How To Optimize Your YouTube Channel
The chances are likely you spend a bit of time on YouTube. As the second largest search engine in the world and the third most-visited site behind Google and Facebook, there’s no denying its prominence in today’s digital landscape.
If you’re responsible for your company’s YouTube channel, do you know how to optimize it for better performance? Here are some tips.
Organize your content.
Featured video. Think of your YouTube channel like the front page of your website. What do you want visitors to learn about you first? A featured video allows you to select a video across all of the videos on your channel to ensure your new and returning subscribers see it first. Take advantage of this as free advertising to get the video content you most want to get across playing first and foremost.
Playlists. A YouTube playlist, or a collection of videos that play in order, is a perfect way to organize your videos on your channel. A playlist can help better inform your visitors of your brand’s products or services. For example, if you sell products popular with DIY audiences, a playlist is a great opportunity to incorporate how-to videos to show viewers how to make the most of your products. If you’re looking to recruit new talent, a playlist is a good way to organize video testimonials from employees. The point is that by organizing related videos together, it’s easy for viewers to browse by theme—and your visitors are more likely to watch multiple videos in one sitting.
Implement titles, tags, and descriptions.
Proper titles, tags, and descriptions are key to making your content more discoverable.
Titles should tease the story of your video. YouTube only allows 100 characters, so create a title that is engaging and relevant to your topic so viewers can immediately understand its content, and use words that will help it come up in relevant searches.
Tags. Much like meta keywords used on websites for search engine optimization, the tags you enter for your YouTube videos are a great method for providing further valuable information about your video. What word or combination would someone use to search for your video? Determine these and tag appropriately to cover all areas that may lead someone to your video.
Your description is where you can describe your video content in further detail, linking out to your website or relevant landing page when applicable. Try to keep your description to a few sentences, pay attention to the keywords you use, and include a call to action when possible to lead your viewer to visit your website or subscribe.
Check your analytics.
Like most social platforms, YouTube has a built-in analytics dashboard that reports information such as number of subscribers, average view duration, traffic sources, and top videos. These are great metrics to gut check how your videos are performing in order to determine if you should further optimize or reorganize your channel. And they’re also a good indicator of the kind of content your audience is interested in—so you can make more of what people want to watch.
