2013 YouTube Optimization Tips

The popularity of online videos continues to increase. Videos are so popular that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.  And we’re seeing more and more links to YouTube videos in the search results.  If you have videos which promote your company, products and services, it makes sense to optimize them to be found both on YouTube searches and for searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo too.

Please check out our easy to read, short guide on how best to optimize your YouTube channel and videos to be found in the search results. 

Channel Optimization

• The first few words of your channel description appear most often across the site so highlight your most important content upfront.
• Precisely describe your channel.
• Use relevant keywords in the description.
• Add website and social media links to the “About” tab.
• Check how your channel looks in search and related channels. Do your channel icon, channel name and channel art do a good job of describing your channel to potential fans?

Video Optimization

• Make it captivating – this is your video’s headline. If it showed up in a search, would you actually click on it?
• Offer keywords first, branding at the end.
• Update video titles on a regular basis so they continue to grab views.

Tags are descriptive keywords that will help people find your videos. Create a set of standard tags for your channel that can be applied to any video you publish.

• Include a mix of both general and specific tags.
• Use enough tags to thoroughly and accurately describe the video.
• Properly format tags to ensure accurate indexing of your video.
• Include keywords from your title in your video’s tags.

Only the first few sentences of your description will appear in search results or above the fold on a watch page – so make them count! Follow a template for all of your video descriptions to create consistency.

A video description should:

• Accurately describe your video in one or two concise sentences.
• Include your website’s URL first as that is what users will see
• Entice viewers to subscribe (and include a subscribe link).
• Link to other episodes or related videos and playlists.
• Include links to your social media presence as well.