YouTube SEO – Optimizing your videos for complete Search engine optimization

With YouTube being the biggest video sharing website in the world it is effectively one of the biggest search engines in the world as millions of people search YouTube for videos just as they may search Google for websites. This is why it is a good idea to search engine optimize your videos so that you gain maximum online exposure and more video views.

If you have not optimized your YouTube videos then exactly the same effect is going to happen as what would happen to a websites that has not been search engine optimized. Views will be a minimum. Contrary to what many people may think; optimizing your videos is actually pretty easy.

Keyword rich titles and descriptions 

Keyword research is well, key for YouTube to see what keywords that your competitors are using. Spend some time searching for related videos and making a list of the keywords that they are using that are suited to your videos. Once you have these you can start to write your titles and descriptions.

Your Title is key on YouTube. Firstly for SEO and getting the highest possible rankings but also this is what people see when looking through search results and deciding what video to click on. I like to use my keywords at the start of the title as they seem more relevent and get the best results i find, however you might want to do some experimenting and see what works best for you.

Never neglect your Description. Time and time again i see videos with either a short or non existent description. Your description is key and i like to have at least on good strong paragraph that is full of keywords. There is no need to repeat you title but instead you can use some keywords that you was not able to use in your title. If you are creating a lyrics video then you may want to add the lyrics to your description so that if people search for a songs lyrics then you are still going to rank highly.

Furthermore many people do not use Tags. Tags are just like your Meta tags when you are optimizing your website for search engines and best rankings. I like to use between 8 and 12 tags for best results as you do not want too less as they will not have much effect, and there is no need for too much.

Powerful YouTube channel

Just like when first publishing a website, you are not going to have much web authority at the beginning and probably a very low Page rank to go with that. Well this is exactly the same with YouTube. A channel with hundreds of videos in a niche and loads of views is going to rank a lot higher than your YouTube account if it does not have a lot of views and visits. It is worth spending time publishing more videos and growing your YouTube authority before you expect to see a lot of views coming your way.

Create high quality videos

Many people either upload videos with poor content or poor quality standard definition video. Think of video quality like a blog post. If you have a high quality and interesting blog post then more people are going to click onto it as well as share it with their friends and build backlinks to it. Furthermore the quality of your videos is also very important. It has been proven numerous amounts of times that high-definition videos will out rank standard definition videos every time. With camera quality getting better all the time no-one wants to see videos in low quality from your old 2003 camera.

Backlinks

Just like your website, having backlinks to your YouTube video is also going to make it have more authority online. If your video has links coming from other videos and social sharing websites then it is going to have more authority. As well as this do not forget to link out. I like to add my website link to all of my YouTube videos. This helps boost my targeted traffic.

Social media

Okay, this may not exactly be search engine optimization but it is going to help get your views up. Be sure to share your videos via Twitter, Facebook ,Google+ and any other social media websites you use. By doing this you can convert your followers into YouTube traffic and easily boost your views.  On the other hand they may also want to subscribe to your channel and view your other videos, making your YouTube channel have more relevance and importance.

Ratings and comments

unlike what many people may think, your video ratings and comments can actually have an effect on your SEO and rankings. If your video has a load of high ratings and a substantial amount of views then it must be a better and more important video than one with less views and maybe a lot of dislikes. Also, the amount of comments your video has can also help. I like to try to increase my comments by replying to other users comments and then try to get a discussion going on.

Final Notes

What you need to remember is that you are not going to suddenly get thousands of views overnight (unless you go viral). Building up your YouTube channel takes a lot of time and hard work. If you can it is a good idea to try to post a video on a regular basis, just like you would with a blog post.

Analyzing your videos is also a good idea. Take note of where your views are coming from and where they have been embedded. Furthermore you can also see how much views you have got from Facebook and other social media websites.