Five Tips to Improve SEO Using YouTube

To most marketers, YouTube is known for its possibilities regarding word-of-mouth, viral marketing and for its integration possibilities within other environments.

Think about the ways you can use YouTube as a blogger, within social media and increasingly in other communication and marketing channels.

However, since Google started including YouTube in its search engine results, the most popular online video sharing platform is gaining attention for search engine optimization purposes.

There are dozens of possibilities to get your video (channel) found in Google. Now, why would you want that? Well, first of all, because as a marketer you will put your online videos for a reason: that they get seen and spread. However, also because your YouTube channel can be a traffic builder towards your site or blog. Now, don not think that YouTube tomorrow will become your first source of traffic. But if your online videos are relevant, people will be curious to see who’s behind them, and of course you can always get your URL in the video itself.

Here are some tips to get your YouTube videos and/or channels found in Google’s search engine results.

1. Attention: incoming links

The more valuable and high-ranked websites, blog posts, etc. link to your online ‘property’, the higher it will be placed in the search results.

The same is true for videos. So do not forget to set up a link to your video and video channel on blogs, websites, Facebook, Twitter (and whatever you use) to ensure that they can be found more easily.

2. Describe what people will see

Describing what your online video is about doesn’t only make sense from a user viewpoint, it’s also a known fact that descriptive titles and tags (keywords) are good for SEO (think about the images in your blog).

Again, the same is true for videos. Make sure that you have a catchy title (you need to attract attention anyway) but also that it contains the right keywords. Also make maximum use of descriptive tags.

3. Create links to video responses

One of the best ways to be indexed by Google is to have other online pages and posts refer to your video. YouTube facilitates this directly with ‘video responses’. Search YouTube for videos related to yours, and add your video as a video response.

This creates a link between your video and another video. This will not only fetch you more viewers, but both Google and YouTube will also be better able to find your video.

4. Create links to playlists

Another way to use internal links is to make a playlist with your video and other related and highly popular videos.

Playlists are often assigned a higher placement within search engines. In addition, videos in playlists are more often displayed in the ‘Related Videos’ list in the sidebar when a video is being played.

5. Encourage ratings and comments

It is rumored that Google only indexes videos with a certain rating. True or not? Who will tell? Anyway, ratings are used to distinguish between videos on the same subject. This works in the same way as page-ranking. So it’s important to encourage viewers to rate the video.

Similarly, comments on videos also help to better index your video and make it easy to find. It is therefore wise to encourage viewers to post a comment.