Using youtube videos to rank for queries in the serps as well as youtube

[Ron10]

I have some youtube videos of my business and some of them are ranking organically as well as for queries in youtube.  Would it be wise to start naming more of my videos long tale key search phrases and uploading them to youtube to get them to rank organically and on youtube?

what is the best way to optimize these videos?  key phrases in the description as well as title of the video?

How do i get them to rank on youtube as well as in the serps?  just get lots of views or do links to my video help?

Thanks mozzers!

Ron

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Ron,

I think there may be some value in building your YouTube presence for certain keywords, but you're looking at this situation all the wrong way round.

Really - you should start by looking at your business goals and determining whether, for a specific keyword, you want users to go to your site, or to YouTube to watch a video. If the keyword is informational and potentially appeals to individuals high up in your conversion funnel - that is to say, they aren't already engaged influencers or members of your community - then getting them to watch a video on YouTube that helps solve a specific problem or provides decent (non sales-focused) information might be the way to go.

If you're then able to create good content to fit with the user intent for that keyword - THEN you can think about optimising your YouTube videos and presence with specific keyword intent.

Don't start with the form (video) or the channel (youtube) but instead start with the audience and the business goals - then work out your strategy from there.

in terms of optimising for YouTube - basically, the Title should be treated like a title, the description like a meta description - then you need to drive targeted engagement (not just raw views) in order to get the video ranking. Embeds and links also help, and uploading a transcription manually will allow you to rank for longer tail phrases which match the text in the transcription itself.

I hope that's useful.

[Ron10]

can i upload the same video for all the different long tale key phrases or can google tell it's the same video and think that it is spammy?

[TakeshiYoung]

Definitely optimize your videos for the SERPs, Google ranks YouTube videos highly even for competitive queries.

To optimize videos for Youtube and/or Google:

• Include relevant keywords in the title
• Include tags with relevant keywords
• Provide a unique, detailed description with keywords
• Include a transcript of the video
• Get lots of views on your video
• Get lots of likes/+1s on your video

For Google specifically, try to get your video embeded on high authority sites and build backlinks as you would with any other sites.