YouTube video optimisation – a six-step guide

As YouTube gains more and more importance in the online world, it is necessary for us digital marketers to take it seriously – especially when it interferes with the natural search results!

Research has shown that videos are the most prominent category to be featured in the search engine results pages (SERPS) besides images, news, blogs, shopping and maps.

YouTube SEO will help your videos rank highly in the YouTube search results, as well as in the natural SERPS.

Here are a couple of quick techniques you can use to optimise your videos (perhaps surprisingly, many of them are very similar to traditional SEO):

1. Optimise your title, descriptions and tags with the keywords you are trying to target
2. Ensure that all of the above are enticing, as YouTube takes in to account CTR when determining rankings
3. Build keyword optimised anchor text links to your video
4. Ensure your title and description are relevant to your video, as time on page and bounce rates are relevant factors when determining rankings
5. Have a good preview image: as this image appears in the results page it essential to have an image which stands out from the crowd
6. Use the YouTube Keyword Tool to identify keywords with high search volumes on Google

Well optimised YouTube videos will appear in the natural SERPs, allowing brands to acquire more real estate – for free!