20 June 2010

YouTube Optimisation

How to Optimise YouTube Videos for Google

These SEO points on YouTube videos have been collected from several resources and years of experience. Google now shows video links at the top of standard search results pages so you effectively get to the top of Google using YouTube if you have a video that Google sees as being relevant to the users search query.

YouTube videos are great forms of viral marketing. This doesn’t mean giving people viruses, but it does mean making a video with content that is so interesting to users that they will share and link the video with other users. Obviously the video will have your web address, etc and also the following should be taken into account:

Editable YouTube Attributes

Title - Get keywords in the title – this should be similar to a website page title (unique and keyword optimised).
Description - Same as a websites META-Description tag but can be longer than the standard 150 characters (unique and keyword optimised).
Tags – Same as a websites META-Keywords tag – simply add all your keywords in here.

Other SEO YouTube Factors

Views – The amount of views a video has affects the SEO. With lots of views a video (that is not too old) will be thought of highly by Google.
Ratings – The quantity of ratings and the average levels (1-5) – if there are 150 ratings an average level of 4.5/5 it may be thought of highly, whilst f there are 2 ratings, both at 1/5 then it may not be thought of highly.
Playlist Additions - Users who have added the video to their YouTube account playlist. The more the better.
Flagging – Has the video been reported as inappropriate? (There is a link on every video page called “Flag”). If so this can act negatively for SEO.
Embeds – Has the video been embedded on anyone else’s website or blog? Google tracks this through the embed code given by youtube.
Shares – Has the video been shared on a social network (facebook, myspace, twitter, etc). There is a share option on every video that does this.
Comments – Easy to understand. The more comments the better.
Age of Video – Google will see the newer videos better than older ones as it is classed as “fresh” content (especially if lots of comments, high ratings, links, etc). This is the dilemma because the longer a video is online the more views and ratings and links, etc it will get. This method keeps fresh content on the internet – but don’t be resubmitting the video every day because that will get you nowhere.
Channel Views – If you have set up a channel on Youtube and that channel has lots of views then Google will rate your videos higher.
Subscribers – If your channel has lots of subscribers Google will rate your videos higher.
Inbound Links (links from outside of YouTube pointing to your videos) – Lots of links to a Youtube video means it is important (especially if the content is similar and the linking page is higher ranked itself).
Transcribing - Transcribe the video to have the wording shown as subtitles. There is a rumour that the transcripts are used to index content on Google (unconfirmed).

Hopefully this will give you an insight into the SEO factors effective YouTube videos. Keep in mind all this applies because Google, Yahoo, Bing (MSN) and other search engines want to get the best and most relevant content to the people using their search queries. The search engines are constantly battling againt each other to be on top and they do this by effectively filtering their indexed pages to find the best content.