Using YouTube to Push Video SEO
Grow your business, SEO tips, search engine optimization |
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Gone are the days when YouTube was a mere channel for footages of kids attempting painfully mind-boggling stunts and personal videos of people lip synching to their favorite music and tearfully defending their favorite infamous celebrity. Today, the online video service is the most popular video sharing platform with, according to their fact sheet, gets an approximate 24 hours worth of videos uploaded every minute. Many of those videos have since gone viral with some of the recent ones even getting Webby Awards nominations this year.
These facts give YouTube even more value than it already has, proving its viability as a tool for marketing and as a platform for advertising. And the advent of blended search has boosted it further though making it even more challenging for online marketers and SEO specialists alike.
Google’s blended search feature seems to prioritize the mixed video and photo thumbnails, related maps and tweets, making it more informative and beneficial for the normal user to discover varied content online. However, its mixed search results occupied more result page real estate than before. As a result, it pushed the usual array of text links that would otherwise have competed for top page ranking lower on the results page and even spilled them into the succeeded pages.
In a previous post, we highlighted the use of video SEO not only to get around this feature, but also to leverage on videos to boost your SEO efforts up a notch and make your way up the results page. Today, we get you started on your video SEO planning intended for creating your own YouTube channel.
Planning
No matter what your brand’s product may be, adding a video component to its campaign will definitely help both as a valued add-on and as a separate platform where you can disseminate content. Determine first what your goals are and what you’re hoping to achieve for doing so; this makes it easier to map out a smart strategy and carry out plans more efficiently. The most common, of course, are brand awareness and informing the public about your products and services. You can also use your videos to drive more traffic to your own site and, depending on your videos, more followers and potential new clients.
Also, specifying your target demographic will also give you a direction as to what kind of videos you’ll be making and will give cues as to the production values and the possible script.
More Value for Your Content
While your site centers on a specific subject, do not limit your videos’ focus on it or else you’ll keep churning out advertisements. What you can do instead is expand your videos around your topic from different standpoints.
For instance, if the brand you’re representing sells IT products and you happen to be releasing a new laptop, you can make a video that offers a first look at it and include its many features and how those would be beneficial for your users. Include other very important details like the price, the date the laptop would officially be shipping out and which stores would be carrying it.
In addition, you can also release a follow up video a few days or a week later to give it a more in-depth review, highlighting some more features in detail. Just make sure these are done without doing some blatant hard-selling; just properly position the product, giving out a balanced pros and cons list and then specify which type of user would benefit from it the most and you’re good to go. These points you can either write down as a full-scale script or you can just jot down each idea in bulleted form.
For example, a netbook would carry a decent feature set, but while its diminutive size and lightweight body makes for a good traveling companion, it has limited processor speed, memory and storage capacity. You can describe it as a machine for students and light users with not-so intensive computing needs that would benefit its lightweight frame, or as a compact device to supplement a much powerful, full featured laptop or desktop.
For a more balanced review, you can further enrich your content and offer your viewers more valuable advice by comparing it with other models of its class from other brands, thus giving them more shopping options.
Before You Hit Record
Armed with both the objective behind your video and your written content, you’re now ready to hit record and shoot your video. If you decide on writing an actual script, just make sure you won’t sound mechanical and monotonous in delivering them on the video; however, a preferable approach would simply have you highlight your topics in bulleted form. This way, you can keep your lines free flowing, candid and conversational-tones most viewers can respond to.
You don’t have to own expensive professional video recording equipment at the onset, since you are merely starting. At this point, a decently good quality camera that yields clear and bright videos with accurate colors would do. You can easily find inexpensive ones these days with the popularity of YouTube-friendly pocketable camcorders like the Flip Ultra HD, the Creative Vado HD and Kodak Zi8 the among others. An external mic would also be important to make sure your voice is captured clearly; thing is, the built-in mics in these camcorders may be sufficient to record your voice but they’d also pick up other external noise in your background.
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RSpears @ April 18, 2010
