Youtube is the second largest search engine. A lot of people are doing SEO for Google - which usually ends up with Bing and Yahoo rankings following suit. What we fail to see is that Youtube SEO can gain you far more search traffic than Yahoo and Bing does. So if you're not doing Youtube SEO, you're missing out. No I'm not posting this because I was one of the winners of the SEOmoz Youtube Contest. I'm really looking into Youtube SEO lately - even before the contest started - for promoting SEO Hacker School. We launched our first video by the way (It's pretty simple but it's my first production so please bear with me). I'll be using this video as our example for most of the screenshots. First thing's first - you need a Video How hard can that be? The average Nokia phone today has video capability. Or buy a webcam - it doesn't cost that much. Plus, almost all laptops have one. Video content creation has never been this easy. Why should you start bothering to create videos to penetrate the Youtube search market? Here are some statistics to start with:
3.7 Billion Youtube searches per day as of March 2010 according to comScore
48 Hours worth of Video uploaded every minute on May 2011
More than 3 Billion views every day
13 million hours worth of video uploaded in 2010 alone
700 billion video playbacks in 2010
Youtube owns 10% of the entire Internet Traffic
Applying SEO to your Youtube Video There are two categories in Youtube ranking factors. There's your Video Content and then there's your User Engagement. These two things make up pretty much most of your Youtube SEO. You see, Youtube's search engine does not work like how Google does. Youtube's search engine cannot directly tell if your keywords are inside the video. It cannot directly tell if your video is relevant to the tags you put in. So what exactly does it use to know which videos rank first?
Video Content Factors
This is the foundation of your video's Youtube SEO. It deals with all factors under your control as the publisher - much like how on-site optimization is to SEO. Get all of these factors right, and you can be ranking top spot even without hitting high on your User Engagement factors.
Title
The Title of your Youtube video is one of the direct, hard-hitting factors where you can put your keywords in. It's arguably the most important thing in your Youtube SEO. Your Youtube video's Title greatly affects your Click-through rate (CTR) as it appears in a very prominent place in the Youtube Search Results Page (YSRP). Of course, you shouldn't use a Title for the sake of Youtube Search Rankings and sacrifice relevance. Google owns Youtube and Google is all about dishing out the best, most relevant results to its users. Key takeaway: Put your keywords in the title tag. Make sure it's relevant and it's what best describes the video.
Description
Your Youtube video's description is really the only place to describe what your video is about. This is mostly for people who are searching in the Google Search engine results page: Or people who are searching in the Youtube Search Results Page: It's primary purpose is to increase click-through rate because people who see an exact match of their search query in your video's description will immediately realize your video's relevance to what they're looking for. Put your keywords in the description so as not to miss out on your keywords being 'Emboldened' in the Search results page if it matches a user's search query. Putting a link in your description is fine so long as it is a relevant, qualified link that helps describe what your video is about or helps people to have a further idea about your video. Key Takeaway: Write around 300-500 words to describe what the video is about. It's not a transcription of your video, but the more you explain what your video is and the more information you give about your video in the description area, the better.
Tags
Put in at least 10 tags, make sure your keywords are in there, make sure they're relevant to the video. This is where you target those extra keywords where you want your video to pop out in. Take note: Youtube video Tags are plural and non-plural sensitive. So if you're talking about a camping bed, you should put in your tags section "Camping bed" as well as "Camping beds" because that's a Product defining keyword. Key Takeaway: Don't be stingy with your tags. Put in as much as you like - so long as they're relevant.
Transcription
Most people don't know that Youtube automatically transcribes your video. That's pretty great news isn't it? You automatically have a written record of every word that you've said in your video. The bad news is, Youtube is extremely horrible at transcribing your video. Take a look at how it transcribed my video: Youtube is indexing your video's transcriptions and uses it to rank your video for some of the keywords in the transcription. The obvious reason behind this is, you're using those keywords in the video - and you'd look and sound pretty stupid if you spam words in the video itself with your face and voice in it. Chances are, if the keyword is in the video transcription, you used it in the video and, if a lot of people watched and shared your video, you evidently used it well. Youtube will match up the words and will make your video appear in the Closed Caption results. You can search for videos with captions by choosing "Type: Closed Captions" in YouTube Search or by selecting it in the Filter section: Videos with captions display this small logo at the bottom of the player: This is how it looks like in the Youtube Search Results Page: Having a Closed Caption attribute added to your video can indirectly increase your click-through rate in the YSRP and will allow your Youtube video to rank better. Key Takeaway: Take the extra effort to transcribe your video word for word. Upload it to your Youtube video as a text file - it might just make a huge difference in your Youtube SEO efforts.
