Ranking Videos on First Page of Google
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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!
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Wow, thank you Phil for all your great suggestions!
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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/
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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?
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