YouTube - ABCO Technology

Optimizing Youtube videos

Posted on May 26, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, Blog

As we approach memorial day, many of our readers may want to put a video online about their business, activity or cause. I decided to reprint a chapter from my book, Search engine Marketing Guide for the small business. If you like this chapter, please consider giving our school a call. My book has 32 chapters filled with information about optimizing for search engines. Today we’ll discuss optimizing your Youtube video.

Chapter 24 Optimizing YouTube Videos

Google has provided statistics proving that Internet users spend more time on YouTube than they do on Google. YouTube states they receive over forty million visitors per day. YouTube videos are entertaining. The information presented on all search engines appeals to three types of learners: visual, audio and kinesthetic. Understanding this concept will be of significant benefit to your organization’s bottom line. This chapter will show you how to make your videos stand out for your chosen key phrases on YouTube.

It’s no secret that YouTube is a traffic source with almost limitless potential. There’s only one problem: YouTube is crowded with video content. According to YouTube over 100 hours of video are uploaded to this search engine every minute. When you take into consideration the large amount of content displayed on YouTube, the key question is how to get your customers to view your videos? The answer to this question is to optimize your YouTube video. It probably will not surprise you to learn that your competition simply uploads their videos to YouTube and hopes for the best. After reading this chapter you will be able to do much better than that.

Before we dive into how you can optimize your videos for YouTube, let’s review some of the most important ranking factors that YouTube uses.

YouTube’s ranking is not nearly as complex as Google’s famous 160 ranking signals, which was published in 2015 but YouTube’s algorithm is much focused. It compiles dozens of signals into a weighting system for ranking videos in YouTube search and for suggested videos, like this:

YouTube Sidebar Suggested

Now let’s get started. We will begin with a basic YouTube primer.

YouTube Ranking Factors

Here’s some information to keep in mind about the trust signals YouTube uses. So let me give you a brief list to use containing the most important signals that YouTube ranks videos:

•Title tag information

•Audience retention

•Keywords in description tag

•Tags

•Video length

•Number of subscribers after watching

•Comments

•Likes and dislikes

YouTube

It’s time to show you five strategies that you can leverage these trust signals to bring more traffic to your videos…and ultimately to your site.

1. Write Super-Long content for your Video Descriptions

Please note that YouTube and Google can’t watch or listen to your video. The search engine can only understand the contents of your video by what you write about it.

That means that they heavily lean on the HTML text surrounding the video to index your video’s topic. That’s why it disturbs me to see extremely brief video descriptions. For example: YouTube short non-ranking description “Japanese food”. The more YouTube knows about your video, the more confidently it can rank it for your chosen key words. Even more important to your ranking, YouTube uses keywords in the description to rank you for super-long tail keywords. A better ranking video description would look like this “Japanese food West Los Angeles including: Sushi, Sashimi and Tempura under $25.” If you owned a Japanese restaurant serving these dishes containing these prices, your video would be viewed by potential customers who were hungry for Japanese food. YouTube videos are designed to be niche specific.

2 Find “Video Keywords”

Like a normal practice in SEO, the YouTube SEO process begins with keyword research.

Your goal is to find keywords that have YouTube results on the first page of Google. The Key word tools we provided will be of great help to you in selecting those key niche phrases.

These are called, “Video Keywords”.

Unlike a normal SERP with 10 webpage results, containing Video Keywords, Google reserves a large portion of the first page for video results:

Google Video Results

In general, Google tends to use video results for these types of keywords:

•How-to keywords (“how to install a dish TV antenna”)

•Reviews (“Islands Restaurant review”)

•Tutorials (“Setting up your YouTube Channel”)

•Anything fitness or sports related (“long distance running”)

•Funny videos (“Cute animals”)

Let’s suppose you optimize your video around a keyword that doesn’t have any video results in Google.

In this case, you’ll ONLY get traffic from people searching on YouTube. This will cut your traffic results in half.

If you optimize for Video Keywords, you’ll also receive targeted traffic to your video directly from Google’s first page.

How to Find those High Traffic Video Keywords

The easiest way to find video keywords is to search for keywords in your niche. Then see if any of the keywords you searched for have YouTube video results, like this:

YouTube Results in Google for your selected key phrase.

Does this sound simple enough?