Channel Authority
A Youtube channel can be very easily searched. Just add the word 'channel' at the end of your search query and if there is an existing channel as what you just typed, it will pop up. Google uses your channel's authority as a basis for your individual videos' rankings. How is channel measured? We'll be talking about it in the User Engagement category of Youtube SEO. You control your content - how much it is optimized, how often you publish videos, how relevant your tags, titles and descriptions are, how you promote it, etc. Consequently, this means you have control over your authority. Key Takeaway: Take care of your channel and promote it as a whole as it affects your individual videos in their Youtube Search rankings.
Content Delivery
If you make a crappy video, Google and Youtube will figure it out and you're not gonna rank well. How do they find this out? They measure it a combination of your Youtube Video Content Optimization and mix it with User Engagement Factors. Youtube content delivery has everything to do with providing people with awesome videos with or without the tags the transcriptions, the titles, etc. Content Delivery is first and foremost about the video itself and how useful, informative, or entertaining it is to people. Check out DollarShaveClub.com and how the delivery of their video dragged their Youtube SEO upwards without even targeting any real keyword but their brand: If you have video content that is really poor, users are not gonna like it, they're not gonna comment, stick around, engage, etc. This sends a negative signal to Google that your video sucks. Don't expect to rank. Key Takeaway: Make an awesome video and build from there.
User Engagement Factors
Having laid a great foundation in your Youtube Video Content factors, what you need to work on next is your User Engagement factors. This can be likened to off-site optimization in SEO and cannot be directly controlled by the video's publisher. As in SEO, your website's content will determine user activity and natural links to be built to your website, so great videos and delivery will also determine User Engagement in each of your videos.
Views
It's pretty obvious that you're publishing videos in order for them to be viewed. Views help boost your video's Youtube SEO. How do you increase views? Promote! Share it in your blog, share it in your Social Networks, embed it in your website, tell your friends and family about it. Do everything you can to make people watch your video. But it doesn't stop there - Youtube measures the quality of those views by checking out if the user watched the whole video. The more of your video each users watch, the better the quality of their viewership. You can check out your viewer's retention rate of your video in the Analytics section of your Youtube account. Click on the 'Audience Retention' tab in the left sidebar You'll see a the graph of your chosen Video's Audience Retention: Here you'll see how long people watched your video, where they stopped watching - all while the video is playing: You'll be able to analyze the reason behind your viewers turning your channel off at any specific moment in the time-frame. Key Takeaway: Check out your videos - why do your viewers quit watching at a specific part of the video? Do something about it.
Inbound Links
It's no surprise that Youtube is using inbound links to video as a ranking factor much like how Google uses inbound links as a ranking factor. What most people don't know is that in Youtube SEO, you have to build links BOTH to the video you want to rank and to your Youtube channel: This leverages your channel's authority (which we talked about earlier) and your individual video's authority. The great thing about this is, it consequently affects your Google video SERP rankings as well. How do you build inbound links to your channel and video? The best way is to create great, quality Video Content that will appeal to the emotional triggers of your viewers. People just can't help but share a video that has 'touched' or 'inspired' them. Appealing to the emotional trigger of a person is much easier in video than in writing. Take advantage of that fact. Still, it won't hurt to promote and share to start the ball rolling. Key Takeaway: Always be building links to your Youtube Channel - profile links in your other social networks, links from your blog, from your website, etc.
Social Shares
It's really easy to share your video through social networks in Youtube. They have buttons for that. Youtube tracks these shares as social signals and as a User Engagement Factor. Key Takeaway: Share it on your own social profile and pray that other people share it too.
Embeds
The embed function is meant to take your video outside the bounds of Youtube. Even so, Youtube can track all instances of your video being embedded on other websites. They count it as a positive User Engagement signal - boosting your video's Youtube SEO. Key Takeaway: Always allow embedding. Your video is public anyway and it's free marketing to boot!
