Have you ever wondered why your YouTube video isn’t getting as many views as you’d like? You might not be optimizing your channel to its full potential.
Here are NuZoo’s Do’s and Don’ts of video SEO:
VIDEO SEO DON’TS
1. Don’t: Use vague words, titles and/or descriptions on your videos.
While it may be good advertising to use your company’s name in the title of your videos, you have to consider words that people are actually searching on YouTube and Google. You should avoid using vague or confusing descriptions. For example, at NuZoo we write about video production so a word we use in all of our titles, articles, and descriptions is video; followed by any trends or tips we’re discussing. It might seem obvious but sometimes it’s the obvious that’s missing from successful online content.
2. Don’t: Bypass tagging your videos.
Like keywords, you must have relevant tags on your video in order to appear on YouTube and Google searches alike. Having between 5-10 tags on your video is the best way of making sure your target audience finds your content. These tags can be as general or specific as you want them to be, as long as they are consistent with your video content. When you don’t tag your videos, YouTube and Google will have a hard time figuring out if your video is right for a search result; this applies to all SEO.
3. Don’t: Forget to promote your video on social media.
Having your video linked and/or embedded on any and all your online portals is the best way to improve your number of viewers. This is the basis of video SEO and SEO in general. The more your content is linked and found elsewhere the more likely it is to be found. If you aren’t sharing it then neither will YouTube or Google on their searches.
Video SEO Do’s
1. Do: Choose strong and relevant keywords in your title and description.
Going back to our example of video editing at NuZoo, we make sure that our keywords appear several times throughout our work. This is a classic SEO tactic and the same applies for video. You want to make sure your keywords are found in your description, title, transcript, and annotations in order to receive a more positive SEO ranking on your video.
2. Do: Organize your channel using keywords and tags.
The more organized and manageable your page appears to the audience, the better. By tagging your video with relevant topics and grouping it with your own you create a keyword-friendly channel that will connect you with a more concentrated audience. Linking your video to similar ones will help you get in touch with a bigger audience while keeping it concentrated, and have a better history and reputation with Google.
3. Do: Use Metadata for your video.
While this might seem like a foreign concept, using manually written metadata is becoming an increasingly popular aspect to include in videos. Metadata is the keywords that computers and search engines alike use to search for any content in videos. Anywhere your video goes the metadata travels with it. YouTube gives you many fields you can use to personalize your video from the title to the description and metadata. Why not take advantage of all the SEO opportunities YouTube has to offer?
Since its launch in 2011 Google Plus has been fighting to become a strong social media toolkit. The following are pros and cons of using Google Plus as a marketing tool for your business:
Pros of Using Google Plus
First and foremost as a business owner you should keep in mind that all companies small and large alike must have a strong online presence. According to marketing psychologist Martin Shervington, using Google Plus can give you an advantage on search rankings. If your company’s Google Plus page is constantly active, updated and read it’s more likely that it will appear on a person’s search for your area of expertise and or product.
Part of having Google Plus is being able to create “hangouts” and “circles.” Hangouts enable communication with your audience; you can video chat or instant message each other without having to leave the Google Plus page. Be it present or potential clients as well as business partners, Google hangouts give room for a more personalized online relationship.
Circles on the other hand facilitate finding and reaching your target market. When you make a circle, you’re putting people into a specific group that you create. For instance, NuZoo might create a circle for affordable housing or telecom, both industries that we serve. But we might also create a circle for video professionals so we can share info and communicate with other video producers. The key to using circles is controlling what posts you see from each circle you make; as the creator you are able to put a limit on how many posts from each circle appear on your company’s stream page. This is search engine optimization at its most basic: the more content with your key words in your circles — even from other people in your circle — makes it more likely that someone searching Google will find you.
Cons of Using Google Plus
According to the DMR (Digital Marketing Stats Resource Center) only 13% of small businesses use Google Plus and an unknown number of business pages are also present. Meaning you might not be able to measure how much you’re being found, and how big the market on Google Plus is for the products or services that your company provides.
Google Plus boasts of having a network of 540 million active users (statistic which has not been updated since 2014). But Google owns YouTube, and everyone who wants to comment or post on YouTube appears on Google Plus, whether they are active or not. DMR 2015 research shows only 4 to 6 million users have actually made a public post.
Last but not least is how complicated Google Plus can be; just because it can have an extremely good effect on your company’s organic searches doesn’t mean the end result is going to be a positive one. In one place there are tools for photos, messaging, streams, videos, groups and hangouts. But if not used correctly or consistently Google Plus can turn out to be a waste of time and effort.
Google Reputation
On a final note something that can be both a pro and con about Google Plus is every company or person has their very own “Google reputation.” This includes the comments you post on YouTube videos, your blog posts, and comments on other blogs make up a profile of you.
Google uses this information to create an image of you (person or business). It then uses this to identify who you are regardless of what tool you use.