Once you’ve found the right Video Keywords, it’s time to check if there’s enough search volume for that keyword.

Since videos don’t take a ton of time to put together, you don’t need to go after keywords with massive search volumes.

Just make sure your target keyword gets at least 300 searches per month in Google (you can find this information using the Google Keyword Planner):

GKP Results

Why 300 searches per month?

If a keyword delivers at least 300 searches per month, then you know it also gets a decent amount of searches within YouTube itself. The free Keyword Suggestion tool by Wordstream is another excellent tool to verify against Google’s GKP tool.

If you can get that video to rank in Google, then a lot of those 300+ monthly searches will click on YOUR video from the search results.

That means you’ll get more high-quality traffic to your video, and ultimately, your site.

3 Make your (great) Video

When manufacturing a product for your business, the more effort you put into your product, the better your return on investment. This same philosophy also applies to your video.

If your budget can afford a professional look, you might want to consider hiring a professional videographer for the day, pay an editor to add graphics, rent a studio…

YouTube has facilities around the country that offer this service at a reasonable cost. In fact a YouTube facility opened near me in the suburb of Playa Vista, California.

If you’re on a really tight budget, you can record your voice over a PowerPoint presentation using Screencast-O-Matic ($15/year). This service will deliver professional quality at a very reasonable price.

I’m highly emphasizing quality because user engagement is THE most important YouTube ranking signal. Again to repeat Google can’t watch your presentation, but they can digitally judge the reaction to it.

If your video stinks, it won’t rank…no matter how optimized it is for SEO.

Unlike Google — which can use backlinks and other signals to evaluate the quality of a piece of content — YouTube doesn’t have this luxury.

They judge your video’s quality based on how people interact with it.

The User Experience Metrics That YouTube Uses

Here’s what YouTube uses to determine the quality of your video:

•Video retention: The percentage of your video people tend to watch (the more, the better).

Video_Retention•Comments: If people comment, they probably enjoyed the video (or at least watched it).

Video Comment•Subscriptions after watching: If someone subscribes to your channel after watching your video that sends a HUGE Trust signal that you have an amazing video.

YouTube Subscribe Button•Shares: How many people share your video on social media sites like Twitter and Google+.

YouTube Sharing Icons•Favorites: The number of people that favor your video or add it to their “Watch Later” playlist:

Watch Later•Thumbs up/Thumbs down: Self-explanatory 🙂

If you want to see how your videos are performing, you can see user experience data in your YouTube Analytics:

YouTube Analytics

If you make a top-notch video you’re highly likely to get top-retention views, likes, comments and all the things that YouTube likes to see in a video.

Make Your Video At Least 5-Minutes Long

Similar to text-based articles, longer videos rank better.

Since 2013, I’ve consistently observed longer videos outperforming shorter videos in YouTube and Google search.

For example, if you search in YouTube for the keyword “WordPress”, 3 out of the 4 top videos are an hour long.

So make a Video that runs for at least 5-minutes.

If it makes sense for your video to be even longer than that, go for it. Don’t worry about your video being too long. If it’s awesome, people WILL watch it.

OK so you’ve created your compelling video that’s 5-minutes or longer in length. Good job-)

Now it’s time to optimize your video and upload it to YouTube.

Here’s how to extract the most SEO value from your video.

Video Filename

When you’re done with the video make sure that you use your chosen keyword in the video’s filename.

For example, if you wanted to rank for the keyword “computer training Los Angeles”, you’d want to name your video computer_training_Los_Angeles_video.mp4.

Video_Filename

Video Title

The title of your video should be at least 5-words long. That way, you can include your full keyword phrase without keyword-stuffing.

Video Title

Power Tip: Like with a blog post, I’ve found that you get a slight video SEO boost by putting your keyword at the beginning of the title.

So if you were trying to rank for “surfing tutorial” you’d want a title like: “Surfing Tutorial: Learn How to Ride a Wave Today”.

Description

Your videos description is VERY important.

Because Google and YouTube can’t “listen” to videos, they rely on your text description to determine your video’s content.

Here are the basic guidelines for the description:

•Put your link at the very top of the video (this maximizes CTR to your site)

•Include your keyword in the first 15 words

•Make the description at least 300-words

•Include your keyword 3-4 times

This SEO-optimized description helps tell Google and YouTube what your video is about without being spammy.

