When it comes to optimizing your videos for Youtube, it is somewhat less complex than optimizing website content for Google. With that being said, however, there are still a few things you may want to pay attention to…
(on top of the things we discussed in last week’s blog post about getting more Youtube Exposure)
To many people, these things may sound trivial. In the grand scheme of things, some may say they are. However, when you combine the effect of all four of these, and compound them on the results of the steps we proposed in last week’s blog post, it tends to add up very quickly.
Here are 4 Youtube SEO factors you need to pay attention to:
1. Click-through rate.
There are a few things that have been proven to influence the number of people who click on your video (as opposed to other videos shown along with it, whether that is in the search results, or related/suggested videos):
a. Keywords in the video title. Do the keywords the user searched for appear in your video’s title? The closer the match, the more likely he or she is to click on it. The less relevant your title seems, even if the video itself is relevant, the less your chances are of getting the click-through to your video.
b. The length of the title. The internet appears to have turned us into impatient, unreasonable and lazy people. Statistics have proven that video titles of fewer than 50 characters perform best. Try to fit as many keyword phrase variations as makes sense into that.
c. Your video’s thumbnail. Youtube is a visual platform. Even when people are looking for information, they still respond to visual elements, which in this case is your video’s thumbnail. The more you can make it stand out, the better your chances of getting the click. Unless, of course, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Make it good, but unique.
2. Watch time and watch percentage.
The watch percentage gives Youtube an indication of the quality of your video, and whether it resonates with your audience or not. Be mindful to give people what they want to know without any unnecessary fluff. It is better to create a 3-minute video that gets to the point, than to have a ten minute video from which people click away after the first 2 minutes.
Watch time comes into play in two ways:
a. As your video receives more and more watch time, Youtube will give it more and more exposure – hence many content creators aiming for videos of 12 to 15 minutes. However, if most of your viewers drop off prematurely, the video’s extra length won’t help.
b. As your channel accumulates more and more total watch time over time, it adds to its reputation, increasing your reach for every new video you upload.
That is pretty much like SEO on your website’s content, where you receive more and more exposure as more and more people visit your website from search engines.
3. The right video length for your audience.
While you can have a look at other similar channels, and see which video lengths do well for them, you will eventually have to do some experimenting yourself.
The more specific your target market segment/sub-niche is, the more unique their expectations are likely to be. Getting your ideal video length right will not only mean better watch times and watch percentages, but it can also impact the clicks you get in the Youtube search results.
For instance, if someone is looking for a more in-depth tutorial, they won’t be interested in a two-minute video, and if they just want info on one small specific thing, they may not want to watch ten minutes of video to see it.
4. Google searches contribute to your visibility.
Yes, you read that right. When people find your video on Google, those views (and engagements) count towards the video’s overall watch history and reputation.
However…
Since YouTube is such a massive authority site, it doesn’t take much in terms of backlinks to improve your Google search visibility.
Not to mention that, since Youtube belongs to Google, Google is unlikely to penalize any backlinks that they deem to be coming from a poor source – so you should be able to build links from wherever, and at worst, some of them will be ignored.
The concept is known as “parasite SEO” – where you piggy-back on the search engine authority of a bigger site to get exposure for your own content on that site.
In conclusion:
At the end of the day, how well your video performs is not determined by any individual factor. Fair enough, if you have a poor video, nothing else that you do will be able to help it.
But if your video is of a fair quality, its ultimate exposure is determined by a string of small things that have to be in place. leave any one of those out, and you are likely to be disappointed with the lack of views your videos receive.
Finally…
Depending on your niche’s search volumes and its competition, it may take quite a while before your new videos (on a new channel) gain any real traction. In fact, on some new channels that post infrequently, it could take a year or more before their videos start getting consistent traffic.
So don’t think that, if your video doesn’t immediately explode, it is a bad video, or that you did something wrong. The Youtube machine (showing it to people here and there, checking how they react, and then showing it to some more) needs time to realize who will want to see your video.
Much like SEO for your website, it’s a long term thing.