Over the last two months, I discussed various techniques to help you and your business move forward in the digital era. This month’s article will focus on using videos to drive traffic to your site: Video Marketing.

The use of video is effective and is becoming more important in driving traffic to websites. Just look at what YouTube did in 2015:

• One billion users;
• $4 billion in estimated revenue;
• Four (4) billion video views per day;
• Six (6) billion hours of video watched per month;
• One billion average YouTube mobile video views per day;
• Forty (40) minutes average time spent on YouTube per mobile session

And, the list goes on and on

The above information should support the reason for you to use video in your marketing efforts moving forward, and YouTube can be one of the kingpins in your marketing arsenal to help you drive traffic to your sight.

What we are going to look at is ranking a YouTube video for a particular keyword. It is much easier than ranking a standard website. The other thing is that Google loves videos, and YouTube in particular (I guess that may be because Google owns YouTube).

If you look at the current searches you do, you will notice more videos popping up in the search. Also, YouTube is one of the top search sites, after Google.  So let’s see how we can grab your slice of this traffic from using video.

What we need to do is use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and YouTube to create an SEO technique. It’s a technique that if performed properly will increase your videos on the first page of Google and YouTube searches.

Keywords for your video

There are three (3) things you are looking for in a keyword.  First, you need to realize that it is pointless to think you will rank highly for competitive keywords.  As a result, we will be looking for three things in a keyword:

1. Select a realistic keyword (long-tail keyword) — Unless you already have an established network of related websites (or a ton of money) it is pointless to try to rank for highly competitive broad keywords such as “cannabis,” “marijuana,” or “marijuana stores.”
2. Make sure the keyword is in high demand — If people are not searching for the keyword, it will be pointless to try to rank for that keyword.
3. Target “buying keywords” Think of a buying keyword as one where people are searching with their credit cards in hand, ready to click the purchase button. In earlier articles I wrote about SEO and that the choice of keywords is crucial to success. It is the same with video marketing. The great thing is that it is much easier to get your videos ranked, and you can target several competitive keywords!

Here are some other things you need to also consider:

• Setting up your video — This will incorporate the use of video titles, a video name, a video description and video tags.
• Video title — The title of your video should include the keyword you are looking to rank against.
• Video name — Make sure you use the keyword in the name of your video file that you are uploading.  It is a simple step, but many do not remember to do that.

Video description

The video description is a very important part of getting your videos ranked on Google.

Make sure you use your main keyword first, followed by a link to your website. Do not skimp on the description  Let your writing genius shine here. Provide enough information to make Google happy, like a paragraph or two. Also, include associated keywords in the description, and include your main keyword again at the very end.

You also want to rank on the first page of YouTube searches. People think that the more tags, the merrier.  That is not correct. Remember, we are looking at quality, not quantity, so look at having at least three tags that include your main keyword

Also, think about using at least two LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords. The easiest way to that is to use your main keyword and put it in the Google search bar. Google automatically provides the best matching phrase for your main keyword.

Your video channel

Want to get better rankings on Google and YouTube? Make sure to fill in your YouTube channel with targeted keywords. This will help you to rank higher in both search engines.

Go to your setting button in your channel section and make sure to fill everything out. You will be glad you did.

I hope that this article was of help. Next time, I will go over bookmarking and building your links to help you help search engines pick up your videos and increase your traffic.

Until then …