YouTube Description tags

Tags aren’t super-important…but they help.

Just include a few keywords to help YouTube and Google learn what your video is about.

Targeted Tags

Targeted tags will not only help you rank for your target keyword…

…but they will get you to show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube:

YouTube Sidebar

When the video someone’s watching has a similar tag as your video– boom! – You’re added to the sidebar.

Once you’re done, hit “Save Changes” and your video will go live!

5 Get Video Views

We talked a lot about user experience signals so far…which are really important.

In order for your video to rank for competitive keywords, it needs to receive A LOT of views.

More views=higher rankings.

But there’s one catch…

…the views need to be real.

YouTube has caught onto fake views. That’s why I don’t recommend using a service on Fiverr to pump up your view count.

As we already discussed, long-retention views are worth their weight in gold.

Here are a few strategies you can use to get targeted views to your video:

Mention Your Video on Quora and Other Q&A Sites

Quora, Yahoo Answers, and other Q&A sites are some of the most popular sites on the web (Quora rocks a top 500 Alexa ranking).

But if you try to go in there and plaster links all over the place, you’re going to get banned in a flash unless you link to YouTube.

Because you’re posting your video in a place where people are desperate for information on a given topic, the views you’ll get are extremely high-retention.

Just search for a question on your video’s topic:

Quora Search Results

And add a link to your video. Or better yet, embed it into your answer:

Quora Answers

Link to Your Video in Your Email Signature

People that email you (like your family or wife) generally like you.

And if you’re like me, you get A TON of emails.

So when you add a link to your latest video in your email signature, that means you get high-retention views like they’re going out of style.

Email Signature

Embed Your Videos in Blog Posts

Whenever you write a blog post (on your site or as a guest post for another site), think to yourself:

“Where can I embed a YouTube video into this post?”

As we stated at the beginning of this chapter Google reports their users spending more time on YouTube rather than searching for information. If your product translates well for videos use them for promotion.

If you want to build websites or make videos, which are highly visible to your audience call ABCO Technology. You can reach our campus by telephone at: (310) 216-3067 from 9 A.m to 6 P.m Monday through Friday.

Email all questions to info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

Build highly visible webpages and videos today!

Five proven tips for optimizing YouTube Videos

Posted on March 6, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, Blog

Tagged: ABCO, abcotechnology, ABCOTRAINING, advertisement, video, YouTube

Just how powerful is YouTube in 2018? According to a solid infographic, which was released earlier in 2017, there are some highly incredible statistics:

◾YouTube is available and used in 88 countries around the world

◾It is the second largest social media platform with over 1.5 billion monthly users, second only to Facebook (2 billion) and more than twice the number of Instagram (700 million)

◾500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

◾Mobile viewing makes up half of the site’s streaming.

In other words, YouTube is POWERFUL. Not only has it been steadily growing since its initial launch in 2005, it has become the single biggest and most important video service on the web. While there are others that have come in its wake, none have reached the same level of popularity.

With that fact in mind, it is no wonder that so many people are looking to boost the effectiveness of their content on the platform. However, with so much use comes other struggles, like being seen in the crowd. If 720,000 hours are uploaded in a day, you have to do everything known to marketers to stand out and be noticed.

Here are five optimization tips for your YouTube channel and videos that will help you to start doing better in search, get recommended, and gain more traction.

Find the sweet spot with your video title length

There are several things to consider when coming up with the video title:

◾How engaging and catchy it is for the eye

◾How many important keywords you use within your title (those keywords are going to help you rank that video in both YouTube and Google search)

◾Which part of the title is immediately visible when people search YouTube or see your video thumbnail in YouTube-generated related videos.

YouTube suggested

Taking all of the above in the account, the sweet spot for your video title is going to be around 100 characters. That is enough to give a unique, descriptive title while still showing in search without a cut off.

Make sure your title not only describes what is happening in the video and contains key phrases you have already researched, but it is also attention grabbing enough that people will want to click on it.

When crafting a video title, consider including the following:

◾Include the important names and entities (your interviewee, event name, branded hashtag, featured brand name, etc.)

◾Location (especially if you are targeting a specific locale)

◾Your important keyword you’d like the video to show up for.

