Major SEO Ranking factors for YouTube Videos
Overview of YouTube
A video retains more probability of achieving higher ranks in search engines than texts for time-bound users prefer the former over the latter. Persuasive, informative and target-oriented videos get noticed far more easily by users than long, tedious and useless content that clog the web. YouTube is a vast database of videos spanning verticals and domains; it’s like a colossal community of videos on each and every available topic around to serve the purpose of information.
With videos gradually overwhelming tedious articles in the popularity chart, YouTube has grown to become the source of information for users around the globe. Like texts, videos too have the potential to fetch desired online visibility and as a result, marketers are tapping into the immense popularity of videos. Search Engines need texts to give SEO rankings and videos can easily be promoted with the help of supporting texts to generate higher rankings in major search engines.
With YouTube, videos are now a major source of visibility, online promotion, online marketing and business generation. Videos on YouTube are likely to attract more users, views, comments and feedbacks and thus, the chances of achieving relevant targets are easily met.
How videos are more helpful than texts for SEO?
With unparalleled growth and popularity of videos, one question instantly pops up in mind: do search engines really see videos for rankings and SERPs? Well that’s not the case as search engines never take videos into account to generate result; they rather use a specific algorithm that only supports texts. Videos are decoded through the texts around them to get the result; it’s the texts that ultimately help generate higher rankings, not the videos.
In other words, videos with relevant texts are used by search engines to fetch rankings and further analyses. Videos on YouTube are uploaded by inserting words in the title, description and tags for good results. More so, videos’ overall popularity, views, comments, feedbacks and ratings are considered by search engines to derive the result and rankings.
Thus, videos with relevant words, tags and description have better chance to fetch good rankings than long-drawn articles or texts. More so, videos score heavily over texts for their popularity quotient and informative nature. A short-span, funny and interesting video is likely to score more points that a deliberately stretched-out article.
In a nutshell, videos on YouTube are a good bet in today’s time to enhance visibility and attain higher SEO rankings in search engines.
How YouTube serves as a modern day SEO tool?
YouTube is now considered as the second largest search engine after Google; its billions of hours of videos on every imaginable topic are proving to be quite a rage among the users and marketers alike. A growing number of people, say marketers and businesses are uploading videos to share information with the target market. And in turn, a vast collection of information, attractive and target-oriented videos have been getting added to YouTube on a daily basis.
Unlike texts, videos have always proven to be far more attractive, informative and useful source of information and entertainment. Millions of users from all across the globe are watching these videos and that’s where marketers have a golden opportunity to score point and reach to the intended result.
Users prefer videos over text for information in a lucid way and that’s why videos often generate more interest and visits than texts. If you have any vital information to share with the target market, YouTube offers an opportunity to add relevant keywords, title tags and description in the video to avail of the advantages as texts do.
A compelling, short, informative video on YouTube gets instant clicks & views and spread like a fire in the forest. Thus your target market gets served in the best possible way. So pick the video route to lend your business the modern day edge for the majority is following the same route.
Common practices of SEO rankings for YouTube
Videos are a rage these days for SEO, marketing and online promotion; the majority is posting videos on YouTube to get a relevant pie of this vastly growing segment. Users have been following some common practices to get more clicks, views, comments and feedbacks for the videos.
Steps users should follow while uploading videos on YouTube:
- Add suitable keywords in the title of the video
- Don’t forget to include the word “video” for searches are done mostly using this word
- Having a unique keyword-rich description for each video would be a real game changer
- Include a URL in the description to let users find the link easily
- Take full advantage of social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter etc by placing the links onto them
Options to embed links to Facebook and Twitter
- Comments or feedbacks add value to a video and get importance by search engines to better SEO rankings and thus, make sure that your video meets that aspect
- Embedding is a significant aspect; allow your video to enjoy that feature
- Place a full transcript of your video in the description to allow search engines to completely comprehend the video
- YouTube’s captions and annotation features must be used
- Tag your videos with keywords
Latest practices of YouTube SEO rankings factors
YouTube is changing with the time and bringing in a new set of rules to fetch rankings and results. The aspects and practices that were earlier beneficial for higher rankings and visibility of videos don’t hold much of a value these days. Unlike the earlier times, title tags don’t enjoy the same privilege for being somewhat manipulative in nature. At present, views and subscribers of a video are major factor now and thus, steps should be taken to score heavily on these vital aspects.
Steps to get more subscribers:
- Put “Subscribe to my videos” everywhere in the your site
- Connect and socialize with other YouTube users.
- Be gracious in your comments to videos on YouTube for that usually prompt users to revert back to subscribe to your video
Conclusion
YouTube is a buzzword these days for its immense video database and ability to serve as a beneficial social media platform. The number of videos has been growing on it with an exceptional pace and making it the second largest search engine in the world, right after Google. For SEO purposes, it’s serving like a god-send boon. Thus it would be a judicious move on your part to be an active part of this vastly growing community of videos to target the audience and users. So don’t be a minute late; come up with a persuasive, informative and short video to reach to the marketing target and reap intended rewards later on.