Depending on your online activity, Google might conclude that your company and page is trustworthy or not, and whether or not it should appear in its search results.
We all crave getting found quickly and easily on Google. But how do you do it? We’ve got 7 ways to help you get found on Google.
How To Get Found on Google
In order to successfully boost your website’s organic search results you must first understand and take advantage of the following features:
1. The GoogleBot:
This is a search software Google sends out to collect info about websites in order to add them to Google’s massive index. Although GoogleBot spends only a couple of seconds on your website it aims to improve Google performance and scale as the web grows, giving you ample opportunity to appear on people’s Google searches.
GoogleBot Works Two Ways
Crawling
This is the GoogleBot going into different websites and finding new and updated information to report back to Google. When the GoogleBot crawls it goes through your website links and documents and takes all your site info back to Google.
Indexing
All the information gathered by GoogleBot while “crawling,” is then categorized and Google determines whether or not it will be added to the Google index. Google also decides if your site has quality content, which can make your site appear higher in the organic listings. Indexing looks at whether a page has pictures, videos or a list of links; the more pictures and links you have on your website, the better.
2. Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a list of everything on your site: web pages, documents and graphics. If you organize it and update it constantly this overview of site links allows for the GoogleBot to “crawl” easier through your business’s website. NuZoo.com is a WordPress site, and there are plugins that automatically update your XML site map.
This is a search console you can use in order to monitor, make changes and maintain your website according to Google’s rules. It makes sure that Google can access your content, submits new content for crawling and removes content you don’t want shown in search results. It also creates and monitors content that is visually engaging in organic results and the best part is, if you have a Gmail you’re all ready to sign up for it.
4. Google Analytics
Same as Webmaster, you can sign up for analytics through your Gmail account. Once you have it, Google Analytics helps you track where your website is in Google indexing as well as in social media. You can monitor your website traffic, see where users come from, what pages they visit on the site, when and where they leave. You can also use Queries to find out where your site ranks for specific keywords. For example, NuZoo ranks #4 for video media company and #17 for graphic designers chicago. So we can target the keyword/phrase graphic designers chicago and try to move us up the rankings.
5. Content Experiments
This is a free, (yes FREE) optimization tool for visitor rates and satisfaction on your business website. This is an additional Google Analytics feature that helps you test almost any change or variable on your website and see how it optimizes (or doesn’t) any specific goal(s) you have envisioned. The more you know about your audience the better for your online future.
6. Website Links and URLs
Submitting your website URL to any social media sites or partnering sites helps get a search engine crawler in your loop faster. Let’s face it, everyone has some sort of social media profile nowadays; having your link on sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, where people can share and re-tweet, means GoogleBot will get to your website faster.
7. Creating offsite content amps up your link building process
The more links your website has, the better. But they need to be quality links; Google rewards you for links from authority sites. At NuZoo we create informative slideshows, post on GooglePlus and Facebook, and write articles for LinkedIn ~ all of which we link back to our site.
As you can see, how to get found on Google isn’t an overnight thing. You need to be consistent and in it for the long haul, and you will start to see results.
Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net / Salvatore Vuono
According to Google AdWords Keyword Planner, the keyword SEO averaged 673,000 monthly searches versus 74,000 for search engine optimization in the last 12 months.
I compared the following search terms in the keyword planner for the last 12 months and here are the results.
Email or E-mail?
Some people speculate that nobody under 30 uses “e-mail” anymore. The New York Times still does, but they’re also using “web site”. The Associated Press Stylebook has been recommending email since 2011, according to the AP Style book.
Then which is it, email or e-mail?
An important thing to consider is how people are typing the word on their mobile devices. People type email rather than e-mail because it’s easier; they don’t want to search on their keyboards for the hyphen, so email is the way to go. The difference in the monthly search is staggering: email 11,100,000 versus e-mail 1,220,000, an almost 10 to 1 ratio.
Smartphone or Smart Phone
This is one of the big ones. And if you guessed smartphone you’d be right. In the last year smartphone averaged 1,000,000 monthly searches versus 60,000 for smart phone. People have a tendency to go for the one word choice because it’s easier to type, so smartphone wins. Dictionaries also now have it as one word.
Website or Web site
Publications like The New York Times still use the phrase “web site” according to Grammarist. But we’re focused on optimizing word usage. If you look at other words using the root word web, webcam and webmaster are all one words, so website should be, too, right? Yes; monthly search stats over the last 12 months have it averaging 246,000 monthly versus 27,100 for web site.
Have you ever wondered why your YouTube video isn’t getting as many views as you’d like? You might not be optimizing your channel to its full potential.
We all crave getting found quickly and easily on Google. But how do you do it? We’ve got 7 ways to help you get found on Google.
You say tomato, I say tomahto. Not a big deal. What about email or e-mail? Now a big deal.