Surfing is the key to My Life: Tip from a PRO: YouTube Best Practices

YouTube Best Practices by Professional surfer and GoPro ambassador Reno Makani Before you continue on please subscribe to my NEW YouTube Channel

Marketing videos on YouTube is rapidly growing as one of the major online marketing tools, it’s affordable and has great impact on consumer behavior along as a place to publicly displace your creative side. As YouTube video views are continuing to grow rapidly every day, using YouTube as a major method of organic traffic generation for your site, blog or social media channel resulting in guaranteed success!

Video Optimization

Achieve high ranks for videos on search engine results page for targeted keywordsIncrease the number of views to the video on YouTube, social websites and blog(s) Support / start a viral buzz for a new product on social media websitesBuild high relevancy links from video page to product page and vice versa to increase its authority.

Video Optimization Challenges

The main challenge is that search engines can’t parse videos (most search engines are originally designed to index HTML content). Search engine can read and base their ranking algorithm on following factors: video title, description, comments, ratings, number of shares and some Meta information.

YouTube Video Optimization Best Practices

YouTube Channel: upload video Video Title: is considered one of the most important factors for video ranking on search engines and YouTube search results page.- Start video title with the main keyword or product main feature- Include targeted geographical location and brand name in the title (if applicable)- Title length shouldn’t exceed 45 characters (with spaces), Avg. 5-7 words- Uses a catchy title, videos get watched because of how they are titled – “how they sell themselves.”Video description: - Write the description in a compelling manner that drives the user to take action. This description is what the user will see before view your video on search engine result pages.- Use several related terms “long tail keywords” in the description that are highly relevant to the top targeted keyword and don’t keyword stuff the video description- It’s recommended to use the video transcript and revise it to make it reader-friendly- Include a clickable (full path) URL in the first line of the description. Best pages to link to are: product and catalog pagesVideo duration: video duration shouldn’t exceed 3-4 minutesVideo Category: choose the most appropriate 1 to 3 categoriesVideo Tags: Use 5-10 tags for each video. Tags could be product name, product benefits, city, province name and brand nameVideo Rating: Allow users to rate the video; search engines will pay attention to high rated videos. It’s also a key part of “going viral”, as potential viewers are very attracted to highly rated videos.Video File Name: it’s recommended to rename the video file before uploading it to YouTube, use the top targeted keyword as the file name.Video Length: I recommended 2-3 minutes for action packed videos and 30 seconds for commercial.

Advanced YouTube Video Optimization Opportunities

YouTube Call To Action Overlay: A popup footer banner that appears 10sec into the video and 10sec from the end of the video. It could be used to share more information about the content of your video or to raise interest to your channel, other videos or link to an external website. There’s no additional charge to setup this feature but it involves- Connecting YouTube account to AdWords- Creating a promoted videos YouTube accountVideo Annotations: a way to add a banner, text link or interactive commentary to videos. You could link any annotations to YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video.Example here > "GoPro Surfing China"

Why Is Video Optimization Important?

Ten years ago, people began switching from newsprint and television to the Internet as their main source of news. Now video is the primary source of news for the public. Anyone can go online at any time to watch the highlights of the big game. At the same time, a person can learn how to knit a new scarf with video. Why is video important to the Internet marketing community? YouTube is one of the most powerful marketing tools at the disposal of businesses. Since its acquisition by Google, YouTube has become the second most powerful search engine in the world. Best of all, Google indexes YouTube videos instantly. A fully optimized YouTube Channel containing engaging video content will not only provide a powerful, followable link to your website, but it will also greatly increase views, which will drive more traffic to your website.

