How to get your video found on YouTube – Video SEO tips & advice

Getting your video found on YouTube

 

Like the Search Engine Optimization that should be part of your website planning and ongoing development, you need to get the most out of video that you are posting on YouTube - video optimisation starts with deciding on the keywords you want to rank for and ensuring that these keywords are in the title of your video.

Firstly, identify one main keyword or keyword longtail (2 - 5 words) for the video title. There are several keyword tools you can use to see what people are looking for around your subject.

1. Go to www.google.com and type in the keyword you are thinking of. If people are looking for this keyword, Google instant will show automatically completed results if the phrase is one that's being searched.
2. Go to YouTube itself - try typing in the search bar and see if the keyword you want appears - if so, it's being searched.
3. Google Keyword tool is also another great keyword research tool.

When deciding on your video keyword you can also look at the Google or You Tube search results to see how many listings, or pages there are with that keyword present. This will give you an idea on how competitive it will be. The longer keyphrases (long tail keywords) are easier to rank than shorter ones.

Next place to use your keywords is in the description. The description is where you describe what your video is about. Always start with the URL of your website or wherever you want to direct any traffic. That way it'll will always appear in any shortened description that YouTube shows. The content of the description needs to be full of keywords that are directly relevant to what your video is about!

In "Tags", you should also list the other relevant words or search terms for your video. These help people find (or otherwise!) your video, so use keywords here that are related to your main keyword. Relevancy is king here - you need to make sure that your title, description and tags are all related to the core content of your video. This will help you rank your video on YouTube and in the search engines.

More on embedding into your website next time!