Ranking Videos on First Page of Google
-
Hey Guys,
My videos are doing well on YouTube with lots of views and comments (about 1.5 million views).
Nevertheless, I can’t manage to get them to appear on Google’s first SERP for my branded keywords.
What am I doing wrong?
What in your opinion are the major ranking factors for YouTube videos?
Thanks!
-
Wow, thank you Phil for all your great suggestions!
-
Hey,
So - the primary YouTube ranking factors are in essence the same as page ranking factors in Google. Each element sort of has equivalent meta data elements in YT.
Page Title = Video Title (And name of uploaded file!)
Meta Description = Video Description - be sure to put a link in here
Meta Tags = Meta Tags - these still work for YouTube, so be sure to include them
Page Copy = Closed Caption File.
There are also some unique ranking factors in YT which will make a big difference:
Hotspots metrics - The Youtube Hotspots graph shows user engagement in a video, you want to make these as "hot" as possible by ensuring everyone watches your video from beginning to end without bouncing or clicking out.
Likes and views - generally speaking, the more the better! Its also not problematic to get some thumbs down - this wont hurt your rankings, as some videos are popular but still get thumbs down (i.e. rickroll)
Basic advice for getting it optimised would be upload a closed caption file, ensure you're titles are optimised and that there's a few mentions of the keywords in the meta descriptions.
You should also be building links to the YT videos, through embeds and contextual references - if you can include some anchor text this will also help.
You should also submit a video XML sitemap.
For more advice on how to nail YT vide optimisation - Check out Dave Sottimanos post on the Distilled blog.
http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/youtube/youtube-seo/
-
We have had success ranking YouTube videos in the past by just doing some "old school" SEO by just optimizing the title and description. Placing a link in the description seems to help it also.
Getting a video to the first page is tough. First, are there currently any videos on the first page for your targeted keywords?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking drop
My website ranking dropped on Google. I am Searching that why its dropped, But cannot find a solid reason why its dropped. Anybody in community can tell me reason why its dropped, and how to rank again on google Url www.getmp3songspk.com Check Chart for my traffic dropped Traffic dropped chart VujrDTg
Branding | | Getmp3songspk0 -
Hosting videos on your own website versus youtube - which is best?
_Hi Folks, __simple question - We are creating a highly shareable video __to gain links/shares/traffic/google love for our site _and want to know if its worth hosting it on youtube i__n any circumstances.? We have the bandwidth to host it for sure. Cheers, Tom
Branding | | tomnivore1 -
In the Google search results, the company name (with the drop down arrow) next to the result URL is incorrect. The company being displayed here is a company we acquired many years back. How do I adjust/fix this?
When I search any term for my organization, we are getting good results BUT the company name, next to the results URL is of an orgnization we acquired many years back and not the name of our company. The URL is correct page JUST the company name next to this URL is incorrect on the Google search results page. How do I go about changing so the company name next to the URL ?
Branding | | DigitalNTT0 -
Best Practices for Google+
I have a client that has a decent following on Google+ on his personal account but his business profile doesn't have many people going to it. The law firm he owns has roughly 14 attorneys and all of them write for their blog. Since they are all new to Google+ except for him, I'm wondering what everyone things that the best practice is to get the information shared. When we post the information on his personal personal profile, he generally gets between 50 - 75 +1s and a dozen or so shares. If we put it on the business profile we don't get more than 10. The issue is when one of the attorney's that is new to G+ posts on their timeline and then we share it via the business, we then have to share it via the owners timeline to get any traction. We need to build followers for each of the attorneys new to G+, that's obvious, but what do we do in the mean time? Since the owner is also the brand, what is your suggestion of the best strategy?
