9 YouTube SEO Hacks that will Boost your Videos

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9 YouTube SEO Hacks that will Boost your Videos
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As the second-largest search engine in the world,
YouTube is a premier video sharing platform.
Significantly, out of 10 video search results 8
are YouTube videos. The numbers keep growing,
every minute over 500 hours of video are uploaded
to YouTube. With the number of uploads increasing
on a day-to-day basis, how can a video uploaded
by a user stay afloat and be noticed?. The only
way it can be done is publishing the videos, and
optimising them for search, through the best
video SEO practices implementation.
Having an active YouTube SEO strategy provides
positive outcomes. Other than the basics of
including keywords in title, description, and
tags, and considering that search engines can
only crawl text, having a full accurate
transcript of the video influences the search
results for YouTube videos.
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As the second-largest search engine in the world,
YouTube is a premier video sharing platform.
Significantly, out of 10 video search results 8
are YouTube videos. The numbers keep growing,
every minute over 500 hours of video are uploaded
to YouTube. With the number of uploads increasing
on a day-to-day basis, how can a video uploaded
by a user stay afloat and be noticed?. The only
way it can be done is publishing the videos, and
optimising them for search, through the best
video SEO practices implementation.
Having an active YouTube SEO strategy provides
positive outcomes. Other than the basics of
including keywords in title, description, and
tags, and considering that search engines can
only crawl text, having a full accurate
transcript of the video.influences the search
results for YouTube videos.
Designing web content that will rank higher in
search engine results pages (SERPs) is a key
element in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Similarly, YouTube SEO entails optimising
channel, playlists, meta data, and description.
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Besides the video itself can be optimised for
search within YouTube, and outside it. Anything
in text in the form of transcripts, closed
captions, and subtitles associated with the video
is a key factor in YouTube SEO.
The YouTube Search Functionality
After Googles ownership of YouTube, the outreach
of videos in video search has increased
dramatically, since data is seamlessly shared
between the two companies. Uploading videos to
YouTube gets it a beneficiary advantage of being
indexed by Google immediately. The bots crawl the
videos in the shortest period of time, and
submitting a new video site map is no longer
essential.
Nonetheless, despite the close partnership
between Google and YouTube, the fundamentals of
SEO still apply for the growth of the viewership
of videos. An optimised content is an essential
element for search engines to index and find
YouTube videos. In the context of the videos to
go viral, Google must have the necessary
information of the content of the video.
Therefore, the search engine bots are guided by
the accompanying data for indexing them
methodically.
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The title of the video, description and tags are
the key elements. Not many YouTube users however
realize that closed captions and transcripts
positively influences user engagement, watch
time, viewership, and obviously SEO.
The nine key fundamentals to increase viewership
on YouTube and improve video search rank are
Doing Away YouTube's ASR Captions and Adding
Accurate Closed Captions.
An automatic transcription option has been added
by YouTube, however the auto-caption tool has the
capability of delivering only 70 accurate
captions, which at times become difficult to
comprehend. Remember Google has a policy of
rewarding helpful and informative content, and
penalizes spam.
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One of the classification of spam is defined as
automatically generated gibberish, in other
words, the automatic caption files fit that
description aptly. It certainly would be a risk
uploading or using inaccurate captions, this
would lead to the video being determined as spam,
the search ranking as a result would be lost for
the whole YouTube channel.
In order to prevent the detrimental effects of
adding ASR captions for YouTube SEO, adding
accurate closed captions to YouTube videos would
be an ideal solution. Since search engines are
not programmed to watch videos, they can only
crawl text, having a video transcript with
relevant keywords added to indicate the gist of
the video will have Google crawl the content and
rank it in accordance.
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Auto Speech Recognition (ASR) captions can be
unfavorable for the cause of YouTube SEO, it is
always desirable to add accurate closed captions
to videos. Having a keyword rich transcript will
have Google crawl the content, and rank it in
accordance. If it is time sensitive or the user
is not inclined to work on something beyond their
realm of activity, a transcription and captioning
company can be called upon to fulfill their needs.
Improved Search Ranking
Adding captions to videos contributes to better
SEO ranking, a prominent media company found out
doing research, the views increased by 13.48 in
the first two weeks after captions were added,
and overall views increased by 7.32. As a means
to better understand the relevance of keywords,
the company searched for a keyword phrase that
was only available in their video captions, with
no trace of it in the title, description, tags,
or metadata. They found that Google had crawled
the caption text, and the video received a
favorable ranking for the phrase.
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Improved User Engagement
Adding closed captions to videos results in
improved user engagement, getting more likes,
shares, and comments than videos that do not have
captions. More engagement, improved the video
search rank, it results in more views, as per a
study by YouTube, captioned videos receive 4
more views.
