Video SEO – How to rank your videos on YouTube and Google?
Ranking on search engines is very necessary whenever we upload a text content, but it is equally important to keep certain factors in mind while we upload video content as well. If we do not pay attention to the SEO our videos wouldn’t be on the first page and would get just a few views. Most people lazily upload some random content and expect that to “go viral” all of a sudden, which isn’t possible in most cases. Nothing goes viral without practical approach. So, here are some techniques that are useful and quite helpful in case you want your videos get the optimum network traffic:
1. Useful Contents – Always upload that content which seems quite useful to people, i.e. it either gives a kind of knowledge or contributes for entertainment. When it comes to spreading knowledge there is a huge ocean of topics such as those related to the medical field, politics, how-to-tutorials, yoga and meditation, food and drink, makeup, hairstyles, etc. For the entertainment purposes you could choose to upload videos of your pets, babies, or you may also compose your own music, acting skills and dance.
Your videos must be of good quality. May be you cannot afford to own a DSLR at this point and this uploading thing is obviously an experiment, but always try not to upload that video which is taken from a low quality video camera and cannot be properly viewed. Editing is necessary step as well just as taking the video, in which you keep only those parts that are highlighting your motto behind and not unnecessarily uploading every damn thing which isn’t required. You do not want to bore your audience, do you?
2. Eye-Catching Topic – Letting know of your video’s existence is important since there are many strangers just like you uploading their contents of 100 hours every minute! It isn’t that easy to get an attention and so for that chooses your topic wisely and do write it wisely. Topics aren’t just for the public but for the Google and YouTube search engines as well. Your topic must contain those kinds of keywords that hits the list of Google’s bot’s algorithm.
For instance, if you upload a video that explains to combat backache, your topic must contain something like Top 10 Useful Home Remedies for Backache, in which the keyword “Home Remedies” is crucial. You may also replace Home with Ayurvedic depending on the kind of methods you are going to explain. Keywords like ‘remedies for backache’, ‘methods to combat backache’ aren’t good enough. You may also write additional words like ‘successful’, ‘a must try’, etc. along with the main keywords.
3. Description – This sounds lazy and unimportant, but it plays a terrific role in bringing the network traffic. There are plenty of YouTubers who would go to every extent making their contents presentable, but fail to get people’s attention just because they didn’t write enough of nice video description. Since Google and YouTube haven’t learned to ‘understand’ your video yet you will have to put in efforts on the text contents so that they ‘know’ your video has some useful contents to show.
Try writing about 200 to 250 words at least, just like a blogger would do and your video gets into Google’s priority list. You are allowed to extend this word limit just as writing a literal blog content. Also include target and related keywords but keep yourself away from stuffing the whole content with the same words, else Google would reward it with Spam!. Do not copy your contents with someone else contents because you wouldn’t want it getting blacklisted, despite of their content being the most viewed and on the top, still copying would not work. This is how the Google’s bot’s algorithm is designed.
4. Playlist – Adding your all the related videos to a playlist uplifts the video contents since it is as well important as per SEO rules. So, if you have uploaded two different categories of videos, namely exercises and meditation, you better make two playlists and join them all whatever suits to whichever category. This is quite healthy and useful Search Engine Optimization technique for YouTube videos that actually works and helps you rank your videos.
5. Adding Links – Whenever you add your description, never forget to utilize it with the very best efforts. In the description section you may also add few links of your own website, blog, Facebook/Twitter profile or simply from where you got the idea of creating your own stuff. Nowadays, it is very common to roast (make fun of) others’ work or make reaction channels. If you are doing such kinds of things then do show the link of original video(s) in your description area. This definitely adds a plus to your Video SEO.
6. Limited Contents – Well, there is an option to upload video of even 2 to 3 hours but if you are a fresher in this field uploading such a huge contents isn’t recommended. This is because first of all you need to increase your viewers so that people start subscribing to your YouTube channel. If your subscribers cross the mark of 1000 then it makes sense to increase your video timings.
The kind of videos you upload is a consistent trial-and-error method. You initially post a content which is not more then 7 to 10 minutes. Once you get a significant number of subscribers you may post for about 20 minutes or even half an hour. The viewers will definitely give their reviews and based on those reviews you may continue or discontinue uploading such videos. The progress is based on the previous failures and successful attempts. Posting something interesting is a tough job because most users simply discard themselves from viewing if they find something they aren’t looking for. Give them the reason to spend their precious time out of 24 hours.
7. Share Your Videos – You must always remember to share your videos much as you can since that would increase the chance of your viewers and subscribers. If your viewers find that interesting they would be sharing that themselves as well, resulting into even more views.
Likes, Shares, Comments and Subscriptions as well as the total timings that your viewers viewed your contents is a crucial step as per SEO rankings. This means not only the number of views your video had but also viewing it for more period of time equally plays role in the Video SEO. The Likes, Shares, Comments and Subscriptions tell the Google bot that the video is important and must be ranked higher. The Likes play negligible role but these do matter.
8. Interesting Thumbnails – To make a user click on your video content your thumbnail must look interesting. It gives them the basic idea of the overall contents that they are going to watch. Always think like a random end user like what kinds of contents you would prefer to click if you were one of them.
9. Be Regular – If you have started a YouTube channel ,you must be strictly regular in uploading your contents. Take an inspiration from very famous YouTube channels like AIB, TVF, CarryMinati, ||Superwoman||, BB Ki Vines, Unboxing, etc. who are very regular in uploading their video contents. This increases the number of viewers and subscribers. If you aren’t doing this, your graph of getting the recent attention would significantly drop and so do your subscribers.
The above points must be taken into consideration before you upload your video. Though, it is allowed to edit the already existing contents, but the database that Google and YouTube hold has to be updated every single time you make an edit, which is internally a mess. So, it is better if you thoroughly go through each part of your content and then finally upload.
