Original title: On-Page Video SEO Secrets
This is just the text part of the guide.
You can download the complete guide here: https://special.myimplace.com/youtube-seo/
Below it’s just a text version without pictures, so it’s a mess. Download the new updated version using the link above.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
UPLOADING VIDEOS 4
THE VIDEO FILE OPTIMIZATION 6
VIDEO TITLE OPTIMIZATION 9
VIDEO DESCRIPTION OPTIMIZATION 10
TAGS 13
CHOOSE THE CORRECT CATEGORY 15
ADD YOUR VIDEO TO PLAYLISTS 15
CHOOSE THE CUSTOM THUMBNAIL THAT CONVERTS 15
CLOSED CAPTIONS 15
ANNOTATIONS 18
CARDS 19
LOCATION 20
LANGUAGE 21
ADDITIONAL TIPS 21
FINAL WORDS 22
ON-PAGE VIDEO SEO SECRETS
INTRODUCTION
Hey. Congratulations on your smart decision of getting this guide.
My name is Luke Kubow and I’ve been doing online marketing for around 6 years now. I’m a digital agency business owner, I’ve been doing client SEO, affiliate SEO, I teach SEO and I’m a video ranking software creator. I love YouTube SEO and this is what people connect me with. Video is a content king and SEO is the most efficient way to generate high converting traffic, which means more sales and money.
In a few moments you will learn the most important thing when it comes to ranking videos – YouTube on-page optimization. It will give you an unfair advantage over your competition, because only small group of people has this knowledge.
Because most of authors write a lot of unnecessary things that only waste reader’s time, I want this publication to be as short as possible (I love nice and quick value injections – like in the Matrix) so let’s get to it.
UPLOADING VIDEOS
The video optimization starts before you upload the video.
- Quality matters
Make sure that your video is a good quality one. Some people recommend lower resolutions, but in my opinion HD (720 x 1280) should be a standard, and you can also use Full HD (1080 x 1920).
YouTube recognizes video quality and it’s natural that it promotes / ranks the good ones before the blurry ones.
- Ways to upload your video
There are three major ways to upload a video to YouTube and they differ when it comes to rankings.
- Live streams also known as live events
- Hangouts
- Regular uploads
For rankings the best are live events, hangouts take the middle spot and at the end are regular uploads. I use only options 1 and 3, because hangouts are past since the live streaming has begun.
Live events are the fastest way to rank high in both Google and YouTube. Most of the times it gives 1st page rankings instantly.
Disadvantages of this method are:
- a bit worse quality (invisible for most of the people, but I see it so I’m letting you know), and
- YouTube tends to cut videos longer than 3 minutes during the after-streaming processing. You can avoid that by adding some extra footage at the end of the video, so simply play with it. It’s important to watch the video after the upload to make sure that everything’s fine.
It’s still my number one ranking method and the best place to start further rankings, regardless of the keywords competition.
I use the live events for most of my videos, but for stricte brand promo videos when every pixel of the quality matters, I would suggest the regular uploads.
How to stream a video to YouTube?
There are several tools that you can use to stream a video as a live event.
The one I use is not available to the public now but there are alternatives:
And one time services on the Source Market:
If for some reasons those are not available you can just search for live events on the market.
(This guide is more about the strategy than about YouTube features itself, so if you want to know more about the live events simply Google it.)
What you need to keep in mind regardless of the method you use to upload your video, is that right after the upload it usually ranks high (especially after the streaming) and some time later your rankings may drop. YouTube and Google rank fresh content and this is one of the reasons it may happen.
Of course if you send backlinks to your video and embed it on several amount of blogs, there are pretty good chances that it stays where it is, goes higher or – ATTENTION – totally disappears from SERPs, even or especially when you do some backlinking. If it does, simply breathe, don’t panic and keep building your links and embeds along with social signals. Google likes to play with SEOs and when it looks like you don’t care about the rankings, the video after some time (few hours to even three weeks) comes back and most of the times comes back higher. This is what happens to me all the time and when I see my video disappeared I’m actually happy because I know I’m on a good way to dominate the SERPs.
