seo tips for your youtube videos part 2

Written by: Alicia Kea

Hi again! As promised we’re back to discuss the actual Content Optimization and go into specifics of your videos title, description, tags and more.

Content Optimization

Elements you’ll be creating:

• The Video Title
• The Video Description
• A valid link to related [“Targeted”] information on your website
• The Video Tags

Each video you upload should be planned out prior to uploading for search optimization. It will help if you create a spreadsheet or document with each video URL, columns for Keyword Target 1, Keyword Target 2, Video Category, Video Title, Video Description and Video Tags.

Details on the mentioned Optimization Elements

1. Video Title — [up to 120 characters / approximately 16 words] keyword focused (use Keyword 1 and 2 from your worksheet) and descriptive of the video, yet relevant to the viewer. END with your brand name. You can consider "video" in the video title. For Example: “Min Pin Puppy Training Video — Professional Dog Trainer World” In MS Word, you can get character and word count. You can find this in Review, Word Count.  
   
   
2. Video Description— Up to 22 characters will show before “See More” shows. Try to add a link to your website in those first 22 characters, and the keyword phrase should be listed in the first sentence of the description.   You have up to 1,000 characters available for your description. Your description should still read naturally for other humans, and not be a string of keywords [“spammy”].   If possible, include one or more URLs with http://website.com pointed to other videos, playlists, websites or social media profiles late in the description. YouTube will automatically turn the URLs into hyperlinks.      
   i.     Make sure to format your links correctly. “www.yourdomain.com/product” will not make it an active link.  YouTube will create the link if it is formatted correctly as “http://www.yourdomain.com/product”.    
   ii.    We recommend making sure there is always a link pointing back to the relevant detail page, not just the home page of your site. This is an excellent way to gain relevant links and additional traffic back to your website.  
3. Video Tags — 4 to 5 tags minimum. Look at other popular videos for tags already in use for ideas. Use tags with 2 to 4 words in each tag. These are referred to as “long tail” keywords and will increase the relevance of your search in results. YouTube will allow 500 characters in the tag section, so you have some wiggle room here.
    i.    Include a mix of video-specific and more general (but still relevant) tags.      
   ii.    Include keywords from your title in your video’s tags.  
   iii.      Use quotation marks (“) to convey multi-word tags (ex: “Harry Potter”)

Following are some visual examples of videos currently on YouTube. Please note these are chosen for example (and maybe or maybe not, the cute dogs) only and Avenue 25 has not worked with any of the companies or individuals of these videos.

A [possibly unintentional] “spammy” video stuffed with keywords, though it’s a really nice video thumbnail image.

Here’s an example of an under-optimized video. Short and sweet, but there’s plenty of room for a URL.

Here’s an example of a well-optimized video in YouTube search results. Notice 1) a descriptive title, 2) the full description as it’s intended to be read, 3) calls to action, 4) key phrases and a URL in the description. I would only advise to choose a thumbnail image that was more appealing.

It’s never too late to go back and optimize your YouTube videos!

Feel free to contact us if you’d like help optimizing your YouTube videos, setup and design of your YouTube channel, graphic or web design to add your videos to your website or SEO or online marketing of your website so your website will appear at the top of Google, just like your videos will! Call us at: 602.864.1233.