Search Engine Optimization
The 3 Social Media Traffic Titans of 2019 (Part One: YouTube)
Before we jump right into this let’s get the obvious question out of the way…
We’re going to be discussing these following websites at length:
With just these three mega-platforms it’s still possible to get plenty of traffic to your websites with the right amount of effort, and make no mistake it will require some work on your end to do this right. In this first part we’ll be discussing how to take advantage of the free traffic one can reach from YouTube. It’s possible to use YouTube alone for this entire traffic method and do just fine but when you combine all three social sites you’re going to discover the trifecta of free traffic can benefit you greatly.
Contents
The Marketing Battle Plan
You’ve got a website you want to show off to the world and you don’t want to pay for traffic yet, no problem. It’s time to buckle down and set aside at least an hour every day for the next few months. That’s right, this is not a recipe for quick results so if that’s what you require then might I suggest taking a look at our free training course which walks you through an introduction to affiliate marketing, you can find it over at Powerhouse Affiliate.
SEO is the name of the game and in today’s internet climate it’s going to take work and patience. If you do this right you could very well end up with tens-of-thousands of views per month to your website for the next few years or more. Ranking anything at the top of the SERPS is difficult and anyone who makes it seem otherwise is lying to you or they’re simply unaware of the truth.
In order to rank your sites anywhere near the top of the results you’re going to need help and that’s where these top three media titans come into the scene. Each one of them will work best towards different means and though you can find excellent results with just any one of them if you combine their forces you’re setting yourself up for a higher chance of success.
YouTube for Business
We’re starting things off with the 2nd largest search engine around, YouTube. A lot has changed with YouTube over the past few years, things aren’t as easy as they used to be in some ways and much simpler in others. As of the writing of this article it’s been announced that measures will be rolled out to ‘shadow ban’ certain topics and keywords on the website, as well as the filtering-out of links within descriptions that YouTube fields “problematic”. The reason we’re bringing this up right now is to keep you informed and updated, things change and what has worked before won’t work forever. You have to strike while the iron is hot and be mindful of when it’s time to change plans.
YouTube SEO & Marketing for Business
In order to rank your websites higher in Google it’ll help a lot to first rank them on YouTube itself. By doing this you’ll stand a far better chance of reaching higher levels of organic traffic directly from YouTube which in turn can result in more click through to your links in your video descriptions.
Here’s a quick checklist of what to do and how to do it:
- Find already high ranking videos for your chosen keywords, then copy their keywords to a list somewhere. To do this simply open the first 5 to 10 videos per search and right-click anywhere on the page (not on the video itself) and then choose the view page source option in the menu that opens. On your keyboard, hold the Ctrl key and press the F key to open your browser’s search function and type the word “keywords” to highlight the appropriate part of the page.
- Notice which keywords are used in the title of the video as well, these tend to be the most important ones and won’t always be listed in the keywords section in the step above.
- Watch the video and write down any keywords which may appear on screen as YouTube now uses specialized recognition software to read words which appear on screen, there are also rumors that the audio can also be recognized so if you happen to notice any keywords being spoken go on and write those down too.
- Compile your list of keywords making sure to note any duplicates as these are probably very important and the most targeted of all the keywords you’ve noted then use these keywords when writing your own titles and descriptions, it won’t hurt to also include as many as you can (within reason) in your actual videos.
You can take this approach on a 1 for 1 basis meaning one of your videos can basically mimic the keywords of one high ranking video on YouTube and then simply follow this process per video you make… or, you can compile a larger list of keywords from multiple videos and squeeze them all into a single video or a handful of videos, it’s really your choice. That said however, it’s important to note that targeting too many keywords in a single video makes it difficult to keep track of just which keywords are actually working and which are not so maybe sticking to only a few per video is the best way to go but you can try both ways if you wish.
Channel Updates (new videos)
If the goal is to syphon traffic from YouTube over to another page then you don’t need to worry about updating your channel very often. In fact, you can upload one a month or less in some cases and do just fine. The reason for this is because your aim isn’t to stay relevant in the algorithm on YouTube but instead to create opportunity for people to find your videos by searching keywords.
The way these two methods vary are evident in how you create the content on your entire channel. This means your videos themselves, the titles and descriptions all need to be made as though you’re primary goal is SEO and not overall views. We’re not trying to start a career as Youtuber after all but instead using this platform as a free way to get qualified traffic.
Of course, the more keywords you can hit the better off your results will be in the end so trying to publish at least one video per day which targets a handful of keywords can do wonders for traffic to your websites. You’re probably wondering how to create these videos, a very reasonable question. There’s no real easy answer to this as your options are extremely numerous. You could always hire someone on Fiverr to create cheap videos but that will rack up a decent sized bill by the end of just a single month. Alternatively you could find some cheap or even free software and learn how to use it which is certainly a reasonable option. We’re going to have to leave this up to you for now to figure out, perhaps a YouTube marketing search for something along the lines of “how to make whiteboard videos” could be a good starting point. There are options out there and which one suits you best will be up to you to determine.
Content Requirement
Let’s just get this right out of the way… don’t steal content and pass it off as your own. Not only can this get you into hot water legally but it’s just a shady practice and could get your entire YouTube channel terminated.
Short Videos
This again goes back to what your goal is on Youtube which in this case is not to become a ‘Youtuber’ but instead to get free traffic to your websites with YouTube marketing strategies. You don’t need to make long videos to get the job done, you only need to make videos which will entice people to want to click your description links in order to find out more about your offers.
Long Videos
There is some evidence to suggest that YouTube favors longer-form videos but how much that might affect your overall rankings is tricky to determine as the aim is optimization for search terms and not discovery by the recommended videos algorithm. If it suits you to make videos over a minute or two in length then by all means go for it, you certainly won’t see that harm your video rankings but it does take more effort and time to create longer videos which is something you need to be mindful of.
Thumbnails
YouTube tends to flip back and forth between allowing you to upload your own custom thumbnails and not based on their own criteria. The key point here is to simply use a thumbnail which has your main keyword in it and let that be the eye-catcher for anybody browsing through the long list of videos when trying to find something to watch. Think about how you scout for videos when on the hunt for information. Chances are you look at the thumbnails first and if one catches your eye you glance over at the title and then click on it. Alternatively there are folks who read titles first and then glance at the thumbnail but in either camp you’re still bouncing between those two things and the thumbnail is always a part of it so make yours stand out without being overly obnoxious and do your best to have it convey what your video is actually about at a glance.
Proper Backlinking
Backlinks are important for SEO of any website and it’s subsequent pages. There are a number of YouTube marketing best practices when it comes to this and we’re only going to touch on the most basic of basics.
YouTube does allow you to insert clickable links into video descriptions, they must be in the longform of a typical URL such as http://www.somewebsite.com and when you insert links like this into your description texts they will automatically become active hyperlinks once your video is published.
What this means is that you can’t exactly use normal hyperlink SEO methods such as turning a keyword into a clickable link but you can still use keywords in your video descriptions and they will help with that particular video’s SEO. Just in case you are wondering if your description keywords will help you to rank in Google, yes it will but don’t count on it as heavily as your video titles as they seem to hold the most weight.
In Conclusion for part one
Youtube is a very well known tool in most marketing circles. It’s power to pull traffic by the thousands in such a short period of time makes it very appetizing for anybody looking to get the word out about their content without the need to fork over money in advertisement costs.
YouTube Marketing Strategies will take time and plenty of work to do the job but if you’re prepared to handle it then it just might prove to be well worth the time for your business.
