Did you know that using YouTube optimization is a staple in a repertoire of many professional and SEOs? Its effectiveness comes from many businesses having not created video promotions and uploaded them to the online video service.
Here are 10 YouTube optimization tips you can use for local SEO.
1. Geotag Your Video
Geotagging your video is important in order to associated with the geocoordinates of your business location. Setting up geotagging is simple. Within the Video Manager, go into the Advanced settings. In the search field, enter the address location here and click the Search button. This is when you’ll see the the location displayed on a popup map. After this, you can refine your location even further by dragging the pinpoint marker. Youtube will then convert this location info into longitude and latitude coordinates.
What does Google use this information for exactly? We don’t really know. Originally, YouTube offered an advanced option for searching for videos within an area, as well as having the videos be assess-able in Google Maps. With these options gone, the location data is still there in the background. This may impact if a video is relevant for searchers according to a physical geographical location.
2. Link To Your Business In The Description
Any experienced Youtuber with an external website will tell you that including a link to your business website at the beginning of the video description is manditory. Youtube automatically “nofollowed” these links, but it appears that there is still some ranking value in the business’s local search ranking.
3. Include Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone), Part I
Near the end of each video, make sure you include your business name, address and phone number for potential business opportunities to present themselves. Because of Google interpretation algorithms, text within videos can be “read.” This is because of an optical character recognition application that Google uses to help with possible video ranking.
4. Include Your NAP, Part II
Speaking your name, address and phone in your video’s audio allows Google to automatically convert it into text transcripts for use in search results.
Text transcripts are now automatically generated on YouTube, if the video contains recognizable speech.
5. Utilize The Description Field
The description box is there for a reason. Utilize it by mentioning your address, city location, and phone number. Aside from this initial information, you might try adding a section afterwards that provides some background information on your company. This could help persuade consumers to choose you over other similar companies.
6. Tag Your Video
When tagging, include your business category name and your location names. Keyword tags are an incredible help in terms of YouTube optimization. This is why adding a handful of relevant tags to your videos are important.
7. Associate The Video With Your Google Place Listing
You will need to add the video to your business listing in Google Places.
When adding the YouTube URL in Google Places, be sure to use the full page URL and *not* the shortened YouTube URL provided for sharing — the shortened URL will not work in Google Places for unfathomable reasons.
8. Associate The Video With Your Google+ Local Page
Google+ is another great way to get your video out there to more people. Add the video to your Google + Local page. From there, you can share the video on personal Google+ streams. The popularity of your video can be determined by the number of shares your video gets.
9. Embed Your Video
Embedding your video is another great way to get even more exposure. You can embed the video on any number of websites pages or blogs.
A popular question in video optimization is, “should I host videos on my own site, or should I store them on YouTube? The answer is probably YouTube. With the options that YouTube provides, such as embedding can really help drive the ranking and popularity of your video.
10. Promote Your Video
Similar to embedding your videos on sites and blogs, promote your video on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Google+. From there, your video will have more reach, and will have the possibility of being shared by your viewers. With all the views from these various channels, your video will move up in the rankings.
Bonus Tip:If your YouTube channel has more than one video (which is usually the case), it can be a worthwhile endeavor to optimize not just the videos themselves, but the YouTube channel itself. Adding a description, link to your website and linking to a few of your main social media profiles is a must.
Because Google likes videos (hey, if people like videos, so does Google), videos are given a fairly good influence in search. These tips can help provide you with a stronger video presence for augmenting your local search rankings.