youtube marketingUnless you’ve been living under a moon-sized rock, you’re familiar with the largest video-upload site in Cyberspace. Google’s YouTube platform has more than 1.3 billion users, making it one of the best marketing platforms available for businesses who know how to profit from it. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people have become millionaires from properly leveraging the platform. Those people are now known as YouTube stars.

The Most Important Elements of YouTube Success

Needless to say, the more people see your videos, the better you’ll perform. Thus, a primary motivation behind achieving site visibility is to increase YouTube views. We’ll explore numerous ways of achieving this.

1. Content is the Key

content is kingThis may sound trite; but it continues to withstand the test of time. With every Google search algorithm update, search engine optimization strategies that might have worked in the past falter. The only thing that has remained a pillar of reliability is content – and this extends to YouTube as well. Always create compelling videos. But how to do this?

Whenever you have an idea for a video in mind, ask yourself – “does this address the needs of my intended audience?” Use analytics to determine which keywords and pages on your site are the most visited, and then make a video about it in a compelling way. Answering frequently-asked is questions is usually a good way to get video traffic.

2. Meta-tags, Keywords and Meta Descriptions

The goal here is to make sure your video can be found among the glut of YouTube content. Analytics is of great help here as well. You want to find the keywords people are using to get to your site, and title your videos with those words. Make sure to do this in a natural way that appeals to the reader, and then add a keyword-targeted description, as well.

3. Call to Action

You can be creative here. Make sure to include several calls to action strategically placed. This means you should instruct your prospective customer what to do, and not leave them to figure it out. For example, if you’re making a YouTube video about your ecommerce website, make sure you tell them to visit your site in the url in the description box below – or something to this effect. You can have the best video content; but if you neglect to give them directions, many visitors will leave your site without checking out the actual goods or services.

You don’t even need to entice them into buying anything. Simply getting them to add their email address to your subscriber’s list could help you in the long run. They could become future customers and that is very valuable.

4. Subscriptions

social media subscriptionSubscribers are the lifeblood of a YouTube channel. Many people think that likes are the most important feature; and while they are important, it is the subscriber count that really helps you move up in the search engines results pages.

It makes sense, actually: when you have a lot of subs, your videos will immediately show up preferentially in the feeds of all those people – who will then like (or not) and perhaps leave a comment. This shows YouTube that your videos inspire engagement, and the search engines will reward you for it. Make great videos, buy subscribers, and promote your YouTube channel.

5. Promotions on Other Platforms

It stands to reason that if a picture is worth a thousands words, then a video might as well be worth a thousand pictures. Just about everyone would rather watch a video than read – especially when it comes to making decisions about a product.

Once your video is created, promote it on other social platforms. This will boost your backlink profile in Google’s eyes, and help you move closer to the top of the search engines. Although Google’s Pagerank metric is no longer available to the public, you can still use measurements such as Alexa Rank and the Moz seo domain rank tool to gauge the success of your promotion campaigns.