Updated: August 3, 2013
Last week, we discussed how YouTube videos have become an integral part of web, and that businesses who don’t promote video content through YouTube could be missing out on an opportunity to reach a very large audience.
As we said before, YouTube gets more views in one hour than 10 Super Bowls put together!!
With that in mind, we went on to explain the most critical element of optimizing your YouTube videos for maximum search rankings and viewership – keywords.
Read Part I to learn more about how and why keywords are so invaluable, and the different places you need to be sure you’ve optimized. Believe it or not, many sites we evaluate fail at this most basic task.
And continue reading to learn more about the remaining 7 tips for optimizing your YouTube content – while not as critical as keywords, setting things a certain way will ensure your video is fully optimized.
Allow Comments: This isn’t critical for rankings, but it’s recommended you allow comments for your videos. Disabling comments means you may miss out on valuable customer interaction. To further engage your audience, include a solicitation for comments in your video.
Syndication: Be sure and click “yes” for syndication. This will spread your video to other channels people access through mobile devices or TVs. This is a large, and fast growing demographic.
Privacy – Set your video to “public” unless you’re working on it.
Embedding & Inbound Links – To increase views and overall exposure, embed your video on other web sites, especially your own. Like webpages, inbound links to a YouTube video from another site is a positive ranking signal. Spread it around on social media outlets, other websites and related forums.
Try your Best to Keep Someone Viewing for 8 Seconds – YouTube considers a video to be “viewed” once 8 seconds have elapsed. Number of views is an important ranking signal for YouTube videos. Use YouTube Insights to see how long users are staying – are they only watching the first few seconds, or are they watching the whole thing?
Choose your Thumbnail Wisely – These small images can increase your overall click-through-rate (CTR). Go to “My Video > Edit > Video Thumbnail” and choose the best one you can. If you’re a YouTube Partner, you can upload a custom image. But read the guidelines carefully – any violation could result in a permanent revocation of this privilege.
Develop Playlists – If you have a group of videos, develop a playlist!! This will help increase viewership by keeping visitors in one location. Take your time and group your videos in a logical order.
Following these recommendations, and the tips regarding keywords in Part I will go a long way to ensuring your YouTube videos are fully optimized for the search engines and maximum viewership.
Keep in mind that optimizing videos for YouTube shares a lot of similarities with optimizing a website for search engines.
If you’re filming interviews, check out Nathan’s piece from last year to ensure you have proper lighting and positioning. Having poor quality interviews or footage will most certainly discourage viewership.