5 Advanced YouTube SEO Tactics to Drive More Traffic to Your Videos & Website

It's no secret that YouTube is a traffic source with almost limitless potential.
There's only one problem:
It's a very crowded place. In fact, according to YouTube, there are more than 100 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute.
Considering the deluge of content you have to compete with on YouTube, the obvious question is: "How do you get people to watch YOUR video instead of the millions of others?"
The answer? Video SEO.
I bet that most of your competition lazily uploads their videos and hopes that one of them "goes viral." Needless to say, this rarely (if ever) works out.
But if you take the time to optimize your videos for SEO, you'll get significantly more traffic than your competitors.
Let's jump right in.

A Brief YouTube SEO Primer

Before we dive into how you can use to optimize your videos for YouTube, let's go over some of the most important ranking factors that YouTube uses.
It's not nearly as complex as Google's famous 200 ranking signals, but YouTube's algorithm is no joke. It takes dozens of signals into account for ranking videos in YouTube search and for suggested videos, like this:

This infographic by Tag SEO sums them up quite nicely:

I know that's a lot of information to process, so let me give you the Cliff's Notes of the most important signals that YouTube uses:

• Title tag information
• Audience retention
• Keywords in description tag
• Tags
• Video length
• Number of subscribers after watching
• Comments
• Likes and dislikes

With that, it's time to show you five ways that you can leverage these signals to get more traffic to your videos...and ultimately to your site.

1. Write Super-Long Video Descriptions

Remember that YouTube and Google can't watch or listen to your video (yet).
That means that they heavily lean on the text surrounding the video to understand your video's topic. That's why it pains me to see extremely brief video descriptions like this:

Why is this such a crime?
Well, the more YouTube knows about your video, the more confidently it can rank it for your target keyword.
But more importantly, YouTube uses keywords in the description to rank you for super-long tail keywords.
For example, I published a video on YouTube a few months back called "SEO Strategy 2014: How to Rank in Google Today." My description for that video is a hefty 291 words. Almost an entire blog post, really.

That long description – along with some other techniques I'll show you later - helped the video rank quickly for it's target keyword, "SEO strategy" (currently number three in YouTube).
But it's also ranking for quite a few long tail keywords, like "infographic seo strategy" (number one), because the keyword-rich description includes words like "infographic" and "seo strategy":

Bottom line: Make sure your video descriptions are at least 200 words.

2. Optimize Around "Video Keywords"

Ranking in YouTube is great, but ranking your video in YouTube and Google is even better.
Although Google gives YouTube videos an inherent edge in the SERPs, that's only true for certain keywords.
These keywords are called "Video Keywords" because they tend to have video results on Google's first page.
For example, any keyword that includes "cute cats" will almost always have a few video results:

This makes total sense if you think about it.
Someone searching for "cute cats" doesn't want to read an article like, "10 reasons cats are so darn cute." They want to see cute cats playing, eating, and sleeping!
On the other hand, someone searching for "ankle sprain" wants to read about symptoms and treatments. Google knows this and shows those searchers a block of 10 text articles:

Bottom line: Before deciding on a keyword for your video, check to see if there are video results on the first page. If so, that's a keyword you should strongly consider because you can potentially get your video ranked in Google and YouTube.

3. Get More Video Views From Online Communities

Online communities like Quora and LinkedIn groups are fantastic places to funnel traffic from.
The thing is, most communities don't take too kindly to someone dropping links to their content all over the place.
But they're usually open to people sharing helpful YouTube videos, like yours!
Because the number and quality of your video views is one of the most important YouTube ranking factors, getting views from targeted communities works wonders.
Just find a question in the community that your video could help answer. Then provide some value and suggest that people watch your video if they want more information:

Bottom line: Share your video liberally on online communities. This will hook your video up with the type of quality, high-retention views that YouTube likes to see.

4. Encourage Subscribing and Linking

Because YouTube's algorithm doesn't use backlinks, it puts A LOT of weight on user experience signals. If people enjoy watching your video, expect it to crush it in YouTube search.
Subscribing and liking are two of the most important user experience signals that YouTube uses.
When someone likes your video enough to subscribe after watching it, it sends a strong message to YouTube that you have a killer video on your hands.
Likes are much less important, but they still count.
You can ramp up both of these user experience signals by asking.
At the end of your video, give people a strong call to action that encourages them to subscribe.
Marie Forleo – a master of YouTube marketing – asks people to subscribe at the end of every video:
(Skip at 4:55 to see how it's done)
And I'm confident that her gentle push has contributed to her multiple first page YouTube rankings and 93,000 subscribers.
Bottom line: Ask people to like, comment, and subscribe in every single video.

5. Create Keyword-Rich Playlists

Don't leave your YouTube channel an unorganized mess.
One of the easiest ways to get more YouTube search traffic to your videos is to organize your videos into playlists.
A keyword-rich playlist gives YouTube deeper information about your video's topic. And like we saw with your description, more text-based content=more views.
For example, FitnessBlender, which gets more than 100,000 views on every video, has their channel organized neatly into keyword-rich categories:

Read More

One Easy Trick to Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

Fifteen years ago, I got a beautiful bound journal. I remember the month and year because the first entry in that journal is dated September 21, 1999.