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Improved Web Accessibility
Adding closed captions to videos makes it easily
accessible to viewers who are deaf or hard of
hearing. Besides, with sound muted in public
places or workplaces, captions make it possible
for viewers to watch and enjoy the videos,
without silence protocols being breached.
Transcript of the Video Has A Marketing Outreach
YouTube allows adding 4,580 characters including
space in the description field of the videos.This
feature enables displaying the transcript of the
video, potentially for a 10-minute video that is
heavily dialogue oriented. If the transcript
exceeds that limitation, a shortened version can
be displayed, with a link to the full version on
a different webpage.
The search engines reference the video
description field of the videos to index them, a
keyword-optimised transcript will boost the SEO
efforts of the YouTube videos.
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How can video transcripts help marketers?
Many marketers fail to explore the full potential
of transcripts, unlike a few prominent brands
that have realized its potential value and
through it have extended the reach of their
videos. As a Content Marketing Manager of a media
company pointed out that interesting videos can
be a beginning for content creation and a
valuable component for targeted inbound marketing
efforts. She explains that video content can be
leveraged for content marketing through video
transcripts as secondary content.
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SEO can be optimised, using a video transcript,
it can be shared, either as blogs, infographics,
whitepapers, fact sheets or even website copy.
In a way, a video transcript can be a handy
component for a marketing shortcut.
Offering Multilingual Subtitles Through A
Translated Video Transcript
The audience reach can be further expanded
providing subtitles in other languages in a
similar way as English captions that enable video
accessibility to more viewers. As Brad Ellis,
the YouTube Product Manager at Google explained
in a streaming media conference that 80 of views
on YouTube come from outside of the United
States, which is huge, and much of it is
non-English. He stressed on the importance of
translating captions, emphasising that it was a
huge opportunity for growth. Further stating that
their organization is also seeing a huge demand
from non-English uploaders as well to get their
content translated.
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Videos receive an extended reach when foriegn
language subtitles are added enabling non-native
English speaking viewers to understand and enjoy
them. An added advantage is attained, the search
engines index the translated caption files to
include them in search results of those
languages. This will have a great potential for
YouTube SEO, providing an opportunity of ranking
higher for non-English keywords with limited
competition to confront. It is important however
that translations are absolutely accurate.
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An Optimised Keyword, Title, Description, and Tags
An important SEO element is determining
appropriate keyword and keyword phrases that
accurately corresponds with the video
description, and words and phrases users were
most likely to enter in search engines that match
the content of the video.
As an example, if videos about hair styling are
published, the title, description, and tags must
correspond to it accurately as hair styling
video. Search engines have smart filters to
identify overstuffed keywords, the urge of
over-using keywords or variations of keywords to
hack the system should be desisted, making sure
that keywords are targeted at humans, not robots,
or the user will have to bear the consequences of
getting penalized.
YouTube offers a free video analytics tool to
determine what phrases and keywords are being
used in search. It offers a range of effective
keywords for targeted audiences. Most
importantly, a variation of keywords should be
chosen which has less competition, this will have
the potential of favorable end result.
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Google Trends and Google Adwords Keyword Planner
are important tools for reference to determine
phrases that are popular in search queries.
Long tail keywords would be more appropriate
for individual videos, being more specific and
targeted. Just as an example hair styling videos
for boys will have a better keyword target value
than just hair styling videos.
After selecting the keywords, they need to be
entered into the following fields.
Title Consisting of 100 characters, shortened at
66 characters, with important information
included in the first 66 characters. Better
results can be potentially accomplished using
persuasive or compelling language, for example
how to, advice, tips, or numbered lists
will have a better click through rate
Meta Description 5,000 characters can be
accomodated, but Google generally shortens
snippets to 155160 characters.
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However keeping the meta descriptions long enough
for it to be sufficiently descriptive is a good
practice, so the recommended descriptions can be
between 50160 characters.
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Tags 120 characters can be accommodated into the
meta tags. Google however displays 50-60
characters of a title tag. So keeping the titles
under 60 characters enables an accurate display
of 90 of the title.
If a video is supposedly posted on several
domains other than YouTube, the keyword phrases
need to be slightly varied, unless a user wants
to setoff a competition within his own domains
across different sites.
Using honest and relevant terms is a good SEO
practice, rather than harping on trending topics
that may not be relevant to the users video
content, and which would invite a negative score
later.
Targeted Keyword A Part of the Video
As mentioned earlier, the targeted keyword should
be a part of the title, description, tags, and
the transcript. Since YouTube too ranks the video
referencing the transcript and captions, the
importance of an accurate transcript should never
be ignored. Auto-Captions cannot be relied upon,
the inaccuracies would result in keyword
advantage being lost.
