How to Drive Traffic to Your YouTube Videos
YouTube is the second-largest search engine and also the third most-visited website in the world, only behind Google and Facebook. Find out the seven steps it takes for you to drive traffic to your YouTube videos.
Posting content on Facebook and Twitter can be quick and simple, however making videos take time. Many companies focused in reaching their audiences via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, but YouTube receives over 1 billion unique monthly visitors and it has about 6 billion hours of videos to watch each month. Those numbers…let it all just sink in. The biggest challenge is getting people to see your videos and through these seven steps, it can potentially drive traffic to your YouTube videos.
1) Research Keywords: Head over to the YouTube keyword tool and check how many searches specific queries receive per month. Type in the keyword that best describe your video’s theme. At the top right of the query results, select exact to see how many people are searching for your exact keyword.
2) Look around at Your Competitors: In order to check YouTube for competition, do quick searches with your select keywords. Popping up should be the number of results, they are your competition. Keep in mind that it will take longer when you compete for highly competitive keywords.
3) Name Video File and Upload a Thumbnail: To search engine, text content is key. Text is important to search engine since it determines what words to rank your video for. A good way to include text is by having your keyword in the filename of the video that you upload to YouTube. Having an enticing thumbnail will increase the click-through rate of your video and can lead to more views with ultimately higher ranking. It’s best to upload a relevant picture with text and colors edited in in order for it to stand out among the competition.
4) Include Title, Description, and Meta Tags: Make sure in the video title has keywords. The maximum character count is 100; make sure your title is clear and concise. It will be harder to be rank high for that keyword if you use more words in addition to the targeted keyword. YouTube allows you to tag your videos with appropriate phrases and words; you can add your keyword and a few variations that include your keyword. Added related keywords will allow your video to show up in the “related videos” section for other videos.
5) Enabled closed captions: One of YouTube’s functions is a video transcription function that enables closed captions. YouTube will automatically match the script to the words that are being said in the video when you paste the script in the box. This method helps search engine text to crawl.
6) Call to Action: Encourage your viewers’ engagement with calls to action. The views number can be detrimental if audience retention is low since people tend to have short attention spans on the internet. Generate better ranking by using calls to actions with your viewers on the “likes-to-dislikes ratio.” You can’t control the dislikes but you can control the amount of people liking by simply asking “Hit the like button if you’re ________.” Furthermore, pose a question somewhere in the video or description in order to stir up conversation in the comments section. The more activities in the comment section, the more important your video will be deemed by YouTube.
7) Embed Your Video: Create inbound links by embedding the video, you can do this on your own blog or website and you should contact influencers in your niche about having your video embedded on their website. Embedded video does not have anchor text so you want to focus on the on-page optimization factors.
Reach your target audience by exposing your videos to the millions of people who goes on YouTube. Optimizing YouTube can be your greatest asset next to Facebook and Twitter.
To learn about these steps in more detail, visit this blog