I’ve never seen anybody was writing about this in any guide but it’s one of the most common questions in SEO Facebook groups.
THE VIDEO FILE OPTIMIZATION
Now it’s time to optimize the video file – it’s only for the regular uploads but it’s important to understand what’s it all about and I’ll tell you how to implement this tactic to the live streams in around 2-3 pages.
It’s for the Windows users only (sorry Mac users – Steve Jobs didn’t make that possible to you).
To do it:
- Change the name of your video file to your main keyword. For example to “how to lose weight.mp4”
- Right click on the file and from the bottom choose properties.
Then go to the Details tab and
- In the Title field paste your main keyword
- In the field right below it (it may be Album or Subtitle) paste your secondary keyword
- Hit the 5th star to give it 5 star rating
- In the Tags field paste your keywords
- In the Comments field paste your keywords too or write a keyword rich description
- You can scroll down and paste your and/or your company name as well, and the url of your website in the url field
- When you do this of course hit Apply to save the changes.
For beginners it’s recommended to use just one keyword as the file name.
For those targeting more than one keyword: your file name should consist of the keywords you’re targeting in format like this:
Keyword1-keyword2-kw3
For example: howtoloseweight-getridofbelly-slimfast
How To Do It For Live Events?
Simply put the keywords as the title in the form:
Kw 1 – kw 2 – kw 3 – etc.
For example: How To Lose Weight – Slim Fast – Get Rid Of Belly
After the video is uploaded to YouTube and ready to watch, you can simply change the title to more catchy one, to boost your CTR, which is a very important ranking factor.
VIDEO TITLE OPTIMIZATION
This is one of the most important parts of your video optimization.
- As I just mentioned it should by catchy. This way you will gain your Click Through Rate which is very very important. When people see compelling headline then they click it. Then Google thinks: “This is what they are looking for and this what has the desired value, so it’s the best, so I’ll push it higher”, and ranks it higher.
- Always add your main keyword in the title, if possible as the first words. This is so important and so basic that without it I can’t imagine ranking videos. REMEMBER: CTR is very important, so it’s better to use the keyword as a part of your title to make it look better (to make the visitors click on it and watch it) than just paste the rough keyword at the front without any sense or enticement.
- Use LSI or long tail/related keyword in the title as well. Ideally you can use another kw you want to rank for but remember to not over-optimize the title (nor any of the stuff you want to rank). For example if I would want to rank for “how to lose weight” and “how to lose weight fast”, then I would want to choose at least one more keyword which doesn’t stuff my headline with “how to lose weight”. Then my title would look something like this:
How To Lose Weight Fast – Get Rid Of Belly In Just 7 Days (VIDEO)
Do you see what I mean?
I used two keywords at the same time without over-optimization and added another kw I could rank for without looking spammy.
If you need a clue what keyword you may add to your main one in the title, simply go to the keyword research tools I listed below in the “Questions” paragraph or just type your targeting phrase in Google and see what it will show you at the bottom of the page.
I think you’re getting the idea.
- Some of SEOs say that phrase HOW TO and the word VIDEO at the end of the title tends to boost rankings. In my opinion it makes sense and SEO is about testing rather than stiff rules provided by Google, so simply play with it.
VIDEO DESCRIPTION OPTIMIZATION
Let’s get straight to the point:
Length
Ideally your description should be 300 – 400 words. Make sure it contains your keywords along with LSIs, kws taken from the Keyword Planner and from the related search terms I showed you above.
Questions
Also it’s nice to have questions here, which you answer in the video or/and in the description itself or article on your website, which you’re linking to.
Why?
Just because. – #KIDDING
It’s because people often search for things using words like “how, why, what, where, when” etc., and if you have these questions answered then Google can see it and ranks your video for these questions. Remember about it when you write your titles – I’ve already mentioned HOW TO, right?
TIP: When you create any type of content keep in mind that it needs to be good and helpful, and then SEO optimized, instead of super optimized bunch of crap.
Where to find these questions?
