Do you want to increase the likelihood of your videos appearing in YouTube search results? Dollar Campus explains how to gather keyword insights from your competitors.
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| SEO YOUTUBE |
As the current consumption of video increases, consequently also the effect of video on consumer purchases. According to recent research conducted by Brightcove:
- Nearly half (45 percent) of viewers say they actually make a purchase as a result of watching branded videos on various social media, and a third (30 percent) say if they have considered making a purchase as a result of watching a video.
- 80 percent of consumers say they currently interact with brands on various social media, and 41 percent say they've done it through watching a branded social video.
- When asked what kind of their favorite branded content on social networking, video is the most popular answer, with 30 percent of respondents listing it as their number one choice.
YouTube is the second most popular social media platform company, based on market traffic. And you'll find if most of YouTuber is a loud YouTube audience. They will be constantly watching videos, looking for videos on everything from how to automate your locked doors how to create ads on Facebook - and everything in between.
Great way to optimize YouTube algorithm
If you want to get the following and rank your videos better on YouTube search, uploading fresh content is very important. User likes new videos. And newly uploaded new content (as well as the most recent action taken by users) is considered by YouTube when ranking videos.
"Watch time" is a very important ranking factor as well. YouTube wants to show the videos that the audience loves, the very high user engagement is a good signal for the algorithm in identifying such videos.
In addition to user signals, YouTube also relies on input from video owners to feed their algorithm. That means YouTube is counting on you to tell it about your videos.
What you do to optimize your videos within the first 48 to 72 hours is critical to the success of your videos and how they rank. If you do it right, your videos get to the top when people search for your video topics. Get it wrong, and you'll sink like a rock.
Metadata is important
Here are some tips for creating effective metadata that can help your videos get found.
Now, this first tip may sound counterintuitive, but you want to research what types of videos your competitors are doing before you create your video. That’s right — the best time to optimize your video for SEO and get more views is before you even record it.
Once you have a feel for what your competitors are doing — the type of videos they’re producing, how engaging they are, how many views they have, what metadata they’re using and so on — it’ll make it easier for you to create a video that “one-ups” them, both in terms of having better content and being better optimized for YouTube’s algorithm.
After you’ve created your video, it’s time to think about uploading and optimizing. Again, the best time to optimize your metadata is before you upload your video — have your keywords, tags, title, description and custom thumbnail ready to go before you press the upload button.
YouTube tags: Doing the keyword research
YouTube allows you to include “tags” to help categorize your video by keyword, but it limits the number of tags you can include. You’ll want to look for multiword tags (i.e., long-tail keywords) that specifically relate to your video’s topic. You should also use single-word tags and broad-term tags that relate to your video’s broader topic. (Note: Do not use trademarks or copyrighted material in your metadata unless you have explicit permission from the owner to use it.)
YouTube is effective at semantically understanding your tags. So here’s an example of some tags for a video about “how to ask a boy out on a date”:
Multiple-word tags
- What to say when you ask a boy out on a date
- How to ask a boy out on a date
- Asking out a boy you like
- How to ask a boy you like out on a date
- Like
- What
- You
- How
- Ask
- Boy
- Date
Broad-term tags:
Dating
Dates
Flirting
Meet boys
Meeting boys
Talk to boys
One great way to get tag ideas is to look at the top-ranking YouTube videos that directly compete with your video. However, YouTube hides the video tags, which makes it more difficult to “spy” on your competitors and see their keyword/tag secret sauce.
Luckily, there are tools that allow you to get lots of insights into what your competitors are doing — including letting you see the tags competitors are using to get their videos to rank high.
Two of these video software tools are vidIQ and TubeBuddy. Both programs have a free version and several paid versions, depending on your company’s needs. There are pros and cons to each — so if you can afford it, I’d recommend you use them both.
How YouTube tools like vidIQ and TubeBuddy can help you get more eyeballs
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| SEO YOTUBE |
With TubeBuddy, you can even zero in on the most used tags the channel used when setting up the SEO for their YouTube channel:
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When planning your YouTube keywords strategy, you want to come up with 10 to 20 single keyword tags that you want to try to rank for. Remember, since YouTube limits the number of tags you can include, add your most important keyword phrases first and then use specific multi-word tags that are easier to rank for. If you have room, also include the single-word tags and broader-term tags.
You want to try to get as many views from as many different (relevant) search results as possible — which is an easier strategy than trying to rank #1 for a single keyword phrase.
By having a metadata strategy in place, you can increase the chances of your videos showing up in YouTube’s search results. And since video marketing will continue to grow and grow, mastering YouTube’s ranking algorithm starting today is a great way to kick your video marketing efforts into high gear.
