Absolutely! Many companies boost their search engine rankings with their own YouTube channels–after all, Google owns YouTube, and is returning YouTube videos in relevant searches.
By creating and optimizing your own YouTube channel, it allows your brand name to appear in natural searches for keywords that can associate directly to your company.
Now, how do you start? There are FOUR Steps:
1. Choose Your Topic – Share your knowledge by producing useful information about your products or services. Engage your viewers by being unique and creative while considering what other expertise you can offer, whether it’s how to paint a room, plant roses or pairing wine with food.
2. Record Your Videos–You can either hire a professional video production company, such as Smellycat Productions, or you can use any high-quality camera, but even an iPhone or Droid Phone will work. Not everyone is a professional editor or has the budget for one, but as long as you’re engaging your target audience, they’ll cut you some slack on editing if the information is top-notch!
Make a list of 5 to 10 valid points that you will speak about during the video and try to keep it to three minutes or less. After that people lose interest quickly. Make sure you include a link to your website on your channel and the video.
3. Optimize for VSEO–After you’ve uploaded your video to YouTube, you’ll be asked to enter a title, description and tags. This is where your VSEO (Video Search Engine Optimization) begins:
- Always include a link at the front of the description back to your website, followed by a carefully crafted paragraph using target keywords pertaining to your video and what you do.
- The video description would show in the search results on Google. It’ll determine which keywords or phrases your video should show for in a search results page. Remember to keywords that give context to your video, so Google can figure out exactly what the video is about.
- Finally, for tags, use your best keywords. As in website search engine optimization, stick to 10-15 keywords. For keywords with more than one word, use double quotes, i.e: “casual sneakers in Williamsburg VA”, “basketball sneakers Newport News VA” or “men’s shoes in Hampton VA”.
4. Build a Base of Viewers–“Seed” your video beyond posting links to it on Facebook and Twitter or other Social Networks. This gives YouTube the context as to what your video is about and start a steady flow of traffic to it.
To do this, search YouTube for the exact phrase you want to rank for; then click on a video that comes up and post your new video as a “video reply” to those.
Next, start building links back to your video (backlinks), and optimize those with keywords. The more high-ranking websites that link back to your video on YouTube, the more that video will appear in relevant searches.
Creating your own channel does take some time and effort, but the results are worth the time by all accounts. If you don’t have the time but want the results, don’t forget Smellycat Productions specializes in video production, especially on the Internet, and can set up a YouTube channel for you!
