7 Video Marketing Tips to Improve Your YouTube Rankings

Although many companies realize the power of video marketing, many still aren’t sure how to make it work for them. Here’s why video marketing should be a vital piece of your marketing and SEO strategy:

• 90% of customers say that video helps with their buying decisions ( Forbes)
  
• 64% say that seeing a video makes them more likely to buy (Forbes)
  
• Video marketers get 66% more qualified leads every year according to Aberdeen
  
• More than 80% of all internet traffic will be video by 2021 according to Cisco
  

If you decide to utilize video marketing to grow your business, there’s a good chance you’ll be using YouTube- the largest and most popular video hosting platform and only second to Google as the largest search engine. 1.3 million people watch almost 5 billion videos every day on YouTube. Just like Google’s search engine, users can type in what they’re looking for, and YouTube will provide information (in this case videos) that it deems relevant on its search engine results page (SERP). Just like Google, showing up near the top of that search is imperative for marketing success. Just like Google, consistently showing up near the top of the SERP doesn’t happen by accident; it takes effective SEO strategies. And that's where many small businesses get stumped.

If you can get more people to watch your videos more often and for a longer duration, you tend to rank better. Think of ways to make your videos more interesting and compelling so your viewers will want to watch longer and to check back more often.

While keywords aren’t as strong a ranking factor as they once were for regular Google searches, they are still important with YouTube. This is especially true if you’re able to match keyword phrases exactly, but even partially matching the keywords will help. Therefore, consider how people may be searching when you name and describe your video. If you’re not sure which keyword phrases are most popular, try several searches on Google and see what comes up, or start typing in the search bar and watch which Google suggestions appear as you type. Use the search phrases near the top of the list that best match what your video is about.

Titles of less than 50 characters and descriptions of 200-350 words generally rank best. Include the keywords you researched in step 2 in the title and description.

Although Google no longer uses meta keyword tags for search engine ranking purposes, YouTube still does. Use 2 to 3-word phrases and use a lot of them, but make sure they are relevant. Research shows that videos with 31 to 40 unique tags tend to do best. While keyword tags only help your video’s ranking somewhat, they can help your video appear as a recommended video. Recommended videos appear either to the right of or below the video viewers are currently watching. They’re also the next videos that play after the current video is done playing. Both of these things can help your video get more views, and more views lead to better ranking.

Remember the adage that shorter videos are always better? It turns out that when it comes to ranking on YouTube that isn’t always true. While videos that are four to six minutes get the most views, it’s the Videos that are 10-16 minutes long that get the best ranking. As with any type of content marketing, it’s good to keep this information in the back of your head, but it’s also essential that the length of the video makes sense for the type of information you’re sharing. If you’re showcasing a new product, the four to six minutes probably makes sense, but if you’re trying to explain a complex idea, the 10 to 16 minutes probably makes better sense.

A YouTube channel is kind of like a home page where you upload videos from your business. Viewers can subscribe to different channels, and those channels are listed whenever they visit YouTube. The research shows that channels increase watch time and tend to get more likes and comments than videos that are not listed in a YouTube channel. Having 1,000 subscriptions or more seems to boost both video ranking and the number of views.

Videos that are embedded on websites seem to have higher rankings, but the research was not able to prove which came first - if videos that ranked well were then embedded, or simply that embedded videos ranked better. Either way, though, if you’re going to make the effort to make a great video, then why not embed it into the related page on your website?

With the increasing popularity of online videos, it would be foolish to ignore video marketing. Apply these tips, and you may be surprised by the increased sales and leads you get online. Ignore video marketing and in time your rankings are likely to fall behind those of your video-savvy competitors.

Want to ramp up your social media marketing, video or search engine strategy? Give Power Marketing International a call at 484-297-6395 or contact us online to discover how we can help. Don’t forget to ask about PMI's Local SEO and Social Media Dashboard System to help you streamline and boost your efforts!

This post is adapted from a YouTube SEO Ranking Factor Study appearing on Briggsby .