Comments / Responses
This is arguably the most powerful User Engagement factor there is to Youtube SEO. Getting user comments and response videos gives a huge relevance and authority signal to Youtube. Warning: Youtube is really good at figuring out which comments are spam and which ones are genuine. Don't try to game the system. Gain more comments by commenting back and responding to your viewership. Reach out to them. Ask them to subscribe to your channel. Here's the tricky part - how do you get video responses? Who's hardworking enough to create a video just to respond to your video? It's pretty tough - but it's also the reason why it's holds good weight in your video's Youtube SEO. No one just gives away video responses. You have to earn them. Getting a video response means that the responder was really, in any way, affected by your video. Or it can also mean that you have a friend who was kind enough to do your Youtube video a great favor by responding to it. You can add a response to your own video but that holds little bearing. So how do you make a video response on Youtube? This Youtube Help section says it all:
To make a video response, click the All Comments box located underneath the video's information (the same place you would click to write a comment). A hyperlink on the right of the box called Create a video response will appear — click this link. You will be given two options for choosing your video response:
Choose a Video
The Choose a Video option lets you respond with any video you've already posted. Each video in your account can only be used as a video response one time. You'll notice that your videos that have already been used as video responses have an asterisk (*) beside them.
Upload a Video Response
This option works like the normal upload process. Simply go to the upload page and upload the video as usual. Once this is complete, return to select your newly uploaded video as the video response.
Key Takeaway: Create and deliver great videos so you won't be ashamed to ask for video or comment responses.
Like (Thumbs Up), Thumbs down and Favorites
Youtube has a Thumbs up and Thumbs down button - much like Facebook's Like button (although Facebook doesn't have a Dislike button). Obviously, you want to get a lot of Thumbs up for your video instead of a Thumbs down. But hey, bad publicity is still publicity, right? Thing is, I've yet to hear about a video with a lot more thumbs down than thumbs up that didn't rank because of the thumbs down - it probably was a bad video with poor relevance in the first place. Getting a Thumbs up, Thumbs down or a Favorite signals User Engagement. Getting these again, depends on the quality and delivery of your Youtube video. Key Takeaway: If you're already asking your friends to share your video in their social network, don't forget to ask them to Like and add your video to their Favorites list.
Hustler Tips from Markus Allen of Marketing-Ideas.org:
Look for "Video Blended Results" for a 3-word search query on Google. For example, when you search Google for this: boiled eggs demonstration ... We see Google displays Video Blended Results on it first page. This lets us know Google considers that 3-word phrase as a "video worthy" phrase to optimize for. Also, these search query words and phrases tend to get videos to show up on the first page of Google: - tutorial - review - test - what is ________ - how to - demonstration - explanation - video
Youtube is the second largest search engine. A lot of people are doing SEO for Google - which usually ends up with Bing and Yahoo rankings following suit. What we fail to see is that Youtube SEO can gain you far more search traffic than Yahoo and Bing does. So if you're not doing Youtube SEO, you're missing out. No I'm not posting this because I was one of the winners of the SEOmoz Youtube Contest. I'm really looking into Youtube SEO lately - even before the contest started - for promoting SEO Hacker School. We launched our first video by the way (It's pretty simple but it's my first production so please bear with me). I'll be using this video as our example for most of the screenshots. First thing's first - you need a Video How hard can that be? The average Nokia phone today has video capability. Or buy a webcam - it doesn't cost that much. Plus, almost all laptops have one. Video content creation has never been this easy. Why should you start bothering to create videos to penetrate the Youtube search market? Here are some statistics to start with: 
The Title of your Youtube video is one of the direct, hard-hitting factors where you can put your keywords in. It's arguably the most important thing in your Youtube SEO. Your Youtube video's Title greatly affects your Click-through rate (CTR) as it appears in a very prominent place in the Youtube Search Results Page (YSRP). Of course, you shouldn't use a Title for the sake of Youtube Search Rankings and sacrifice relevance. Google owns Youtube and Google is all about dishing out the best, most relevant results to its users. Key takeaway: Put your keywords in the title tag. Make sure it's relevant and it's what best describes the video. 
Your Youtube video's description is really the only place to describe what your video is about. This is mostly for people who are searching in the Google Search engine results page: 
Or people who are searching in the Youtube Search Results Page: 
It's primary purpose is to increase click-through rate because people who see an exact match of their search query in your video's description will immediately realize your video's relevance to what they're looking for. Put your keywords in the description so as not to miss out on your keywords being 'Emboldened' in the Search results page if it matches a user's search query. Putting a link in your description is fine so long as it is a relevant, qualified link that helps describe what your video is about or helps people to have a further idea about your video. Key Takeaway: Write around 300-500 words to describe what the video is about. It's not a transcription of your video, but the more you explain what your video is and the more information you give about your video in the description area, the better. 