My intention was to journal every day – I've heard from many successful people that the journaling habit is a crucial part of their success formula.

My second and third entries were also from that month. The fourth entry was made in August 2001, and looks like a page of notes from a prospecting meeting. The fifth entry is from 2009.

Clearly my plans for daily journaling had not panned out.

Then, on January 27, 2014, I picked up the journal and decided to get serious this time. Since then, I've written at least a page a day with only four exceptions.

I used a simple trick to turn a source of frustration and shame into a pretty bulletproof habit. And once you understand it, that same trick can be deployed on your website to get more visitors to convert into leads.

Tiny Habits

BJ Fogg, PhD, has developed a system of habit formation called "Tiny Habits." It's kind of the opposite of the New Year's Resolution.

Instead of making a giant, hard change (like suddenly going to the gym three times a week or giving up cigarettes or yes, writing a page a day in a journal), you implement a tiny habit by identifying the ultimate desired behavior and making the very smallest step in that direction that you can possibly make.

Fogg's flagship example is flossing. He notes that people find starting to floss hard. It can hurt, our gums can bleed, it takes a couple of minutes, the floss can get stuck between our teeth, and so on.

Rather than try to increase our motivation for an unpleasant and difficult behavior, Fogg suggests simply making the behavior much easier.

So instead of flossing, here's his formula for a tiny habit: floss one tooth.

Write One Sentence

My new journaling strategy: Every day I wake up and write one sentence in my journal. There's no quality assurance either: I'm fine with, "Here is my one sentence for today."

And here's what happened: I wrote one sentence.

And since I had already opened the journal and uncapped the pen, I wrote a second one. And a paragraph. And a page. It was really helpful to see my thoughts unfold, my insights come out.

Next day, one sentence. And then the rest of the page.

And so it goes. Each day, I write a single sentence. Sometimes that is all I write, if I'm in a rush or not in the mood. But most of the time I write a page or two.

Should We Focus on Motivation or Ease?

Fogg developed "Tiny Habits" after seeing the implications of his behavior model: that behaviors occur given sufficient motivation, ability, and a trigger occurring simultaneously. The harder the behavior, the higher the motivation required. The easier the behavior, the less motivation.

We search marketers spend so much time analyzing our markets, sleuthing our prospects' fears and desires, and honing our copy, that we naturally default to amping up motivation.

The art of copywriting is all about motivating people to action. Features and benefits, social proof, psychological triggers, urgency, scarcity, and the whole toolkit are there to make our prospects want it more.

But search marketing, although a descendant of the old sales letters that tried to sell anything and everything through the mail to the uninterested masses, is actually a very different beast.

Search marketing is driven by desire. I search for "healthy meal delivery" because I already want vegan meals delivered to my home. Yet the ads and websites triggered by my search are spending most of their real estate on convincing me that I want their product.

For example, BistroMD.com has gorgeous food photos and lots of copy about how much weight I can lose easily and deliciously. But their primary call to action is to order a week's worth of food for $159.95.

I don't care how easy it is to receive, store, reheat, and eat their food. Spending $159.95 is hard for most of us when we don't know if it's a good idea.

Inviting Your Website Visitor to Develop a Tiny Habit

Instead of motivating your prospect to do something hard, why not work the other part of the equation: ability?

BistroMD.com could offer a days' worth of food as the first call to action. Cheaper, simpler, less risky. And that one day, if pleasing to the prospect, can easily be converted into a larger habit, just as my single-sentence journaling easily grew to its natural size. Writing wasn't the hard part; starting was.

And with many of our products and services, once folks get a taste, and develop a tiny habit, they'll increase their order size and frequency to its natural dimensions as well.

So next time you try to increase your conversion rate, try this: make one thing easier for your prospect. You may find that approach becomes a habit.

Source: searchenginewatch

Read More

Intro to ecommerce website design

If you were thinking about the growth of your business and have decided to start selling your products and services also online then you might want to know a thing or two about eCommerce website design that brings your business to success. The difference between e-commerce websites and regular websites is the features and functions that are required for it and also they are likely to cost you more to produce such a website rather than a regular one. The time spent to plan the e-commerce website is the best investment that you could make and which will guarantee the success of your online business. If you create a good plan then you can save a lot of time, expenses and also do some risk management that will prevent the appearance of future crises.

If you are not savvy with programming and website design, then most likely you will be required to hire someone to do this for you, either in the form of a freelancing website designer or a website design agency. Regardless where you hire the person from, a website designer should be able to give you sound advice and assistance so that the final design of your website is also the suitable one for your brand. Before deciding what person to hire ask the applicants to send you their portfolio and study their projects with attention and the way they build e-commerce websites before.

The most important aspect of your e-commerce website is for it to look professional and trustworthy. You are in a business and business means an exchange between you and your target audience. If the seller doesn’t look trustworthy, then of course that people will not spend their money there as they would be afraid of being cheated. This is why the last part of the feedback process is to ensure that the website designer you work with creates a professional look for your e-commerce business.

Source: siliconindia

Read More