Branding | | DarinPirkey1 -
Changing My Home Page Focus Keyword
Hello, We recently launched a new home page design on our company website, but we still have the same focus keyword in the title, H1, and in parts of the page copy. However, this focus keyword no longer represents our entire brand. We want to change the focus keyword and have done some research on the keyword difficulty and local searches in Google, but are still uncertain on the potential effects. Let me explain our situation more in depth. Instabill provides business owners with merchant accounts and other services. Our current focus keyword is offshore merchant accounts. However, over the past three months, we have been helping businesses establish US merchant accounts (retail, mobile, and online--but retail and mobile to US only while online to merchants everywhere) and intend to continue to increase our US merchant base. We are also still able to provide offshore merchant accounts. Our fear is that when a US merchant comes to our website (http://www.instabill.com), they will see Offshore Merchant Accounts in big H1 letters and leave our site since they want a local US merchant account. However, we still want to make sure our international merchants know we can still work with them. Thus said, we would like to change our focus keyword to something more broad, but still descriptive of our brand: merchant services. To elaborate, we want our H1 heading to read Merchant Services for Retail and Online Businesses. Merchant services is more descriptive since we provide more than just merchant accounts. We also provide the payment gateway, free shopping cart modules, help registering businesses, help obtaining an SSL certificate, and a discounted PCI Certification Service through McAfee. We have more than one page on our website that ranks for the term online merchant accounts, but none that rank for merchant services. However, we are willing to put in the work to ensure we optimize our website properly and put in the effort to make the change successful. Merchant services is also a keyword we would like to optimize on our website, so making the change on the home page will only help the steps in the process. Statistics:
Branding | | Instabill
Offshore Merchant Accounts has a 35% difficulty level and we consistently rank for SERPs #1 and #2. This term, according to the Google Keyword Tool, only receives 70 monthly searches in the US, 50 in the UK, 10 in Canada, and 10 in Australia. These are the four countries of most importance to our website. Merchant Services has a 57% difficulty level and we do not rank for it in Google at all since we have never tried to optimize for this term in the past. Also according to the Google Keyword Tool, this term receives 14,800 monthly searches in the US, 1,600 in the UK, 590 in Canada, and 260 in Australia. Clearly, merchant services could potentially get us much more traffic than offshore merchant accounts if transitioned correctly. I suppose my bottom line question is this: Would it be a bad idea to change my primary focus keyword on my home page? What type of results should I expect to see if searching Google for my company name? Thank you for all of your help. Meghan
Senior Copywriter of Instabill0 -
Using Multiple Locations for Google Business/Maps
Hey MOZers, I currently work for a company with several other offices in other countries. Is it possible to set-up Google 'Business' and Google 'Maps' pages so when a user in a given country queries 'our business' on either Google 'Search' or Google 'Maps' they will receive the relevant business information for that country. For example, if an internet user in Canada enters a query for 'our business' in Canada (and we have an office in Canada) is there anyway to set up our Google Business page and Google Maps page so that user receives the contact information for the Canada office, rather than the US office? Conversely, if someone in the United States enters a search query for 'our business' is there a way to set it up so that the user receives our address in the states?
Branding | | NiallSmith0 -
Facebook Like of Root Domain Linked To Facebook Page
If I install a Facebook Like Button on my Root Domain, How can I have the likes accumulated from that button augment those already on my brand's page? Thank you fellow knowledgenies of the Book of Face.
Branding | | Blobe0 -
Do cuss words on social media sites affect ranking?
This is a hard one, I'm sure. In regards to search, I've read that Facebook pays close attention to verbs and that Google takes into account related words close to anchor text and search terms. Now I have the unique opportunity to work as the internet sales and marketing consultant for a company in serious need of brand reputation repair. The company has experienced a terrible fallout from a recent product recall. Unfortunately in this case, the company site has really strong reach, which means that our blog posts, product descriptions, and twitter comments can be found copied on hundreds of websites hours after they are posted. The most recent incident has associated our brand name with words like cheaters, scam, phoney, copycat, and other words that will certainly get filtered here. All my attempts to assure unconditional refunds and offer phone support get labeled as a desperate attempt to save the brand. No doubt, the company has issues but will surely overcome them in time. SEO Question: Should I close the Facebook page and set strong filters on a new page to delete the onslaught of negative comments or should we spend the time to clean up the current page? This is a difficult decision, as I know many companies like Hubspot, Mailchimp, and Rackspace actually look at Facebook pages to qualify business leads (no fans, go home). Damage control suggestions also welcome, but the crux of this issue here is how our brand name and product names will be associated with cuss words or negative terms and how this will affect our ranking in SERPs.
Branding | | kwoolf1