According to CISCO to networking index, video is already making up about 64 percent of all internet traffic and this is projected to account for a staggering 80+ percent of all traffic by the year 2020. This is enormous as it accounts for four-fifths of the global traffic!
If you are in the digital marketing field, then the right time to invest in video content is now.
Video Optimization: Why it Matters?
Despite having worked hard to develop your website and writing voluminous articles and top quality content to achieve a higher ranking in Google, the fact is such articles will never rank on YouTube.
YouTube currently ranks second amongst the most popular search engines with more than three billion searches processed monthly, as revealed by infographics and market research by Mushroom Networks.
This is a huge market you should consider investing in.
Competition is also quite high on Google which is making it extremely difficult to rank on the first page, leave alone getting ranked in position 1!
What this means is that you are letting all your hard work go to waste!
For this reason, you simply need to turn your content into videos. Doing your optimization right simply means you are assured of getting the best out of YouTube hence shifting away from having to achieve the highest rankings since a higher amount of traffic will be realized from browsing and recommended videos.
Video Optimization Goals
There are three video optimization goals you should set for yourself;
- Rank in Google with videos
- Rank on YouTube through YouTube searches
- Getting recommended or suggested on YouTube
Video SEO on YouTube and How it Works
Video SEO on YouTube is a little bit different from the regular SEO on search engines like Google. All the metrics and indicators of high quality and good content apply to YouTube too.
The main objective is keeping traffic on site, and once you achieve that, you will get a free promotion on YouTube provided your optimization is right.
What Do You Need to Know About Video SEO?
1. How to Find Video Topics
This is the very first step to achieving success in your Video SEO. The following are some simple ways through which you can come up with a shortlist of the most relevant video topics.
- Turn your existing content into videos. You do not need to look any further for your video topics. Simply use the content already available and pick the blog posts that have performed best based on the level of interaction then turn the content into video.
- Analyze your competition. If you have no clue where to start, then the best place to begin is by looking into what your competitors are doing and the kind of topics they are covering. You can then remodel their ideas into amazing video content.
- Run your ideas through YouTube suggest. YouTube itself can be a great resource when trying to find the right topics to cover in your video content. You can be assured of the most relevant topics on YouTube. You just need to search keenly for the topic ideas shared on YouTube autocomplete.
2. Get the Best Out of Your Video Content
There are many factors that YouTube looks at when determining the quality of video uploaded. However the most crucial are;
- Level of engagement
- Watch time
Your success in video SEO is thus determined by the length of time you keep traffic watching your video content and how much the visitors are engaged.
How to Get People to Watch Your Video Content
The main goal of video content is to get as many people to watch the videos you create as possible. The following tips will help you in this;
- Create catchy titles, descriptions and thumbnails to prompt viewers to click the links and watch the videos.
- Mainly feature high CTR headlines, in this case, it would be ideal to focus on high-quality headlines matching the top quality and high searched topics. You may as well consider using bold colors on the video thumbnail to attract the attention of viewers.
- Ensure that the first 15 minutes of the video is intriguing and appealing. This will keep the viewer engaged and probably teased to watch the video in full. Get a preview of what the video is all about and this would be the hook to keep your visitors engaged to view the videos to the end.
Keeping Your Viewers Engaged
- When it comes to video SEO, don’t let it end with watching the video. Ask your viewers to like, comment or subscribe at the end of the video.
- Promote CTAs using cards as well as other playlists and videos.
- Promote more playlists or videos on your channels by adding an end screen
3. How to Achieve Video Optimization to Ensure Double Traffic
Unlike other search engines, there is no such relation between the choice of keywords and the actual ranking on YouTube. This, however, doesn’t rule out the need to optimize the keywords.
Other than affecting actual site rankings, optimized keywords are crucial in explaining what the videos are about and their relevancy. You, therefore, need to choose the right keywords to use the upload file names, titles and descriptions.
It has been observed that most of the channel traffic comes from videos suggested by YouTube on the right sidebar. This is, therefore where you want your videos to show up. Maximizing your video tags will enable you to achieve this.
Optimizing with Tags
- Using your main keywords, search to find video rankings then check out the tags used.
- Use browser plugins like VidlQ or Tube Buddy.
- Use VidlQ to get relevant tags suggested from other popular videos when setting up your YouTube videos.
Increase Your View Velocity with Video Promotion
After publishing your YouTube video, you need to promote it. This will enable you to multiply your reach and ensure the video will show up more in search.
You may apply the following tips to promote your YouTube Videos
- Push the video to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
- Embed your video on your blogs.
- Email the video to your email list.
- Use paid traffic.
Challenges Faced During Video Production and How You Can Solve Them
Video Production is Not a Simple Task as Many Would Imagine
Producing videos can be really tedious and expensive. Think of HD cameras, lights, studio fee, actors, editing and editing software. These can add up to thousands of dollars per video minute. Besides, you may also encounter photo-phobic individuals who never want to be on camera!
Solutions on Video Production Challenges
1. Outsource to Expert and Specialized Service Providers. This will come in handy especially if you do not have the time or resources to produce your videos in-house.
2. Using HOTH Video may also help you with this. In this case, your blog content will be turned into highly engaging quality videos to use.
- Visit the HOTH Video website and deliver your primary content.
- With the help of professional scriptwriting experts, the content will be edited into a video script.
- The experts will then shoot a High Definition (HD)-quality video of a professional actor in their studio using the created script.
- Professional title cards and b-roll will be added in the process.
- Finally, the cut version and YouTube description will be delivered to you to upload.
Bottom Line Crucial Points to Note
- Video SEO still remains the incredible yet untapped opportunity in 2018. What many don’t realize is the fact that it is way easier compared to the long and tedious process of Google optimization. Besides, YouTube is likely to promote your video for free provided you optimize it right.
- With over 25% of Google searches reported to have at least one video in them, you may as well achieve better ranking in the SERPs using well optimized YouTube videos.
- Selecting video topics doesn’t have to be hard either especially when you already have the primary content on your blogs which you can easily turn into videos.
- During YouTube video production, the main factors to consider are watching time and level of engagement
- Always ensure you are using tags to get into recommended videos, where a high volume of traffic is found.
- Finally, in order to multiply your view velocity and reach, you will need to promote the videos on your blog, emailing your list, pushing them on social media and using paid search.
Visual information is more likely to be digested by the human brain and for this reason, a majority of people prefer sharing visual content which makes it necessary for you to integrate video into your digital marketing strategies. With the information herein, it is time you launched a visual marketing campaign to see how it turns around your digital marketing efforts.
Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “Video Marketing Doesn’t Have to be Hard, Follow This Simple Guide” was first published on Small Business Trends