How to Rank on YouTube
May 2021Usually, when we think of search engines, we think of Google. When we think of content, we think of blog posts, articles, and other written media. However, YouTube is a search engine, too, and today, video content is just as important for many business rankings as written content.
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Video content is highly sharable, ideal for any type of storytelling or instruction that requires a visual element, and effective for reaching a different kind of audience than users who will read a 1,000-word blog post. How can you harness YouTube to grow your business?
As with any other type of search engine optimization, getting the most out of YouTube requires strong ranking capabilities. If no one can find your content, no one will watch your content. And if no one is watching your videos, they have no impact on your business’s bottom line.
Rankings, YouTube, and Google
There are two ways to score with YouTube rankings.
The first is ranking your video at or near the top of a YouTube search. When someone types a search query into YouTube, he or she will find your video.
The second is ranking your YouTube video on Google. Google will often spotlight a YouTube video at the top of its results as a featured snippet. Getting your video embedded into a Google search is an extremely powerful way to rack up views and build exposure for your business.
The first step, in either case, is to create a quality video.
People who use YouTube are looking for quick, informative, digestible, and well-produced videos. Just as nobody wants to read poorly-written, poorly-structured content, nobody wants to watch a video with bad audio or 20 minutes of someone explaining a top in a monotone voice. Elements including audio and video quality, strong visual components, and slick editing really matter when it comes to ranking a video. A poor-quality video won’t get views, which means it won’t rank.
If you have a quality video, then the strategy is all about positioning it correctly. As with any other SEO, keywords are a core driver. Going to YouTube and typing in words or terms relevant to your video will give you an idea of what people are already searching for on the platform, which will tell you which keywords to target. From there, you can fit keywords into the title and video description to start landing your video in relevant searches.
Finally, start promoting your video. Push it out via social media platforms. Put it on your website for existing customers to find. Send it out through email newsletters. These tactics will help with sharing, views, and link-building. You can also do things on YouTube to bring people to your videos, including ramping up your channel page with images and descriptions of your business and building playlists of all your videos so that users who find one find them all.
Boost Your YouTube Rankings with Inherent
At Inherent, we know how to take YouTube videos with just a dozen views and turn them into top rankers on both YouTube and Google. If you are ready to explore this side of online content marketing, contact us for help.