5 Ways to Optimize Youtube Videos

If you are not yet implementing videos in your online marketing, what are you waiting for?

Online videos can be a great way of getting your message out, as well as driving traffic to your site.  With over 2.5 Billion videos being viewed per month on Youtube, it’s very likely that your target audience is spending time on the  site searching for information you are providing.

However, if nobody is watching your video except your Mom, Dad and your dog Buster, you probably won’t get the results your are expecting.

Let’s discuss a few simple things you should be doing with every Youtube video you submit, in order to increase the chances of someone outside your family seeing it.

The following steps assume that you already know the keywords you are targeting as well as who your target audience is.  If you don’t have a general idea of the audience and keywords you want to target, you will first need to do some keyword research.

Here are the steps you should be applying to each and every video you upload to Youtube.

1. Optimize the Title of Your Video – If your video is about “dog training tips”, you don’t want your video title to be “Me at the park with Buster”.  Yes you know that the video shows you training your dog Buster at the park and your Mom and Dad know it, but guess what, Google and your audience doesn’t.

   Create a title that your users will be searching for.  Put yourself in their shoes for a sec.  It they were searching for how to train a dog, what would they search for?  “Dog training tips”, “how to train my dog”, “best way to train a dog”?

   You’ll want to sit down and do your research and then come up with a title that your audience will be searching for.

2. Link Back to Your Site – After a user watches your video, you want them to take action.  Often the action will be to get them back to your website.  Besides mentioning your site in the video you should give them a clickable link.

   You may be wondering how to link a video to your site.  With Youtube it’s quite easy.  To the right of every video on the site is a description box.  You fill this box out when you upload the video.

   Adding a link to your site is simple.  All you have to do is start your description with “http://www.YourSite.com”.

   When your video is displayed, this will show up as a hyperlink and when clicked, users will be linked to your site.

   Now some people like to add this link at the end of the description but I advise against it.  I put it as the first item in the description for two reasons.

   First, if you want to read the description of my video you are going to have to read my link.  Unless you are somebody who skips the first sentence of everything you read you will be forced to read my link.  Hopefully curiosity will get the better of you and you’ll do what most of us can’t resist and click!

   Second, when Youtube shows the description next to the video, it only displays the first couple sentences.  If you linked to your site at the end of the video it is very likely the viewer will never even see your link.

   Stick it where they can see it without having to click “more info.  This will increase your chances of it being seen and more importantly being clicked.

3. Optimize the Description of Your Video – Right after you type your link in the description box, you are going to want to describe your video.  Write a description that lets the viewer know what the video is about.

   Don’t forget the keywords that we talked about earlier.  Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience again.  What keywords and description would get you to view the video?

4. Optimize the Tags of Your Video – When uploading your video you are given a section for “tags”.   Your tags are a way for you to tell Youtube and it’s searchers what topic your video is about.

   Here is a little trick I use.  Search for other videos that are already ranking high. I’ll stick with “dog training” in this example.

   Do a search on the site for “dog training”.  Visit the first 4 or 5 videos.  On each video click the “more info” link to the right of the video and see what tags the top videos are using.

   You’ll probably begin to see a pattern after looking at the tags of each video.  Do your best to incorporate the top tags you are seeing into the tags for your video.

   Now if your video is about something new and exciting you may need to use tags that nobody has used before.  Obviously in this case you would not want to just copy some generic tags.  Use the other videos as a guide, not as a cheat sheet.  Try to stick in the range of 5 to 7 tags for your video.

5. Put Your URL in the Video – If someone is going to sit through your whole video, get the most out of it!  Don’t just let it end with an abrupt stop or blank screen.

   This is your chance to once again advertise your site.

   Depending on how you create your videos, the implementation of this technique will vary, but the idea remains the same.  You want your video to end with something along the lines of “For more info visit http://www.YourSite.com”.

   You want this message to stay in front of your user for 3 to 10 seconds. Don’t try to get fancy with your message.

   Put it on a solid background with a font size that is easy to read.This simple step will bring you many visitors that would have otherwise been on their way to the next video of a Dog chewing on furniture.

Optimizing your video is only the first part of getting your word out there.  You will also want to promote your videos by building backlinks and using social bookmarking.

Take your videos to the next level by using Traffic Geyser to quickly distribute and bookmark them to multiple sites at once.

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