Videos are one of the best ways to communicate your message to your customers.
And YouTube is an incredible tool for sending more traffic, more leads and more sales to your website.
But how do you get more people to see your videos after you upload them to YouTube?
Here are five actionable steps that you can take with your video to help you get more real views.
Hint: You can implement most of these steps with your existing YouTube videos to increase your views.
Action Step #1: Identify Your Keywords
Your videos should be optimized for specific keywords just like your website is. And just like you do for your website, you can use the Google Keyword Tool to figure out what the best keywords are for your video.
Once you’ve identified your video’s keywords, you should add them to following three place on your videos:
- Title
- Description
- Tags
Remember, YouTube can’t understand the content of your video yet. So use these text areas to tell them what your video is about.
Action Step #2: Include a Call to Action
OK, so your viewer has just finished watching your entire video and they think that you’re just swell. Now’s the time to convert that good will into website traffic by including a compelling Call To Action (CTA) to tell your viewers what to do next.
Your CTA can tell people to visit your website, subscribe to your YouTube channel, sign up for you email list, or any other business goal that you have.
Here are four simple ways to include your Call To Action in all your videos.
- Use a Call To Action Overlay – The overlay is a simple (free) banner ad that displays over your video. It take a few minutes to setup but it’s worth it because it is so powerful and very few other people are using it. This video will teach you how to add the overlay.
- Domain in Description – Include your website URL as the first part of your video description. Be sure to write out the full URL (i.e. https://aaronzakowski.com) and YouTube will convert it into a live link. Make sure that the URL is the first thing in the description so that it will be displayed even if the viewer doesn’t click the “Show more” button.
- Add Annotations – Annotation are those little bubbles that people place over their videos with messages like, “Please Like this video” or “Subscribe”.
- Closing Scene – The last few second of each of your videos should include a direct CTA message to your viewers telling them what to do next. You can accomplish this by including an image that shows your domain with an offer to get more information or simply by verbally telling viewers to visit your website (or subscribe or any other action).
Action Step #3: Upload Your Transcript
Once you’ve uploaded your video, find somebody to transcribe it on Fiverr.com or Speechpad.com and upload the transcription file as a .txt file. This will help your video stand out to YouTube’s search algorithm and give it a lot more content by which to judge your keyword relevance.
Uploading your transcript gives you a huge SEO advantage over your competition because so few people are doing this.
Action Step #4: Get Backlinks
This tip might seems pretty simple, but most people seem to ignore it.
Just like for any other SEO project, you’ll want to send some quality backlinks to both your individual video URLs as well as your Channel URL.
This is your opportunity to piggyback off of YouTube’s authority domain to get your videos to the top of Google.
(Note: It’s too early to know for sure, but a few +1s for your video will probably help as well.)
Action Step #5: Promote Your Video
It might seem obvious, but the best way to get people to watch your videos is to ask them to.
Blast your videos out to your sphere of influence. Post it on Facebook. Embed it in your blog. Tweet it. Share it on Google+. Email it to your friends.
This will result in more views.
Bonus Tips
Ask people to Like and Favorite your video – When more people tell YouTube that your video is good, YouTube will show your video to more people. It’s that simple. You can ask people to Like your video with a call to action at the end of the video or with annotation bubbles. Getting people to subscribe to your channel is another great strategy.
Promoted Video – If you’re serious about promoting your videos to as many targeted viewers as possible and you have the marketing budget for it, you can use Adwords for YouTube to make your video a promoted video. That means that your video will show up more often in the right side list of suggested videos and you will get more views. This program works on a cost per view basis so you will pay for each time that somebody watches your video
So there you have it, seven easy to implement tips to increase your YouTube views.
Here’s your homework…
Pick your best video and implement as many of these tips as possible. I promise you will be surprised by the results.
In the meantime, what do you think about these strategies? Do you have any other tricks to increase views that you think I should add to the list. Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.