Article Written by : Visible Theory
If you know how to rank videos on the front page of Google for popular keyword phrases, you can gain massive exposure without much effort.
There are two reasons why Google favors YouTube videos and displays them on their front page:
- Google owns YouTube
- Video has become extremely popular and is fast becoming the preferred method of absorbing content.
YouTube is also the second most used search engine on the internet, more than Bing and Yahoo.
If you know how to rank videos on the front page of the search engines, then it is well worth experimenting with video marketing. The problem is that most people have no idea what they are doing and don’t see any results.
There is absolutely no point in spending time creating videos if no one can find them online. Therefore it is a massive advantage to know some tricks of the trade that have been proven to work.
But before you try any of these tips, it is very important that you do some thorough keyword research and are crystal clear on what keyword phrase that you have decided to rank for.
Here are my top seven tips to rank videos on the first page of Google:
1. Create an interesting video to keep people watching for longer
Now I know this sounds a bit obvious, but the point is that Google can measure how long people are spending watching your videos.
If the video is always stopped after a few seconds, then Google will penalise your for it. But at the same time, if people spend a long time watching your video, then Google will reward you for it.
The best way to get viewers watching your video for longer is to make it as interesting as possible. The best videos are ones that are either controversial, very humorous, amazing, useful tutorials, or highly informative.
Boring, bland videos that put people to sleep will end up being stopped very quickly and not watched.
2. Change the titile of your video (before you upload it) to be exactly the same as your keyword phrase
I am talking about your raw video that is still on your hard drive and yet to be uploaded. So if you are targeting the keyword red shoes, then rename your video to “RedShoes.mpg” (or .mov, or whatever your file extension happens to be).
The file name will not show up anywhere in YouTube, but it will help you to rank videos higher because Google uses this as part of their algorithm.
3. Try to put the keyword phrase in twice for your YouTube title
For the actual title in YouTube you should try your best to put the keyword phrase in twice, but only if it makes sense.
An example could be the keyword phrase “european football”, where you use the title “European footballer Steven Gerrard wins European football’s player of the year award”.
This is not always possible with some keywords, and you should not use it if the title ends up reading like nonsense.
4. Copy the tags from the top three videos on Google for your keyword phrase
You no longer need to stress about which tags you should use for your videos on YouTube.
Simply do a search in Google for your keyword phrase, and then copy all the tags from the top 3 videos. Use all of these tags for your video, except for the ones that are not relevant such as names etc.
The reason for this is that these tags are proven to be the best tags for that keyword phrase.
5. Include the URL of the YouTube video itself at the end of the description
We are not talking about the URL to your website here, we are talking about the actual URL of the YouTube video itself.
This is something that almost everybody doesn’t think about, including myself until recently.
I know this sounds like a waste of time, but the fact is that YouTube regularly gets scraped by bots and automated software which copy content onto other websites, including the contents of the description box.
This automatically creates back links which point to your YouTube video.
6. Add a couple of annotations that include your keyword phrase
The annotations are the captions that YouTube allows you to embed into the video.
Place one or two annotations which include your keyword phrase, again without making it look unnatural or obvious that you are doing it for SEO.
7. Use a video distribution site such as “Traffic Geyser”, and link all the videos back to your YouTube video
Either purchase a video distribution service, or pay someone to submit your video to as many video sharing sites as possible.
But the crucial point here is to always include a link back to your YouTube video that you have created. Most people make the mistake here of linking back to the home page of their website, which does nothing to make your video rank higher on the search engines.
If you are doing a lot of video marketing, then it may be worthwhile to purchase a service such as TrafficGeyser. If you are only trying to rank a few videos (or one), then it is best to pay someone else that has this type of service to do it for you.
If you follow these tips properly then there is a good chance that you will be able to rank videos on the front page of Google (possibly number one), in as little as three days or less.
Of course it is a lot harder to rank videos for highly competitive keyword phrases, but you should be able to do it for videos that have less than 1,000 searches per month.
If you are not experienced at this, then it is best to aim for the easier keyword phrases first, and then as you get better and more experienced you can try for the competitive keyword phrases.
