Many businesses these days are looking for something that will give them an edge over their competitors, without it costing the earth. Everyone is aware of SEO and how it can affect their business (both good and bad) and it makes sense to try to seek out the best tools and techniques available. One fairly cheap, yet highly effective, method is to have your own YouTube channel.  Every video you produce and add to your channel is tagged and indexed, which in turn will help your website show up in search engine results.

youtube is a great tool for digital marketing.

• Choose Your Topic Carefully

Let’s be honest, some businesses are inherently boring and nobody would sit for long watching a video about them. Therefore, try to make your video as interesting as possible, use a different slant or perspective and give the video some personality (without forgetting why you are there or what it is that you are actually selling). Funny, light-hearted videos always go down very well, so try to think of a way of incorporating some light-heartedness. If you have your own business or website, it is highly likely that you are skilled at something. Show off that expertise, but in a way that is easy to watch. For example, if you are an artist, film yourself painting, explaining what brushes you should choose, offering little tips as you paint. You need to build up a rapport with your audience and the more you are able to do that, the more viewers you will get, which in turn will improve your SEO.

• Making the Videos

There are two ways to go about doing this, either go the cost-effective way and do it yourself or hire a professional. Be wary of hiring a professional, though – not only because of the additional costs, but because professional videos can look, well, too professional. A big part of the appeal of YouTube videos is that people seem real and approachable, and you will lose that if you pay too much attention to detail. These days, video and camera equipment is reasonably priced and there is a great amount of software for producing videos available, so going it alone seems like the most suitable way forward.

• Uploading

After uploading a video, you will need to think about the following ways to maximize SEO:

• Tagging: when tagging your video, do not go overboard and try to keep the amount of tags between 5-10. Think very careful about the words you are going to use and make sure they are pertinent and relevant, focusing on what the video is about. Good words to use when tagging are things like brand, product or model names
• Title: make sure that every video you upload has its own unique title – you should never use the same title twice.
• Description: always include a link back to your website and then build a paragraph using keywords and phrases, remembering to use words that will clarify to the viewer what the video is about.

• Google Rankings

Videos usually receive a higher ranking in search engines, but videos posted on YouTube in particular will get a higher ranking with Google, so this advantage will immediately improve your SEO. Other factors that will play a part in where your video ranks are:

• Number of subscribers to your channel
• How often you upload new videos
• How your video is rated by viewers (thumbs up/down)

Zane Schwarzlose is an SEO at Fahrenheit Marketing, an Austin website design company. Zane enjoys using video in his SEO campaigns.