Over the last few weeks, I have written a few SEO themed blogs that were designed to help small local businesses with hints, tips and reviews on how they can successfully grow their website.

As a Cheshire based web-design agency, we always have to have our finger on the pulse when it comes to improving local search results for local businesses, but sometimes you have to take a step back and take a look at the bigger picture, or in this case the forgotten picture.

Let me introduce you to YouTube! You probably think I’m an idiot after writing that sentence but let’s look at this from an SEO point of view…

• YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine.
• YouTube generates over 30 million visitors per day
• YouTube processes more than 3 Billion searches a month
• YouTube drives more traffic and clicks than Bing, Yahoo & Ask combined

Now I have hopefully gotten your attention, I hope you can see why YouTube is in-fact a forgotten, untapped traffic source that has its purposes for small and medium businesses.

The Research

Just like any SEO strategy, you have to do your homework first otherwise chances are nobody will ever find your video because A) the search engines will have no idea how to rank the video and B) you may be targeting keywords that are out of your reach!

Using the example of a computer laptop I was researching for last month, type in what you want to see on YouTube and take a look at the numbers. While 4,000 odd results may not seem many, it will be realistic enough to drive your video onto the first page using keywords. Next use Google and search for what video you want visitors to find you for to get an idea of keywords. You can see the ones in bold on the image below to get a rough idea.

Research for the 'Acer Aspire E1-572 Model Search Results

General Keywords Google Tends To Look For

You will probably see this when doing your keyword research but Google tends to look for general keywords that give them an idea of what the video is about as they can’t listen when ranking content. Keywords such as how to “How to improve small business SEO”, reviews “Small Cheshire Business SEO review” or tutorials “how to improve local SEO for business in Cheshire” tend to be effective keywords.

Google Search Results. An easy way to find keywords for your video.

How to optimize your video using keywords

• Video Title
• Description
• Tags

Video Title

First things first, the title of any SEO based content is always vital. Much like content, it is important that the title is roughly between 50-60 characters and should be between 3 to 5 words that contain a full keyword or two without keyword-stuffing.

Example of a full SEO friendly YouTube title.

Description

Pick two, maybe three keywords and look to include these keywords about 3 times each inside the text but the challenging part is to try and make it look natural without keyword stuffing. Look to write the description between 300 & 500 words.

Full YouTube description example for a video containing the Acer Aspire E1-572 model. This is a great way to get those keywords into your video that will help improve those search results.

Tags

Again following SEO written content, whilst tags are not ultra important, they still have a role to play when helping YouTube, Google and other Search Engines what your video is about and what they should rank your video for.

Example of YouTube Tags along with suggested keywords.

YouTube Content Also Helps…

• Build on Page Authority
• Establish Real Clicks
• Construct Links

Call to Action

If you are looking at creating video content or need help with optimising video content to help boost web traffic by using keywords, why not give us a try? We are a small Knutsford, based Web-Design team that are passionate about all things web. We want to help small businesses drive traffic by perfecting the art of growing your website.

Give James Cox a call 01565 653616 or simply follow and ask us any questions you like by following us on Twitter.