To distinguish that important keyword, use keyword clustering technique that allows you to see core phrases behind obscure keyword variations. My own trick is to use Serpstat’s clustering feature that allows you to group keywords by how many identical URLs rank in Google for each specific query:

Clustering

You can read more on how Serpstat clustering feature works in this guide.

You may also to match each keyword group to appropriate keyword intent to make sure your future video content will cover the immediate need and prompt engagement.

Make your descriptions longer

Video and channel descriptions are another valuable resource for drawing traffic to all of your content. YouTube allows up to 5,000 characters, which is between 500 and 700 words.

The rule of thumb is obvious: The more original content you have below your video, the easier for search engines it is to understand what your video is about and what search queries to rank it for.

Not every description needs to be that long, but aiming for around 2,000 characters for videos and 3,000 for channels is a good place because it gives you the space necessary to optimize your keyword use and give some context to viewers. More is fine, but make sure you aren’t filling it with a lot of pointless stuff.

Make the first 150 characters of a description count

Of the words you write, the first 150 characters are the most important. That is because YouTube cuts it off with a (More) tag after the point, so the viewer has to specifically opt in to reading the rest. Not all of them are going to do that.

You should make sure those first characters tell the viewer what they really need to know in order to connect with what they are reading. From there you can focus more on keywords and the rest of the description, as it will still count the same towards searches.

It is also a great place to link out to other channels, your website, etc. Make sure your call to action (CTA) is in the first words, such as liking, subscribing, learning more, etc.

Have a good, high-resolution thumbnail

Thumbnails are pretty standard for monetized video channels at this point. You have probably noticed that they follow a certain pattern: silly face, bright colors, something odd in the background, over the top. Sure, it seems annoying. But they follow the formula because the formula works.

Now, you don’t have to do the same thing. You just want to make sure that you have an eye catching, visually stimulating thumbnail in the recommended 1280 x 720 size. There are a few generators out there to help you make one, but my thumbnail maker of choice right now is Adobe Spark.

Adobe Spark

Keep in mind that you want a standard format across all of your thumbnails. For instance, if you do your face on one then you should do them on all. If you use some kind of animation or logo, use that.

You want to be immediately recognizable to anyone who follows your channel right from the suggested videos sidebar, or the search results. If you have old videos, go back and upload thumbnails to each one to start getting some better click results.

Furthermore, make sure your thumbnails are readable: Viewers should be able to easily see what it is about at a glance when seeing it in the right-hand column of the suggested videos or on a small mobile device.

Utilize playlists – I mean it!

Playlists are incredibly helpful. First of all, they help you group together certain videos right on your channel. So let’s say you did a series on how to increase your YouTube views and it was split into ten videos. You would create a playlist on your channel titled “Super YouTube Tips” so that people could find them all in one place. But that has an additional benefit.

Search leans towards introducing playlists right at the top of the results page. It also allows people to specifically search for playlists. That is great because it can introduce viewers to multiple videos instead of one and many will choose to pop on a playlist and watch straight through everything there.

If you do a creative series with a continued plot you will find this is a huge help and makes it a million times easier to sort it out, even if YouTube messes with your order on your channel (an issue more than one content creator has had in the past, take it from me).

To sum that up, YouTube playlists help you:

◾Increase your chances to rank your video content for a wider variety of phrases (which is also helpful for brand-focused results)

◾Improve engagement rate with your videos by giving your audience collections of videos so that they can sit back and watch endlessly. And we know that engagement is the crucial ranking factor when it comes to YouTube rankings.

To illustrate the point, here’s a quick example of how we were able to grab two spots for our show name with the playlist:

Playlist ranking

Bonus tip: Feature your videos on your site

Finally, an obvious but often missed tactic is to increase your YouTube channel performance by prominently displaying your videos on your site. It’s simple: the more people watch your videos (especially if they watch more of each of your videos), the more exposure YouTube offers to your content through suggesting your videos as related.

One of the most effective ways to generate more views for your channel is to promote your videos outside of YouTube, i.e. use your blog and social media channels. There’s a variety of WordPress themes that aim at doing exactly that: promote your YouTube channel prominently on-site.

Furthermore, promote your videos on social media as much as it makes sense for your audience to build additional exposure, links, and re-shares.

ABCO Technology has a powerful web developer program, which includes search engine optimization where this information is covered in detail. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us by phone at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who can successfully qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

Create highly visible videos today!

Request Info with No Obligation