4 Key Ways to Optimize Your YouTube Channel and Content

Keywords and relevance decide the ranking of your web pages in Google, and unsurprisingly, the same applies to Google-owned YouTube. To help boost the performance of your YouTube content and get the most out of the web's largest video network, we've developed some useful guidelines that'll help you to optimize your video for maximum success.

Here are four key tips:

1. Get your branding consistent

Aligning your video branding with that of your company creates a consistent experience for your audience. When existing and potential customers visit your YouTube channel, they should feel that it's part of a greater whole.

YouTube offers free branding features - you can customize your channel background, upload custom thumbnails and link to other social networks.  

Customize your channel art

A custom background is an easy way to communicate that this is the official YouTube channel for your brand. It needs to be simple, high quality and highlight what you do best. The recommended image size is currently 2560 x 1440 px. (source: YouTube Help)

Showcase your social channels

It’s important to list your active social media profiles and update them frequently for social proof. This increases your credibility and exposure, as segments of your audience will have differing preferred networks.

Check the bottom right corner of your channel art, right above the Subscribe button. Here, you can add links to the leading social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and also your website. In the 'About' section you can describe your business and highlight how you provide a better solution than competitors. Keep it short and descriptive.

Customize the layout of your channel

Once you've verified your YouTube channel, you'll be able to create a custom layout for your channel.

You can set it up so that new visitors see the channel trailer while returning subscribers see 'suggested content' instead. It's also possible to customize sections on your channel to highlight specific themes and playlists. Not only is this handy if you have a lot of videos, it also encourages viewers to watch more content.

Update your YouTube channel trailer (or create one)

A trailer is your chance to introduce yourself and your business and explain the benefits of subscription. And just like at the movies, a good trailer can make the viewers want to see more.

YouTube trailers appear at the top of the channel for new visitors and can help drive subscriptions. If you don't have one, or it hasn't been updated in the last 5 years, it’s time to get a new one. There are some simple tips from YouTube on how to create a good channel trailer:

• Assume the viewer has never heard of you
• Keep it short
• Hook your viewers in the first few seconds
• Show, don’t tell
• Ask viewers to subscribe in your video and with annotation

Custom thumbnails

Thumbnails convey the subject of the video and attract potential viewers to click-through. Using the cinema analogy - they're like the movie’s poster. YouTube has a thumbnail algorithm, which means that there’s one for every video you upload. But with millions of videos to choose from, you'll need a way to differentiate your brand.

To put things in perspective, over 400 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute and their average length is 4 minutes and 20 seconds. So, in the time it took you read this far, another 12,000 videos have been uploaded.

There are a number ways to create custom thumbnails that stand out. Use action shots, branded images with text, specific color themes for each video type - but the main takeaway is to keep them consistent.

On the technical side, always remember to use optimized images. It’s likely that your videos will be viewed on different devices, so always bear in mind the smartphone and tablets users. Optimized thumbnails have a resolution of 1280 x 1080 pixels, are under 2 MB and have a recognizable file format, e.g. .JPG or .PNG (source: YouTube Help).

2. Technical stuff that improves your YouTube Channel

Why is your video’s metadata an important part of YouTube strategy?

Titles, descriptions, and tags help YouTube and Google’s search algorithms identify the subject of your videos to rank them in their search results. Optimizing your metadata helps your audience find videos more often, meaning more video views.

The more views your video gets in a short time period, the higher it'll rank across the relevant key phrases.

Video Title

Write a descriptive title using key phrases that people would search to find your video. Remember to be concise, as any longer than 66 characters may be truncated in search. Be as natural as possible, but do keep keyword search volumes in mind. Use a keyword finder tool to check for general trends (we use Google's Keyword Planner).

Video Description

Each video should have a 200-500 word description, summarizing the video (you have 5000 characters to play with). Remember that only about 157 characters will display, so you need to make them compelling enough for users to click the 'Show More' button. YouTube video descriptions can be hard to master, but once you’ve developed a template, it gets much easier.

Always include strong call-to-actions and URLs for relevant pages on your website. Your viewers will appreciate it if they can easily connect to the supporting information on your website and you will benefit from the extra traffic. Everybody wins.

Consider transcribing your video

Another nice addition to your content could be a transcript. Especially if your videos long or have lots of takeaways. In this way, your video content can be repurposed to create a blog post or even downloadable content. Doing it manually can be time-consuming, so if you don't have any scripts already written, consider using a paid video transcription service.

Tag your YouTube videos

No doubt you'll have keywords that didn’t fit naturally into your title or description. Well, you can still make use of them by adding around five to seven as tags for your video. Tags can just be a single word, but ideally you should try to use more phrases. Remember that they have to be relevant to the content of the video and help users to find it.

3. Increase visibility and engagement with video annotations

Use annotations wisely

Make the most of YouTube annotations, as, essentially, they're call-to-action buttons in disguise. Well crafted pop-ups encourage viewers to subscribe to your channel, watch more videos, follow you on social media or find out more from your website. Each of the five annotation types can be used to achieve a different goal.

1. Speech bubble: for creating pop-up speech bubbles with text.
2. Spotlight: for highlighting areas in a video; when the user moves the mouse over these areas the text you enter will appear.
3. Note: for creating pop-up boxes containing text.
4. Title: for creating a text overlay to title your video.
5. Label: for creating a label to call out and name a specific part of your video.

"Pause" annotations are no longer available. If your videos already have them, they'll still work. Just bear in mind that they can no longer be added to new videos.

 Go beyond YouTube

Similar to blog posts, videos can be linked to other videos with the use of annotations. You can even link to external sites once your YouTube channel has been verified and is in good standing. Refrain from doing it with your first videos though, as linking externally is only considered good practice once you have an established channel.

You can also invest in YouTube advertising if you feel your business needs a push that goes beyond organic reach. If you don't have much experience creating short, promotional videos, don't worry. Just recently, YouTube launched the YouTube Director app, making it much easier to create videos. It's currently available to all businesses in the US and Canada, on iPhone (they promise to launch an Android app soon).

4. Organize your videos by topic or theme into playlists

Playlists

Just as you would organize your favorite songs, playlists help to group videos based on a common theme. It increases the likelihood that viewers will watch more than one video - not just because they are easier to find, but also because the videos will play automatically in the sequence you created.

You might want to use custom thumbnails to visually distinguish your playlists. Below is a wonderful example from Microsoft.

Playlists also help to define the subject of your videos for YouTube’s search algorithm, and they also rank in Google and YouTube searches, giving you yet another way to display your content. Keep your playlist titles short and descriptive, then add a keyword focused description (up to 5,000 characters).

Each playlist can have up to 200 videos and there are currently no limitations on the number of playlists users can create. If you only want to share content with specific users (contest winners, influencers etc.) then you can make your playlist private, so only those with the link can access it.

Otherwise, always ensure that your privacy setting is to public - you want your playlists to be found. 

Hopefully this post will help you get your video strategy in motion. We do practice what we preach and are currently revamping Sendible's channel on YouTube according to these best practices. Let us know in the comments if we've missed a tip that has been useful for you.

Source: www.socialmediatoday.com