YouTube is the biggest search engine in the United States, with over 24 hours of video uploaded every minute and over 2 billion video views a day. A lot of companies think they are ahead of the mark when it comes to social media and video simply because they are uploading videos to YouTube. However, without proper SEO of video title, description, and keywords (along with profile information), your videos may fail to garnish large amounts of view and traffic.
Tantalizing Titles
All titles must not only include what the video is about but also who created it. For example, in a promotional video about an event sponsored by a company, a proper title might be, “[COMPANY] [EVENT NAME] | Learn About [EVENT NAME] [YEAR] From [PERSON IN VIDEO]”
Here’s an actual example: “VinSolutions NADA | Learn about NADA 2011 from Sean Stapleton” I like to use the | in titles because it breaks up the content.
Delightful Descriptions
The description character limit on YouTube is a whopping 1000 characters, which is a lot considering the space. To give you an estimate on what 1000 characters looks, like the end of this sentences is 1187 characters from the top, counting the spaces. Most character limit fields count the spaces.
Many SEO professionals recommend listing a link or your website URL in the very beginning of a YouTube description so it won’t get cut off. This would definitely get more clicks than if the URL was placed at the end, and the viewer had to click ‘more’ in order to view the entire description. An easy way to put the URL at the beginning without seeming spammy is to follow the below examples:
- Brought to you by http://www.moxiedot.com
- To learn more, visit http://www.moxiedot.com
These are presenting the links as a service to the viewer instead of as an inconvenience.
Proficient Profiles
My YouTube Channel Profile
There are several other valuable SEO opportunities in the YouTube profile fields. The following fields are those that can be utilized in order to drive traffic to your channel and videos:
- Name: Be sure to list your company name or full name
- Website: MAKE SURE your website is listed.
- Headline: A summary of what videos that users can expect. I made sure to put ‘Kansas City’ in mine, since that is where I live. However, a better description for my channel might be, “Kansas City concerts, family videos, and traveling experiences around the United States and Europe.”
- About me: A basic summary of who you or your company is. This might include your mission statement or a brief summary of what you offer professionally. I made sure to include ‘social media’ and ‘freelance writer’.
- Occupation: Even if you are setting up a company profile, use the occupation field to list your industry.
- Interests: List what you offer product-wise or what your videos may be about. Think of this field as a keyword field for your channel.
Is there anything I missed? Let me know in the comments.
You may also want to read: YouTube Statistics
Kelsey Jones
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Also, it is important to optimize your file name prior to uploading! Even if you change the default title to something else Youtube indexes under your original file name as well.
Excellent post. This is where many people fall short on driving traffic to their site. They know they should post that video to YouTube…. but then what?
Do you recommend linking YouTube videos to Facebook fan pages or uploading separately on the fan page?
I think you should post the videos to your facebook account, and then set it up to automatically post to Facebook and Twitter. YouTube videos have more functionality and they are easier to play on smartphones than Facebook Videos.
break up the content with what? Is that a pipe or a forware slash?
Use a pipe, search engines don’t count them.