Increase Your YouTube Organic Reach

YouTube is the third biggest website in the world, and its built-in search engine is second only to users regarding traffic. Consider than Google also includes YouTube content in its search results and it’s obvious that YouTube is something you simply can’t ignore. The following tips can help you to drive organic search on this increasingly important platform.

Establish A Reputation

Just as you would with your website, your YouTube channel needs to be seen as an authoritative source. Start by completing your channel profile, including a profile photo and a channel trailer that gives visitors a quick introduction to your brand and an idea of what they can expect to find on your channel.

Use Keyword Research For Your Videos

Improving organic search on YouTube is a pretty familiar process, starting with keyword optimization. The Google AdWords Keyword Planner is a good tool for finding search volume and competition for target keywords to integrate into your video’s title, description, and tags.

Optimize Your Videos

You can start optimizing YouTube videos even before they’re uploaded to the site. Optimize everything you can, including the filename. Most video editing software allows you to add at least some information to the file; you might also be able to add additional information to the video file by right clicking your file and selecting properties.

Once you’ve uploaded your video, you can also do some optimization using YouTube’s interface. You can enter all of the basic information including title, tags and description and this works much the same as any other on-site SEO. Your title should be no more than 55 characters and it should, if at all possible, include your target keyword. The description should be no more than 160 characters, and as you’ve probably guessed, it should be the same as the file’s meta description. Doing this probably won’t help your video rank higher in Google search, but the keywords here will be bolded in Google results, which can help it stand out.

YouTube gives you 5,000 characters for a description of your video (roughly 700 – 800 words), which gives you a lot of room for additional optimization. Think of this as a page of keyword optimized content to promote your video.

Promote Your Content

Having great content only goes so far if you can’t engage your audience. To do this, you’ll want to help YouTube’s search engine understand why it should rank your video more highly – getting ratings by sharing your video on social media is an important first step. If you have a blog, share your video there; if you have a mailing list, provide subscribers with a link. Every little bit of outreach helps build your reputation on YouTube and create a prominent presence on this large and constantly growing platform.

Author Bio: Mark Long is a researcher and blogger with experience writing on multiple topics including SEO, AdWords, PPC, and more. He is currently writing for Saba SEO.