With the ability to affect page one Google search results, YouTube videos have been a great digital marketing tool for years. Many marketers, however, still aren’t taking full advantage of all YouTube has to offer. So here are five tips for how to use YouTube video marketing to improve SEO, conversion rates and increase site traffic.
1. What’s Old is New
A great way to keep your rankings up within YouTube’s search engine is by keeping old content fresh. In YouTube’s eyes, your Channel appears to be active and useful every time changes are made to old video titles, descriptions, tags and Closed Captions. Otherwise, when your old videos aren’t being viewed or updated, they aren’t appearing in YouTube search results (or – in turn – Google search results).
2. Put It into Words
Although Closed Captions are an old feature within YouTube, many videos still lack them. Both YouTube and Google search engines scan all text fields within YouTube, which includes your Closed Captions. So not only are they helpful for the hearing impaired, but by using SEO-rich keywords and phrases, they can also drive additional organic traffic to your website.
3. Get Social
Too often, marketers seem to forget that YouTube is, by its very nature, a social platform. It was created as a way to share content with others across the Web and never fails to generate audience interaction. Take advantage of this by becoming more social within the platform, making other users more likely to engage with your own content. A few ways to become a more active user are subscribing to other users’ content, becoming friends with other users, commenting, video respond and like/dislike content from within your own videos’ same niche.
4. Give Direction
By placing annotations in your YouTube video content, you’re able to share additional information, such as a website URL, another video link or a call to action. Use calls to action within your annotations to give viewers clear instructions on where they should go next. That way, you can lead them to your landing page, to an article or a download.
5. Embed
If you’re successfully driving traffic to your website or blog, don’t lead them away from the site by linking to an external YouTube video. Instead, use the embedding tool to place your YouTube video directly on your company’s website or blog, keeping visitors where you want them most. When embedding videos, it’s important to remember to Sitemap those videos on Google. This gives SEO power to your videos and website by informing Google that your video content actually exists on your site.