Are you making videos, uploading them to YouTube, adding a few tags and hoping that someone finds them?
Stop wasting your time and start adding these YouTube SEO best practices to your video marketing strategy today.

Implement these YouTube SEO tips and start having the time of your life.

No, really.  Whether you’re a military spouse (navy wife like me), a stay-at-home mom, frustrated network marketer or mlmer, or just plain ‘ole want to make money online, you have to get really good at video.

Video shows your style and personality.  Video makes your subscribers feel close to you and trust your expertise.

It’s time to break out of your shell and make video marketing on YouTube work for you.

Come out of the corner and start getting some real success with your video marketing on YouTube.

The time of your life….hmmm.

Kind of like dancing with the hottest guy in the whole place and nailing the lift…while your grouchy family hates….jaws dragging the floor…

 Love that scene…

Back to the real meat and potatoes…

I read somewhere that every minute, an hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube. That makes the competition pretty stiff.

But, it’s the second largest search engine in the world (right behind Google) so you can’t ignore it.

The question is how can you make sure that you are uploading quality videos and following the YouTube SEO best practices?

Follow along in this video or read on to get some of the best YouTube SEO optimization tips for 2014.  Apply, track your results and repeat.

In fact, I’m going to do the same with this post.  Check back for updates to how my most recent videos are performing.

YouTube SEO Best Practices for 2014

1.  Target specific buyer keywords with your video.  If you’re not sure about what I mean, check out post on keyword research.  You’re really wasting your time if you are just shooting videos without a specific target audience, problem, solution, or keyword phrase in mind.  60% of views come from video organic search.

2.  Include the keyword in the title.  Earlier in the title is best.  It gives it more weight.

3. Make the title descriptive of the content. Make sure to give the viewer what they were looking for so they watch the entire video.  YouTube is going to serve up a list of videos for the viewer to choose from so the title should grab their attention.

4. Select a thumbnail that is memorable, interesting and stands out.  Some people go for brand awareness and they have the same image  for their videos.  Some add a custom title with the same background.  Some show themselves as a way of establishing rapport.  Others go with cartoons.  You will have to experiment and determine what works best with your target audience.

5.  Consider using tried-and-true titles.  People like lists and they like to make sure to avoid messing up so use something like:

“Your YouTube Video Optimization is All Wrong : 7 Mistakes You’re Making”  dunh.dunh.dunhhhh

Did you hear that?  Like the music that plays during the breath-catching cliff-hanger….

Nobody wants to be the person making the 7 obvious non-ninja mistakes.

6.  Use tags as a key part of your YouTube Video SEO.  Use variations of the tags, from very specific, to general.  Investigate how the most successful YouTube marketers are using tags.  James Wedmore and the guys at ReelSEO do a great job.  Try including hashtags, personal or website branding and maybe even competitors as this might help YouTube add your video to the suggested videos that come up at the end of each video.  By the way, that is an easy way how to get more traffic to your channel and videos.

7.  Review tags as well as other video SEO analytics for YouTube videos by adding the VidIQ Vision Extension to your Google Chrome browser.. Use this tool to spy on the most successful videos and video makers.  Learn and mimic.  Don’t copy their tags and titles verbatim, add your own flavor.  Like this couple doing their own version of my second fav scene from Dirty Dancing…

 

A little different, but still good, right.

8.  Record the file in HD or if doing a screen share recording save it in 720p. Consider the viewer experience your number one priority.

9.  Use the keyword at least once (maybe a few times) in the description.  Include other words and phrases that an expert would use in describing the content. One other way is the pay attention when using  Google search, you will see some related keywords at the bottom of the page; use some of those in your description as well. The description should read like a mini blog posts.

10.  Add the URL that you want to send viewers to in the description.  Make sure to include it in the first 3 lines because that will show to potential viewers even if they don’t expand.  This should be a link to your site, blog, blog post, or Leadpages.net lead capture page.

11.  Upload your transcript to the video as a .txt file.  Google indexes this so if its good enough, it can rank as well.

12.  Consider creating a channel with your niche and/or keywords in the title. Don’t create a channel for every keyword just cover the major themes or audience that you will target.  Remember you will be making a set of videos for this volume approach so keep the videos centered around a common theme and use that in the channel name.

13.  Keep in mind when creating this channel, that channel authority plays a role in your ability to rank the videos. So create channels around your niche and focus on building the authority of those. Don’t scatter your efforts and videos all over the place.

14.  Optimize the description of the channel with your keywords.  Also, spruce up your channel with a profile shot and a good looking hover card.

15.  Optimize the channel with links to other social media accounts

16.  Add links to channels you like or partner with in the description.

17.  Link with Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.

18.  When you create the channel, you will also create Google+ page with the same name.  Create a Google+ post with the link to the video.

19.  Encourage (code for entice and lure) viewers to watch until the end.  It is important that people watch the video to the end so encourage them to do that by rewarding them with a bonus tip or special offer at the end of the video. Let them know to look for it in the very beginning.

20.  Include a call to action at the end of the video to like the video, subscribe to the channel and click on the link in the description to get more information or the free giveaway.

21.  Add the call to action in an annotation to encourage them to subscribe, like and click through as well.

22.  Add annotation to link them to another related YouTube video of yours before they get the choices at the end.  This gives them a moment to pick more of your stuff, not what YouTube recommends.

23.  Add an annotation menu for longer videos.

24.  Add annotation to pause video at the end to give peeps a few seconds to decide to complete your call to action.

25.  Embed your video to your blog.  And add a backlink to the video.  This passes link juice to the video and helps it rank faster on YouTube.  More views, more subcribers, easier ranking.

Whew.

That’s a lot.  Do you have to do everyone of these YouTube SEO tips today?

No. But you should work your way up to it or outsource it.  Remember that for channel optimization stuff, you only need to do it once when you first set up the channel.

Then some of the description stuff, you can duplicate over and over again; like the links to related material and channels.

And lastly, once you put in enough reps with your video marketing, this will be come second nature and you will be able to do it in a couple of minutes per video.

Give yourself a bit of grace and be patient.  It will all come together.

If you enjoyed this post, leave a comment.

If you have a question, leave a comment.

If you want to know what my #1 fav scene from Dirty Dancing is, leave a comment, and I’ll show you…

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“Nobody puts baby in the corner”

Niquelle Wright