Note - I captured some of the first GoPro high def content and later uploaded my first GoPro video in 2008. "Old YouTube Channel" At that moment I had no idea that GoPro and YouTube would be the giants that they have become. Link to video here> GoPro Wave With Rainbow

Optimizing Your YouTube Channel:

Channel SettingsTitle – Include your name in the titleVisibility – Check the blip to make your channel visibleE-Mail Location – Check the box so others can find your channel via e-mailChannel Tags – This is the most important part of channel optimizationChoose 3-5 keywords you want to target for your channel. Make sure these keywords are the same ones you use on your website and that they are relevant to your businessSeparate each keyword using quotation marks. It should look like this:gopro, hero3, surfing, hawaii, travel, adventureChannel Themes and ColorsThis has no real bearing on the optimizationChoose a theme and colors that are similar to your websiteEx: http://www.youtube.com/renomakaniThis YouTube channel was modeled after our old website at http://www.renomakani.comModules – Any other modules are fine, but these three are necessary for optimizationCommentingSubscriptionsFriendsVideos and PlaylistsAlways select the “My Uploaded Videos” option in the featured content boxAlways set one of your videos as the featured videoCheck the box to play your featured video automaticallyProfileUse your business or brand for the nameUse the exact URL to your website under the website section — this will be the only followable link you can obtain through YouTubeIn your channel description, summarize the content of the channel, and include a link to your company’s Facebook or other social media channelsIn the About Me section, it is important to give a brief description of your brand or company using the targeted keywordsAll other sections of the profile are great to have, but they will not help optimize the channel in any way

Optimizing Your YouTube Videos:

ContentCreate high-quality, engaging video content.

Choose video content related to the targeted keywordsMention the targeted keywords in the scriptInfo and Settings.

Video Title.

Always include the word “video” at the end of the title.

Include your company name in the title.

Description. Include the company website URL within the first two lines of the description"SEO"This will be a CTA link.

When users click on the video, the company URL will still show up in the video description without the expanded view.

Mention the company name after the company URL.

Include 3-5 keywords in the video description.

Include links to the company Facebook and Twitter pages at the end of the video description lower down within the description

Tags – Very important for search engine optimization of videos.

Choose 3-5 keywords you want to target.

Separate each keyword using camas. It should look like this:gopro, hero3, surfing, hawaii, big waves, action sportsThumbnail.

Choose a tailored visually appealing thumbnail. This will make the video more inviting to viewers.

Broadcasting and Sharing.

OptionsPrivacy – Set to publicLicense – Select the standard YouTube licenseComments – AllowComment Voting – AllowVideo Responses – AllowRatings – AllowEmbedding – AllowSyndication – AllowCaptions and Subtitles –

"Advance SEO" YouTube videos are converted into Java, which makes the content unable to be crawled by search engines. By uploading a caption file, you are giving Google a giant copy block to read.

Transcribe the video to a .txt file.

Use periods and commas to signify breaks in speech.

This will help Google’s voice recognition service to time the captions properly.

If the video contains no speech, use the annotations feature to create a caption with a call to action for the company website or social networking page. Make sure the timing is set on the annotation to give ample display time for the captionUpload the transcript or caption file (processing can take several minutes)

Date and Map Set the location to the company address.

Promoting Your YouTube Videos:

Embed the videos in your personal or company blogInclude a link to the YouTube URLEmbed the videos on the personal or company websiteInclude a link to the YouTube URLSyndicate the videos via social networking websitesDistribute the videos using http://www.tubemogul.comFind linking partners for the videos. Magazines, news broadcasting, blogers, writers, etc.

If you follow most all of my best practices, you will notice the page hits are now starting to increase because of YouTube channel and video optimization efforts.

What can be done next to bring in more traffic?

Distributing and syndicating videos through social media peripherals will give the channel the jolt needed to turn it viral. Keep it simple – post each video on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc… Social media syndication reaches the largest audience possible in the least amount of time. Embedding the videos on the company website and company blog will greatly impact the number of views. Be sure to include a link to the YouTube URL on the blog and website. Finding linking partners for videos will assist in driving in more traffic. The easiest way to do this is through http://www.tubemogul.com. Tube Mogul is a pay-service video distribution company. For a fee, they will distribute videos across numerous video-hosting websites. A much cheaper method of doing this is by searching through websites and blogs, and getting them to link to the video page on the company website. This process is very time consuming, but numerous back-links can be obtained through this process. If you have a budget then I say go for it :)

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