HOW DO YOU GET YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEO RANKED ON THE FRONT PAGE OF GOOGLE?

How do you get your video ranked on the first page of Google results? This one

is a lot easier than a lot of pundits would like to make it out be.

If you

understand the following simple concepts, you can do tremendously well with

YouTube and Google results.

Fact number one is that Google is in the business of delivering results.

That’s

their number one job. If they don’t deliver good results, people will leave them.

Help them do their job and they’ll help your videos get seen.

Number two: Google has a massive staff of people whose job is to outfox users

who try to trick the results.

Obviously, a lot of people who shouldn’t be the

number one listing for a given search result still want to be the number one

listing and are willing to spend time and money to get there.

There is a whole

industry centered around search engine optimization (SEO), where experts in

Google teach people how to manipulate the search engine. Fortunately, Google

has hired a substantial staff of very brilliant people – PhD’s, gurus and other

exceptionally brainy people, some of whom I have met personally – whose job is

simply to screen out anybody who is playing tricks.

So tricks can happen, but realize that this is a considerable cat-and-mouse game

that I don’t recommend playing in any way, shape or form. It’s like day trading

on the stock market.

Here’s the thing: Google likes video more than anything else.

If you do a search on anything and see nine text results and one video option,

where are you most likely to click? If you are looking for information, what

would you rather do: read or watch?

Search engines are a medium of instant

gratification and video does a much better job of that. You know this; Google

knows this; now it is time to act on what we know.

Now, something that not everybody realizes is that YouTube tracks how long

people watch each video.

In other words, 10,000 views of a five-minute video

where everybody leaves after the first ten seconds of the video, indicates to

YouTube that 10,000 people didn’t believe this to be a good video about the

topic.

Fifty people who watched the entire video is considerably better—even

five people who watched the entire video is considerably better than 10,000 who

stopped after a few seconds.

So Google wants to give its users good results. If they don’t they’re likely to

move to another search engine. Google knows whether or not a result is good

based on how long people spend watching the video. If video is a popular choice

for a search term and people tend to watch the video all the way through, Google

will obviously decide this was an appropriate result for the keywords searched.

It’s as simple as that.

What can you do with this information?

Make the best video for the Google results you are looking for, to reach an

audience who is going to consume the content all the way to the end.

If you do

that better than anybody else does, you will get ranked on the first page of

Google results. That process is actually much easier than cheating the system

and playing SEO games - and has a much longer shelf-life. I have videos that are

three and four years old seeing more traffic per week now than they did when I

first launched and promoted them. You can see the same results.

Google is in the business of getting results and they have a massive staff whose

job it is to identify people who are trying to trick them.

They track how long

people watch each video and they know how good the video is based how long it

has been watched. In short, create the best choice for the audience and Google

will put you first.

What are the action items?

First, the title for your video should include the keyword that people are looking

for. The keyword also needs to be in the first sentence of the description of the

video, the tags for the video, and the transcript of the video. Let Google know, as

specifically as you possibly can, what your video is about so that they can send

some traffic your way to see if you deliver.

Next, you need to make sure that you have a video that people will watch all the

way through (to track those statistics, look inside your YouTube analytics). For

each video, you can see how long people watch, and you’ll see when they drop

off as compared to everybody else. If you’ve got a great video with a keyword-

rich title, description, transcript and tags, but you notice that people aren’t

watching it all the way through to the end, fix your video by adjusting your

content. If you do that, you will see some great results and you will see your

video on the first page of Google search results. You have about 800 words of

content to add to your videos.

New to the book this year is the chapter on “YouTube Automation”. It is now

possible to do A/B testing on title, keyword and tagging details and I can’t

recommend the process enough.

Videos Shouldn’t be your Only Focus

This doesn’t answer the question directly, but it is important to point out that

videos aren’t the only things that show up in Google results and shouldn’t be the

entirety of your optimization focus.

YouTube Playlists and Channels both show up in Google and YouTube results.

If you are looking for some search engine results, make sure to look there as

well.

I personally have a few YouTube Playlists which show up as number one for

some very important terms, bringing me great traffic and views. Consider taking

on the same strategy yourself (just don’t tell my competition!).

A/B Testing

As described in both the “Automated YouTube Marketing” and Mecri'sFavorite

Tech” on blogger, it is possible to do A/B testing on your videos. What does this

mean? In short, it simply means that you post two different versions of the same

video to see which one gets more of the traffic you are looking for. You can

then kill the one which gets the lesser amount and, indeed, have an optimized

video page, with a better chance of getting ranked on the first page of Google.

Actually, to be fair, you don’t need any automation tools to utilize A/B testing,

but they sure make the process easier.

One More Thing … Is Google Everything You Thought It Was?

I could write a book on this topic but it’s important to point out that Google,

simply, isn’t as important as it used to be. At one time, almost all of our traffic

came from search engines (and most of that traffic from Google). Now, with

Social Media, this is no longer the case.

Yes, do what you can do have traffic that comes from Google - but don’t forget

traffic that comes from social media and even email. Take traffic from all

possible sources.

HOW DO YOU GET YOUR YOUTUBE VIDEO RANKED ON THE FRONT PAGE OF GOOGLE?