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YouTube offers a tool called Search Suggest,
typing a word or phrase into the search bar,
outputs a set of keywords. These are based on
terms that users would be searching for. Keywords
can also be determined through the YouTube Search
Report (under Traffic Sources gt YouTube search).
The value of a good keyword can also be known by
searching for it on YouTube, the About results
generated can help determine the popularity of
the key word, and how many users may have used
it. However, choosing a low-competition keyword
makes better sense.
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Video SEO Embed for Improved SERP
As stated earlier, videos are prioritized in
Google search results, however if the meta-data
is not appropriate, it wont be prioritized by
the search engine. An automation tool can be used
to provide information to Google understand
details about the video, such as a detailed
description, thumbnail URL, upload date, and
duration.
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This tool embeds all the information into the
head of the webpage. In marking up the
information of the video with Google search, it
becomes easier for people to discover and watch
the videos. This will have videos appear in
Google Search results, video search results,
Google Images, and Google Discover. In addition
to optimising the video on YouTube, if it is also
optimised in Google, the videos get 2-5x more
views.
Improving User Engagement
Viewer responses to a users content is of prime
importance to Google, they look at the following
aspects
Watch Time Data
Watch time reporting provides an insight into the
amount of time people spend watching videos or
video ads.
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This data helps understand the interaction of the
people with the video ads, and which are the
videos viewers watch the longest, besides how
long the content is keeping people engaged, even
after the ads are skipped.
Assuming a viewer watched a 10-minute video for
5-minutes of duration or until 50 percent
completion, this will get the video a higher
ranking than a 3-minute video that was watched
one-hundred percent.
This makes it important that the first 15 seconds
of the video is packed with teasers to hook the
viewer. If the video is about a DIY project, the
finished product should find a place in the
beginning of the video, to sustain the interest
of the viewer
Session Watch Time
This is another important measure of user
engagement. The contributing factor that YouTube
takes into account is the overall time spent by
the viewer during the viewing session.
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All aspects of the viewing session are taken into
account, was the video viewed until the end, or
did the viewer leave the site midway, or in fact
watched a couple of more videos.
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The more time viewers spend watching videos, it
meets the objectives of YouTube. However, as
website owners, this goes against their SEO
goals, because the videos created were to bring
visitors to their website, but it was moving them
away to YouTube instead.
Analysing User Intent
Analysing user objectives is something Google
does with extreme diligence, they have a perfect
understanding of searchers needs. In this
context, compelling video titles play a decisive
role in search rankings. Desist the temptation of
using plagiarized titles, just because they
happen to be the top ranking searched phrases or
terms. It makes better sense to answer a users
question in the title of the video, while the
search term can be included into the description,
Google will be more appreciative and rewarding.
Extending Subscriber Base
Videos generate a lot of watch time during the
first week they are published. The first seven
days are crucial for productive user engagement.
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Its a good practice notifying subscribers to
provide them regular schedules, and letting them
know when they can expect the publication of a
new video.
Making Good Use of Playlist
This is another way of boosting user engagement,
creating relevant, short sub categorised
playlists. This facilitates sharing multiple
videos simultaneously by sharing the playlist
instead of sending the subscriber a link to one
video.
Video Marketing Best Practices YouTube
How YouTube Can Be Explored As A Productive
Marketing Platform?
An online survey of 600 online respondents that
included senior marketing personnel provided
their feedback to the WVMC and ReelSEO.
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They shared their marketing strategies, many of
the personnel believed that videos had great
potential, and were assimilating it into email
marketing, social media and content
creation. Over 65 of respondents in the survey
stated that they had posted YouTube videos on
their websites.
What options can companies follow for embedding
videos on their websites?
Looking at the options of optimising websites
through video, there are two possibilities that
can be explored, both will provide different
results. If a companys marketing goals are set
at driving viewership and branding, YouTube will
fit their needs, because eight out of ten videos
results are assimilated to YouTube. It would be
absolutely naive on the part of any marketing
strategy to overlook the importance of YouTube as
a marketing platform.
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Standalone media player on the company website
Nonetheless, marketers also need to take into
account the negative fallout of web marketing
cannibalization, driving visiting audiences away
to YouTube, is not the best of marketing
policies. A simple work-around would be to embed
videos on the company website through a
standalone media player.
The video landing page can be optimised, through
relevant keywords and a video transcript. For
better results, visitors can be provided with a
clear path that will guide them towards a goal.
After a period of time, when promotion and
traffic to the video page has slowed down, the
video can be placed on YouTube, optimising the
YouTube video page, following the same principles
of adding keyword variances, captions, and
transcript.
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