you.
Besides the creative team, you must have a keen understanding of what your target audience wants. Don’t spend all your fortune on a single video because the channel needs a load of binge-worthy content.
- The ideal length for the video
Your video should be able to enlighten and engage your visitors. They should not lose attention throughout the video. Thus, YouTube channel optimization experts like us suggest the duration needs to be a minimum of 2 minutes 54 seconds and a maximum of ten minutes.
- Thumbnail
Thumbnail is one of the crucial elements of YouTube strategy. It should convey a message about the video content. Viewers often open the video if the thumbnail and title are attractive enough. No wonder the eye is a powerful motivator. You can select a frame from your video as a thumbnail or upload one created by your designer.
- Video format
YouTube supports multiple video formats for uploading. However, MPEG-4 with a resolution of 640 x 480 (4:3 SD) or 1280 x 720 (16:9 HD) can work perfectly.
Videos uploaded in MPEG-4 appear crisp and clear on multiple devices. If you choose other formats, the video might take time to load on devices with slow internet. It can hurt your video SEO initiatives.
- Create videos that answer questions
As a business, you would certainly want to create content around customer interests. You can uncover topics with keyword research tools. Use primary phrases in the title and video. The content should answer questions your target audiences ask on social media, forums, and question-answer websites.
- Use YouTube channel analytics for monitoring progress
Click on YouTube studio, then choose Analytics on the dashboard. The page shows views, overview, reach, engagement, audience, and other data.
All those charts and numbers can confuse you further. The stats that truly matter are just a few.
Yes, you guessed it right; the total views are the primary indicator for the video performance.
Total views indicate plays on YouTube, social platforms, and websites where the video is embedded.
The total watch time is another critical parameter. It indicates the amount of time your audience has spent watching each video. YouTube algorithms give priority to watch time instead of views.
The platform highlights top videos by watch time and shows the average view duration for all the videos on the channel. Video comments and likes also have an impact on the rankings that the video gets in YouTube results.
- Consider adding links with YouTube videos
You wish to drive traffic from your videos to your website. There are many ways to add clickable links to your video content.
The first and the most appreciated option is adding links in the video description.
The second most preferred option is using a video card. You can specify the time for the pop-up card to appear. There’s an option to add links, playlists, related videos, etc.
The end screen card is another similar option. But as the name suggests, the card appears at the end of the video.
- A quick look at critical factors in YouTube optimization
A superb strategy is crucial to ensure your YouTube channel achieves success within a specific time frame.
It will help if you work on the following factors for ensuring your videos get noticed:
- Choose keywords that best identify with your videos
- Create a catchy video title after watching it at least twice
- Choose and add relevant tags to the video
- Write a thoughtful and crisp description, and ensure it contains primary keywords
- Before uploading the video, choose a descriptive file name for the video
- Captions and transcriptions can prove an added advantage
- The video’s length should be between two to ten minutes
- Promote the channel and videos with Google ads
The endnote:
Google search results consist of books, news, images, videos, blogs, articles, press releases, and other content formats. The search engine gives equal significance to text-only pages and videos. Thus, YouTube video content often appears in search results.
Are you curious to know more ins and outs of YouTube? Team PeddleWeb is here to assist you. We have helped several businesses with a YouTube SEO strategy that fits unique business needs. Let’s increase leads and overall bottom-line with traffic from YouTube.
