While intimidation can work, there are easier ways to get viewers for your online videos.
In this post I’m going to reveal some key techniques for optimizing online videos for search and getting large amounts of traffic to our online videos.
I don’t talk about these techniques very often, but I think that, within the right hands, they can be worth solid gold. I believe that the most powerful way to influence another person is to speak with them directly, face-to-face. Since that’s not possible on the web, the closest thing to face-to-face communication is through online video.
I am now completely convinced that online video is by far the most effective way to sell anything online – it’s much better than text or design – but that’s only if it’s done properly.
In the next blog post, I’ll talk about how to create a compelling video script that will have new leads rushing to your online doorstep. But first, I want to reveal some of my carefully guarded secrets for optimizing your online videos for search engines and getting lots of views and traffic to them.
By far, the most important way to optimize an online video is to use the desired keyword phrase that you’d like to target in the video title. Include the same keyword phrase in the description of the video and in the tags.
So, let’s say that your video is about oil painting techniques, and you have an art gallery in Los Angeles. You would want to write your video title to be something like this:
“Los Angeles Art Gallery | Oil Painting Techniques”
By writing it in this format: {Keyword Phrase | Video Topic} or just {Keyword Phrase} you will ensure that you’ll get the maximum reward from Google when it comes to positioning your video within search rankings.
Remember that, as a rule of thumb, your desired keyword phrase should be closer to the beginning of the title.
Videos used to rank really well (better than many websites) back in 2007 and 2008. Now, it’s become considerably harder as Google has mixed up things up a bit.
But, you can still rank videos fairly easily for many local searches, and long-tailed keyword phrases. I created a video about property management about a year ago and got it to the top #1 ranking for the keyword phrase I was targeting (700+ search volume).
11 months later, it’s still on the first page:
I wrote the video title exactly as suggested in this post:
Encinitas Property Management – How to Rent your House in 10 Days! with “Encinitas Property Management” being the desired keyword phrase that I was optimizing for.
Google is the largest search engine but most of your video views will come from other sources, so proper optimization of videos have far-reaching effects, more so than one might realize, especially when you consider that videos continue to pull in traffic and viewers for years and years to come.
YouTube is the fifth-largest search engine. Your YouTube channel should contain a keyword. If it doesn’t, get a new channel.
One trick you can do is upload the same video at a different file size and optimize it for a different keyword phrase. In this way, you can have one video that ranks for numerous keyword phrases.
Pretty cool trick.
And, to get your videos really ranking high up on the first page, you can create some anchor text links that link directly to the YouTube video page. This is the same way you build links to articles or web pages, but you can rank videos even with zero backlinks to the video.
Encourage your friends to comment on your videos. Comments increase your videos ranking. Within an hour of uploading, send links to your video through all of your other platforms, such as your social media websites and your blog, and any other online publishing platforms you have, such as forums or by e-mailing friends within your circle.
The more views you can get within the first hour, the more likely your video will be labeled a “trending video” which will create a domino effect and get your video more views.
Also, you can buy Youtube Ads for about a penny a view. This is a great sure-fire way to get lots of traffic to your YouTube videos, as your video will be displayed as a “Featured Video” for folks watching other videos related to your topic.
Speaking of related topics, be sure and associate with popular, sought after brands or trending topics. You can do this by mentioning the trendy or popular topic within the first 30 seconds of the video, because YouTube and Google transcribe your video to text in order to find keywords to discover what your video’s content is about.
In the same vein, include your desired keyword phrases within the first 30 seconds as well. This will improve your search rankings and affect the levels of traffic you will get.
So how about the creation of the video itself? What do we want to actually say? What constitutes as an effective online video for marketing or promoting our business?
I will be telling you exactly what to say in the next blog post… so come back and check in a few days 😉
Danny Flood is the co-founder of LavaLink, and the brainchild behind this website. He has been an online marketing consultant for hundreds of small businesses and entrepreneurs, and is a frequent speaker on wordpress design and web marketing topics.
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