Simply use these free tools:
- WordZe (amazing tool)
- Keyword Planner Tool
- http://answerthepublic.com/
Your Main Keyword In The First Sentence
Your main keyword should be in the first sentence of the description, and ideally it should go first.
The first sentence has couple more of MUST-DOs:
- Put here LSI or another related keyword to make it more relevant.
- If you’re ranking an affiliate offer, your product or landing page then it’s important to have a live link here, so people could easy click it without clicking “Show More”
- If you’re ranking a local business it’s important that you have the contact info here (phone number or/and link to the website), so there was easy access to it – first, and second – so it was visible in the SERPs. Sometimes people call even without clicking on the video and these lead calls are what we do this for. You can also use the phone number as a part of the title.
(I blurred some parts to protect my client’s info, but I think you’re getting the idea – this is how people see the video while searching for local contractors in Google. As you can see they are able make a call without watching the video).
First Three Lines Need To Be Concise, Accurate And Catchy
Similar to the title – it gains CTR, and should be “long story short” of what’s your video about, and what to do – call to action, which is crucial for conversions.
For example:
“Learn how to lose weight in 17 days without any kind of hard-core diet or starving and at the end of the video you can claim a free exercise cheat sheet. You can also go to http://nomorefat.com/free-stuff and grab the 7-minute home training, which models your body fast.”
This approach allows getting leads without necessity of watching the whole video by the potential customer. It generates traffic to your content and builds your mailing list, which you should do if you’re serious about any kind of business.
A Link To A Website You’re Ranking
Despite of the fact that YouTube description links are no-follow they have huge power and impact on rankings, so paste a link to your website (with http://) even if it’s not any kind of offer.
If you want to get a do-follow link from YouTube simply paste it as a first comment – yes – comment links are do-follow!
Links To Your Video, Channel, Social Media & Other Properties
It’s working for SEO purposes and for getting subscribers, followers, fans – building an audience. Simply paste your Facebook etc. links, like that:
“Thank you for watching. Share this video if you liked it https://youtu.be/ZlPpPU1HFUI
Subscribe to our channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxNKo8ZA0YMAamsAx2-4hA/
Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MyIMPlace/
Follow us on Twitter https://twitter.com/MyIMPlace
You may also want to check my another video here: https://youtu.be/ot7JXNbSnuw “
As you can see as first I pasted a link to a video. The very video of the description we’re talking about right now. Always paste a link of the video to it’s description. I also paste it as a first comment.
I also paste links to
- Related video or videos from my channel
- Related authority links like Wikipedia. BTW Wikipedia tactic is so known by Google that more efficient is pasting niche authority links, even if they have smaller general metrics like DA, TF etc.
Remember to sprinkle LSIs, related search terms or/and other keywords you want to rank for.
Thanks to them Google recognizes the topic of your video and ranks it higher for the niche related terms.
Hashtags
You can also paste your keywords in hashtags form, like
#howtoloseweight
#slimfast
etc.
TAGS
The tags should be already sprinkled in your description.
As tags use:
- Your keywords – make sure your main keyword goes first
- LSIs
- related search terms
- similar channels / artist / competition names to appear by the right hand side of their videos and get their traffic
- you can also use the tags used by your competition. You can check them by using a free Chrome extension VidIQ. This technique can be another great source of the keywords ideas and these terms you can use in your description and other parts of the optimization process as well.
To do it:
Install the free Chrome extension VidIQ
After you do this your YouTube SERP should look like this and now you are able to see what tags are used by your top competitors.
To copy all of the tags choose the video and on the top by the right hand side you will see the VidIQ tab. Click the arrow to unfold the metrics.
You can copy the tags by clicking on the little icon pointed on the screenshot below.
When you have them copied you can paste them directly to you tags in the Info & Settings tab.
Do you see how amazing strategy it is and how it can help your business?
CHOOSE THE CORRECT CATEGORY
It’s for the relevancy and for the view retention.
When a viewer finds a film from a different category that is looking for, he leaves the page, which lowers your retention. (View retention is an important video ranking factor.) So choose the category which is the closest to your actual topic.
