YouTube for Organizations: Mastering Search Engine Optimization

August 29th, 2012 - by Norah Heintz

With more than 140 million unique visitors each month, video-sharing website YouTube is the third most viewed site behind Google and Facebook. Organizations can use YouTube to engage people of all ages and demographics. Uploading videos to YouTube can help strengthen your online presence, add credibility to your organization, and create a two-way dialogue with your audience.

Given the enormous amount of content that is constantly being uploaded to YouTube, it is important to make sure that your channel and videos are properly optimized for search. Engaging video content that is easy to find will drive traffic to your website and ultimately increase brand awareness for your organization.

SHARING OPTIONS

Once you’ve uploaded your video on YouTube, you have a number of sharing options, most of which you should allow in order to receive maximum exposure. First, make sure that your Privacy option is set to ‘Public.’ Be sure to select ‘Allow’ on the following: Comments, Comment Voting, Video Response, Ratings, Embedding, and Syndication.

KEYWORDS

In order to make it easy for people to find your video – via YouTube search or a search engine like Google – it is essential that you use keywords when writing the title and description of your video. (Not sure where to start? Copyblogger offers an excellent tutorial to help you research keywords.)

  • Title (100 character limit): The video title should be descriptive but to-the-point. Always include the word “video” and the name of your organization in addition to three to five keywords that describe the clip.
  • Description (1000 character limit): The video description is a key piece of information used to identify the content of your video. Use as many keywords as possible in the text of your video description. At the top, include a link to a related website landing page and request that viewers both rank and share your video.
  • Tags: Once you upload a video, YouTube will give you the option to add tags. Tags are descriptive keywords that people may use to search for your video. Choose several keywords or phrases (no more than 10) and write them in quotations.

CAPTIONING/SUBTITLES

Uploading a text transcript of your video significantly improves SEO. If you choose this option, convert the transcript to a .txt file and follow YouTube’s simple instructions. If a user selects Closed Captioning, YouTube will automatically translate the audio of the video and display it as subtitles. Be sure to include periods and commas in the transcript to indicate natural breaks in speech (YouTube uses punctuation to properly time the subtitles).

CHANNEL SETTINGS

  • Title: Use your organization’s name as the title of your channel. Make sure that your organization is uploading videos to the official channel only.
  • Tags: Much like video tags, you can add tags to describe your channel in order to boost search engine optimization (SEO). Choose a few keywords that you want to target for your channel. Make sure these keywords are the same ones you use on your website and that they are relevant to your organization.

PROFILE

  • Make sure that your profile name matches the name of your organization.
  • Include the URL to your organization’s website in the “Website” field.
  • Summarize the content of your channel in the “Channel Description” field, being sure to use as many keywords as possible
  • Include links to your organization’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

 

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