0

hollywood-trailer-editing[1]You’ve shot something, it’s fantastic, and you think it might just make you a YouTube celebrity overnight. However, getting your video ranked on Google as well as YouTube is essential to receiving the most views. YouTube has its own internal search engine, and Google is putting video results at the top of its first page. Google’s algorithms are exceptionally intelligent and always changing, but there are some techniques you can use to take advantage of how search engines work.

Here are some tips for search engine optimizing (SEO) your video should include:

Use title tags and key words effectively in every video you post. Google reads both of these, but will know if you cheat. For example, if your company offers swimming pool cleaning services and your key words include, “How to clean your swimming pool naked Angelina Jolie Lady Gaga video”, Google will not appreciate it and will rank you lower. Similarly, YouTube users will feel cheated and also rank your video lower. Instead, “swimming pool cleaning tutorial” or “how to clean your swimming pool” should be in the video file name itself (how-to-clean-a-swimming-pool.mov), the title of the video and in the tags.

“Speak” in your video, and the best way to do this is to include text in the video that is read out loud and included in the audio.

In the video itself, encourage users to leave comments, “likes” and ratings as much as possible. If Google sees a video that has 10,000 views and no comments, Google and Youtube will assume it must not be very good and isn’t worth ranking. Encourage as much sharing as possible on all social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

Normally, the purpose of any commercial YouTube video is to draw attention to your business. In the video, include the URL to your website along with a brief paragraph of naturally keyword-filled text in your profile information. YouTube is a great starting point, but carry your video across the web by posting it on your website, breaking it up into multiple smaller videos, placing them in blog postings or even posting screen shots of the video on photo sharing websites like Flickr.

On your website, garner more traffic for your video by using back links. This means cross-linking to other videos, tweeting the video, visiting blogs relevant to the topic and posting your video in the comments and linking to other people’s relevant blogs and videos in order to put as many links back to your video as possible on the web.

Heather Rose, Toronto Blogger