Member Article

YouTube Marketing: 7 steps to rank your video

We’ve all heard an amazing stat or two about the power of YouTube, such as over 4 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube and in 2011 it had more than 1 trillion views (around 140 views per person in the world).

However, an important stat to consider is that 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That means your video is competing for attention against many other videos. Therefore it’s important to understand that in order for YouTube to work for your company, you need to do more than simply put your videos on there. You need your videos to be found by your target audience. If people can’t find your video then it’s not going to get many views and will become a wasted resource.

One way to ensure lots of views is to get it ranking top for important keyword searches that your target audience will make. Following these simple steps will boost your videos rankings and help your business harness the power of YouTube.

1. Keywords

Before you do anything you need to know what keywords you want to target with your video. These need to be related to the video itself but also link into what your target audience are going to be searching for. I would recommend a maximum of 6 words to target.

2. Title

Once you have decided what keywords you are going to target, you need to include them in the title of the video. The keywords must be related to the content of the video otherwise people are going to stop watching early, give it the thumbs down and your video will slide down the search rankings.

3. Description

You also need to mention the keywords in the description, but don’t keyword stuff. You only want to have a light sprinkling of the keywords in the description text and the first line should include the most important keywords. It’s advisable to also have a link to your own website in the description.

4. Tags

Make sure you make use of the tagging feature in Youtube. Again input your keywords and I would recommend only using 6 tags.

5. Location shot

If you are looking for your video to appear in location searches on YouTube, one trick I have found useful is to use the video location feature in advanced video settings. You simply type in the location where the video was filmed, which will result in a map appearing and all you need to do is select the exact location on the map.

6. User engagement

Now you are optimised to compete against the right keywords, appearing higher than all the other videos targeted at the same keywords will depend on user engagement. This includes metrics like total number of views, likes, time spent watching, how many shares it gets etc. Try to encourage as many people as possible to view and like your video.

7. Links

Another important aspect of the ranking system will be the number of quality back links you have to your video. You want to get your message out there and tell people about your video to encourage them to have links on their websites to the video or embed it on their pages.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Three Motion .