We don’t believe SEO is just about optimising the bejezzus out of a handfull of pages on your site for a few keywords. The ultimate goal in our SEO work is to get your site in front of as many potential customers as possible and ultimately help you to do more business. Making sure your website is up there, in the top spot is of course a high priority, but  using third party sites can give you some much needed exposure outside of the usual search results.

YouTube is one such channel that can be wonderful in exposing your content. The videos feature directly in Google search results, which is nice. The site also has a huge number of users browsing and using the service. Recently we talked about the importance of interesting content as a corner stone of a good SEO campaign.  Showing your products or service in video form can give a real feel for what you do and really enhance the textual content. The hugely reduced publishing costs that the web allows you to provide some amazing video content, highlighting your business and have it open to a potentially huge audience. No matter how niche the content is though, you don’t need to justify its publication to some publishing gatekeeper and if you do have a hit on your hands the costs aren’t prohibitive.

More and more I find myself looking for video demos or comparisons of products I would like to buy. Although a video isn’t as good as actually getting the thing in your hands it can be a wonderful enrichment to a bit of text and a blurry photograph.  Fuji, via “The Fuji Guys” are really making a lot of use of YouTube to show off their products. Of course Fuji are also producing slick adverts, but the Fuij Guys videos offer more of a demonstation feel and also give direct feedback to customers comments.

So focusing on YouTube specifically, what should you bear in mind when you’re publishing video content? Firstly, I’m not pretending that producing a good looking video is easy. It’s not. It’s a skill and needs work. You have to make a decision if you are capable of the production standard you want or if you need to find someone to help you. These videos are going to represent your business and you want to make the best impression.

Let’s assume you have some content you’re happy with. How should you present it?

1. Start by creating a YouTube channel. YouTube allows you to discover some pretty diverse stuff; you start off watching a speech about nuclear power, but minutes later you’re watching a cat playing the piano. A channel will allow you to group your content together an give users a hub to more easily find your content. Creating playlists will also give viewers a path to follow once they hit one of your videos.
2. Fill out all the descriptions with information about your company, products etc. Make sure at least one link is going to your site. You want to make it easy for people to make a purchase or find out more if they want to. Make the descriptions helpful, avoid just writing spam.
3. Give your videos meaningful titles. The title is going to indicate what’s in the video, it’s going to help it show in search results. Never ever ever just leave it as movie001.mov. The title might include  a mix of model number, keywords that people are likely to search for, link bait.
4. Fill out the video description. Give some details about what’s in the video, link to a page on your site where you can find out more.
5. Add tags. Tags group together similar videos. Add some very specific to your products models etc. as well as more generic terms that are going to be shared with a larger number of videos.
6. Make sure your video has an opening an closing slide with your site URL company name etc. Remember YouTube videos can be embedded into any site. If your video ends up somewhere else you want people to know where to go to find out more.
7. Reply to comments. It must be said that YouTube dones’t always attract the most intelectual comments. But do check the comments on your videos. You can provide direct response to potential customers as well as use them as feedback for your future videos and products. Make sure you remove spam or offensive comments. No comments is better than something off putting.

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