Put in at least 10 tags, make sure your keywords are in there, make sure they're relevant to the video. This is where you target those extra keywords where you want your video to pop out in. Take note: Youtube video Tags are plural and non-plural sensitive. So if you're talking about a camping bed, you should put in your tags section "Camping bed" as well as "Camping beds" because that's a Product defining keyword. Key Takeaway: Don't be stingy with your tags. Put in as much as you like - so long as they're relevant. 
Most people don't know that Youtube automatically transcribes your video. That's pretty great news isn't it? You automatically have a written record of every word that you've said in your video. The bad news is, Youtube is extremely horrible at transcribing your video. Take a look at how it transcribed my video: 
Youtube is indexing your video's transcriptions and uses it to rank your video for some of the keywords in the transcription. The obvious reason behind this is, you're using those keywords in the video - and you'd look and sound pretty stupid if you spam words in the video itself with your face and voice in it. Chances are, if the keyword is in the video transcription, you used it in the video and, if a lot of people watched and shared your video, you evidently used it well. Youtube will match up the words and will make your video appear in the Closed Caption results. You can search for videos with captions by choosing "Type: Closed Captions" in YouTube Search or by selecting it in the Filter section: 
Videos with captions display this small logo at the bottom of the player: 
This is how it looks like in the Youtube Search Results Page: 
Having a Closed Caption attribute added to your video can indirectly increase your click-through rate in the YSRP and will allow your Youtube video to rank better. 
Key Takeaway: Take the extra effort to transcribe your video word for word. Upload it to your Youtube video as a text file - it might just make a huge difference in your Youtube SEO efforts. 
Google uses your channel's authority as a basis for your individual videos' rankings. How is channel measured? We'll be talking about it in the User Engagement category of Youtube SEO. You control your content - how much it is optimized, how often you publish videos, how relevant your tags, titles and descriptions are, how you promote it, etc. Consequently, this means you have control over your authority. Key Takeaway: Take care of your channel and promote it as a whole as it affects your individual videos in their Youtube Search rankings. 
Click on the 'Audience Retention' tab in the left sidebar 
You'll see a the graph of your chosen Video's Audience Retention: 
Here you'll see how long people watched your video, where they stopped watching - all while the video is playing: 
You'll be able to analyze the reason behind your viewers turning your channel off at any specific moment in the time-frame. Key Takeaway: Check out your videos - why do your viewers quit watching at a specific part of the video? Do something about it. 
This leverages your channel's authority (which we talked about earlier) and your individual video's authority. The great thing about this is, it consequently affects your Google video SERP rankings as well. How do you build inbound links to your channel and video? The best way is to create great, quality Video Content that will appeal to the emotional triggers of your viewers. People just can't help but share a video that has 'touched' or 'inspired' them. Appealing to the emotional trigger of a person is much easier in video than in writing. Take advantage of that fact. Still, it won't hurt to promote and share to start the ball rolling. Key Takeaway: Always be building links to your Youtube Channel - profile links in your other social networks, links from your blog, from your website, etc. 
Key Takeaway: Share it on your own social profile and pray that other people share it too. 
Key Takeaway: Always allow embedding. 
Your video is public anyway and it's free marketing to boot! 
Warning: Youtube is really good at figuring out which comments are spam and which ones are genuine. Don't try to game the system. Gain more comments by commenting back and responding to your viewership. Reach out to them. Ask them to subscribe to your channel. Here's the tricky part - how do you get video responses? Who's hardworking enough to create a video just to respond to your video? It's pretty tough - but it's also the reason why it's holds good weight in your video's Youtube SEO. No one just gives away video responses. You have to earn them. Getting a video response means that the responder was really, in any way, affected by your video. Or it can also mean that you have a friend who was kind enough to do your Youtube video a great favor by responding to it. You can add a response to your own video but that holds little bearing. So how do you make a video response on Youtube? This Youtube Help section says it all: 
Thing is, I've yet to hear about a video with a lot more thumbs down than thumbs up that didn't rank because of the thumbs down - it probably was a bad video with poor relevance in the first place. Getting a Thumbs up, Thumbs down or a Favorite signals User Engagement. Getting these again, depends on the quality and delivery of your Youtube video. Key Takeaway: If you're already asking your friends to share your video in their social network, don't forget to ask them to Like and add your video to their Favorites list. 
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