Starting out as a new creator on YouTube can be quite frustrating, especially if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing when it comes to SEO. All that potential competition doesn’t help either!
I guess it’s a good thing you happened upon this article. I’m going to teach you some valuable information, so get out your notebook and get ready to write this down.
What You’ll Learn
- 5 Advanced SEO techniques to implement into your videos
- The importance of overlooked aspects in video
- How to increase your viewers & subscribers
- Just how powerful a new feature on YouTube really is
Things To Do Before Uploading
Making a video on YouTube is a lot more work than people might think. Let me throw down some things you should do before you begin to upload your video:
- Decide what you want your video to be about. Will it be popular? Does it even get searched for? ( TubeBuddy can help you out with that)
- Go ahead and do a little bit of keyword research. Make sure that there’s a good amount of people looking for your topic. There’s few things more disappointing than putting a ton of effort into a video then it gets no traction, so make sure that won’t happen.
- Establish yourself as an authority. Speak fluently in your video if it’s commentary. Make sure the finished product is crisp, clean, and all around looks good.
- STOP putting music in your video if you don’t know what you’re doing. Background music never hurts, but make sure it’s soft and you’re still easy to hear. Believe it or not, not everyone likes your favorite genre of music, so put something more generic in the background. Make sure the music that you use won’t get your video copyrighted. This results as a strike on your channel and can really hinder its growth.
1. Write A Long, Thought Out Description
More often than not, I see crappy descriptions. This is one of the best spots to put additional RELEVANT keywords that you want to rank for.
Remember that YouTube/Google can’t listen to what’s going on in your video (yet) so the best way to get their attention is to write a super long description.
It can also help to put a written guide/detailed description of exactly what’s going on in the video. This is an amazing way to just flood in keywords (don’t over do it) that can help to get you ranked in the SERP’s.
I try to put descriptions that are between 100-200 words. Don’t be afraid to do more! Heck, go ahead and write a small article in there if you’d like, it definitely won’t hurt anything.
Make sure you use relevant keywords to your topic in there, and don’t use it as a spot to put additional tags. This is against the YouTube community guidelines and could result in the removal of your video, or even a strike on your channel.
2. Take Advantage Of Social Media
A gem that is often overlooked by some creators is the absolute power of social media.
Google+ has its communities, Facebook its groups, even popular forums like Blackhat world. Take advantage of these every moment you can.
I always write a short description (between 10-20 words, but go ahead and make them longer if you want) of what the video is about along with a link to go with it. From here I go around the post it to the relevant communities I belong to.
You can always split test this. Upload 2 different videos at the same time but make sure they’re related.
Share one out on a ton of social media platforms, and then leave the other one alone. Wait for a week or two and compare the statistics. I guarantee the video you shared out will have a substantial amount of views more than the other one.
Always make sure that your video is full of quality information so you don’t get marked as a spammer. That wouldn’t be good for reputation or view conversion.
3. Use A Forgotten Treasure – Playlists
I’m sure you’ve heard at one point or another that playlists are important. But do you realize just how much they can actually help you?
Take a minute and go search for something on YouTube at random. If it’s popular enough, I’m certain a playlist (instead of a single video) will show up on the first page of results.
That could be your playlist on the front page, and could result in THOUSANDS of extra views every month! Interestingly enough, you can optimize a playlist just like you would a video.
You can see for the above search, the first result on the first page (excluding ads) is a playlist.
I’m going to assume you have your playlist already made with videos in it. Go to your YouTube dashboard > video manager (on the left) > playlists. Find the one you want to edit and click the “edit” button all the way on the right.
From here you can edit/add a title and description to be keyword rich. This will help a lot when it comes to getting your playlist ranked, but it always helps to have quality content in there, too.
If you want, you can even mess with other more “hidden” features such as the auto playlist add for your new videos that will make your life a little bit easier.
4. Optimize Around YouTube & Google
Getting your video to rank in YouTube is great and all, but a lot of people don’t try to get their video ranked in Google as well, and that’s a mistake. Having a ranking video in Google goes back to doing some more keyword research.
Say you want to make a video about “Best Youtube SEO Strategies”. Go over to Google, and do a quick search on what the basic title of your video would be.
You can see that the 4th result down is a video. This tells you that videos can rank on Google for this search term, but it wouldn’t be the best.
If I change my search to “Call of Duty tutorials” look at how the search results change:
Now out of the first 4 results, 3 of them are videos! This tells you that this would be a better keyword to target to get your video ranked on YouTube and Google.
Once you know what kind of video would be good to try to rank for in Google’s SERP’s, go wild with your optimization and keyword research!
5. Encourage Likes & Subscriptions With Annotations
You hear people in just about every video asking for you to like their video and subscribe. Nothing wrong with this, but why not throw a call-to-action in there as well?
Studies have shown that visuals are more appealing & effective to most people when it comes to having them do something.
If someone has made it the whole way through your video, chances are they like what they saw. Take advantage of that while you have the chance! I’ve found that throwing up an annotation telling them to subscribe at the same time you ask them to in the video has helped to increase subscriptions from that video.
6. Make Sales & Subscribers Skyrocket With YouTube Cards
YouTube cards are a new feature, similar to annotations, that YouTube has released to their creators. Truth is they’re a ton more powerful than annotations.
They add a new layer of interactivity to your video that hasn’t been seen before, and has real potential to rake in a few extra bucks!
Here’s the basis on them:
- You must implement them on a per-video basis (yes, you have to remake them on every video, but it’s worth it!)
- You provide the destination URL, and depending upon the card type you choose, upload an image, put in a title, and call-to-action text.
- They work on desktop/laptop AND on mobile…
…why is that so important you ask?
According to Youtube statistics, half (or more) of YouTube views are on mobile, but we’ve never been able to send them to external sites – until now.
Even better yet, mobile revenue is up 100%! Simply said, if you execute these cards right – you’ll see an increase in your total earnings across YouTube & even your own site.
Conclusion
If you take a couple minutes out of your day and follow these 6 advanced YouTube techniques, I promise you’ll see growth in your channel.
Before you know it, you’ll be on your way to making an online career off of your content!
Remember though, video watch time is extremely important to how your video ranks as well. Luckily for you, I know exactly how to increase your viewer retention time.