ADD YOUR VIDEO TO PLAYLISTS
After your video is ready add it to one or more of your playlists, which obviously need to be related to the subject of your video. This way you get:
- another internal YouTube link
- more relevancy
- nice & clean look and order of your videos and channel
CHOOSE THE CUSTOM THUMBNAIL THAT CONVERTS
It’s similar to your headline and the first three lines of the description – it needs to convert, so make it attractive and making people to choose your video before the others.
And it needs to be optimized as well. How? Exactly the same like the video file. OK, maby with one difference – I wouldn’t stuff the name of the file with multiple keywords and stick just to the most important one.
CLOSED CAPTIONS
This is one a very less-known tactic and only few of YouTubers and online marketers do that.
One of the reasons is that it may be time consuming, but there are ways to do it fast and efficient.
First of all you can just use the transcript of your video. When you write your script before you do the video then it’s going be just copy – paste for you.
Another fast option is just to paste here your (not over-optimized) title, containing the keywords you want to rank for.
It’s so fast and easy that you can do this in around one minute.
Step 1.
Click the CC button
Step 2.
Click blue “Add new” button
Step 3.
Choose the option that works best for you. I usually choose the third one.
Step 4.
Add your subtitles, click the + button and hit Publish.
That was easy, right?
ANNOTATIONS
Annotations are the overlay text areas you can add to your video. There are several things you can use them for and here we’re going to focus just on the SEO part.
It’s pretty much like the last option I gave you regarding the subtitles. I just paste here my title or if for example I make the annotation clickable, then I just make it the way it contains my keyword or keywords.
You can add more than one annotation and there are different choices like Title or Label. It doesn’t really matter which one you use. When I don’t have any other purposes for it than SEO then I usually choose Note and make it pretty invisible. You can do this by playing with text and background colors. You can also control at what moment of your video your annotation is going to appear and for how long it’s going to stay.
The most important thing – it needs to contain the keyword you want to rank for. The main one is a MUST DO.
You can drag & drop your annotation’s position on the timeline.
CARDS
The story is the same like with the annotations. It’s recommended to add your keyword here.
LOCATION
If you rank videos for local clients then you need to go to advance tab and set the location.
If you already sealed the deal and your client has a real physical location, then just paste here the exact address. If you go for rank & rent method and for example your keyword is “rhinoplasty Dallas” then just paste here “Dallas”.
LANGUAGE
As you can see in the advanced settings tab, bellow the location section there’s a language section.
If your video is in another language than English, you should choose the right one here.
ADDITIONAL TIPS
Length Of Your Video
Unless your video is not a longer training, I recommend to keep it under 5 minutes – the shorter the better. Even training you can split to parts, taking this way more pieces of the SERPs cake for yourself, and inter-link the parts each other to get additional and relevant YouTube backlinks.
If your video is longer, then there are chances that it gonna have lower view retention, which is an important ranking factor, so you want it to be higher, right? Again: THE SHORTER THE BETTER.
Watch It
Right after you upload the video and it’s ready to watch – do it. Watch the video from the beginning to it’s very end.
Quick Social Sharing
When your video is ready to share, guess what?
Do it! Use the social buttons / networks that YouTube gives you.
This way you will get instant backlinks and shares on social networks that YouTube recommends.
THAT’S IT
Thank you for reading my e-book. By applying these techniques you will be far ahead before your competition and you’re good to start your off-page SEO, which are backlinks and embeds.
If you liked my guide check out my website https://myimplace.com/, where you will find more helpful information regarding ranking videos, strategies behind it and online business in general.
Also check out my video ranking tools, which are able to push your video to the top of the search engines overnight.
Here are the links:
http://syndicator.myimplace.com/limited
http://embedator.myimplace.com/membership-join/
You may also want visit my SEO store here: http://bit.ly/1JEvdiF
Feel free to contact me and if you have any questions feel free to ask them in my Facebook group.
I’m looking forward to hearing your success story,
Luke Kubow