But some companies have also jumped on the YouTube bandwagon and created videos that offer value to their audience. While some may think this is just another marketing tactic used to promote their business, using YouTube has another benefit—it improves a company’s SEO efforts. This is done with the intention of creating engagement and social signals
• Ranking
YouTube cannot help improve your site’s ranking on the search engines as their links are nofollow, however having a good video ultimately increases your exposure. When a user clicks on your YouTube link and stays on your page for the duration of your video, it sends a message to the search engine spiders that your content is important and made of quality material. The more important a spider thinks your content is, the higher it will rank you.
You also have the ability to add keywords and descriptions to your video, both on your YouTube page and on the back end of the video. Doing this also provides your YouTube video with more keywords, and when a spider crawls your page, they’ll come across your keywords and rank you better. As a general rule, always make sure to use a catchy title with optimal keywords to help drive the right traffic and give you the best SEO results.
• Linking
When you create a YouTube video, it’s a good idea to put a link to the content on your social media channels, blogs, websites and other collateral to generate the most interest. This creates links to your video on multiple channels, while these links do not provide authority or relevance they do create a larger landscape of web prescence.
Plus, sharing links to your videos through these mediums makes it easier for others to share links to the video, and the more people start to share your content, the more backlinks you build. This is important is your video is embedded as part of a page or blog on your own website and the individuals link to your page and not your YouTube video.
• Discussions
The more your video is talked about, the better your SEO will be. Make sure to ask questions at the end of your video that will get your viewers to leave comments. The more comments your video gets, the better it will start to rank in the search engines.
Make sure to do your part in the comments section by answering any questions or thanking those people who leave a valuable comment. Plus, it’s also rumored that videos with the most comments tend to get a better ranking, so get your viewers to start talking.
So can YouTube videos help your SEO? Absolutely. Make sure that you’re creating informative videos that people will find interesting, using keywords in your titles and descriptions, pushing out links to your video and earning valuable comments. This way, your video can start to earn you the SEO success you deserve.
Marcy SAbout the Guest Author:
Marcy S is a marketing educator and a parter for a video production company based out of Chicago. She is available for interviews or to share the latest trends on video production with your readers.