- the title
- the description
- tags (keywords)
- and your YouTube username
From a social media marketing standpoint, YouTube isn’t an ideal social site because of the way it hoards PageRank (video pages can’t have external links on them, and external links are nofollowed everywhere anyways, including on your user page), so it can’t be leveraged to increase your site’s rankings in the same way that a site like Digg can. That’s why a lot of SEOs and SMOs prefer submitting link bait articles to social news sites versus making videos for YouTube. When a video goes viral, it’s YouTube that tends to benefit in terms of inbound links rather than the original site. So, if the link juice and thus the search engine visibility benefits don’t transfer to your site, what’s the point you may ask?
True, YouTube limits your opportunities to add external links and then nofollows them. But you can be at peace with that fact. Instead, get the YouTube video itself to rank in the SERPs. Long live Google’s “universal search”!
With universal search, YouTube now wields a lot of power to rank in Google’s web search results — which means that getting into video is a good idea. Video blogging or trying to create something that has the potential to go viral can be a great thing for your business.
I especially love the “plus box” in universal search — the clickable plus sign in a YouTube video containing Google SERP that allows searchers to watch the video right there, without leaving the page. It’s a great opportunity to make a brand impression over a course of minutes, while the viewer watches your video.
So how do you optimize video content?
Obviously the spiders can’t see what you say in the video so how are these things going to rank? When you upload a video to YouTube, there are a few important areas to optimize are:
Hi Stephan !
I´d like to complement your post (if you allow me) with another factor.
Fill up completely your Channel info. It will attract more visitors because you will start to rank in Google SERP’s with your YouTube Channel where all your videos are. Write carefully your Title, Description and Tags. And like you say, your user name will have also influence in SERP’s.
Nicely put. The guys at Blendtec have done a great job of using YouTube to promote their company. They make a good example.
Still valid, after 10 years. I’m just starting my vlog on Youtube so it is good reading.
ps
I can’t see labels in comment form, I had to use Firebug to see where to write email, url and name. 😉