Video marketing has to be done properly if you’re to get the maximum effect. YouTube has hours and hours worth of videos uploaded every minute of the day and you need to make sure that your videos stand the maximum chance of standing out from the crowds and getting watched.

Video file name

Some people think that the file name for the MP4 or whatever else you upload should include your keywords. I’ve not personally tested that but I have looked at the underlying code on the pages and can see no evidence of the original file name being referenced on the pages.

That said, YouTube do seem to use the file name as the starting place for the video title and it makes sense from your own filing point of view to keep the file name logical.

Video Title

This is the title that will be shown in the YouTube and search engine results.

It should be relevant to the video content and should be optimised for the keywords you’re targeting without sacrificing readability.

Some people suggest using the keyword more than once in the video title – that used to have a positive impact in the regular Google search results and most indications are that the YouTube search is less sophisticated than Google so it may still help but longer term it’s likely the two algorithms will move closer together, so use techniques like that with caution.

Video Description

YouTube set a maximum length for this – it’s currently 5,000 characters. Depending on the average length of the words you use and a few other factors works out to be about 800 words or so.

Your description should relate to the content of your video. Some people like to use a transcript as the description, others don’t. Personally I don’t because I don’t usually have a transcript to hand of what I’ve said.

You can include links in the description and these can go off to other sites if you choose.

If you include timings in the description (e.g. 1:30 for 1 minute 30 seconds) then YouTube will turn these into clickable links that leap to that place in the video itself. This is a neat way of getting extra links back to your video without being spammy.

YouTube will show a short description in their listings. Some people like to start their description with a link to their website, others prefer to link it a line or two into the description.

There’s no hard and fast rule about this and personally I vary where I put the link depending on where it flows best in the description although some people would say that I’m losing clicks because of that.

Video Annotations

There are various annotations that you can use on your videos.

I just use a simple one that includes a link to my website. You have to verify that you own the website your YouTube channel links to – there are various ways to do this and there are explanations on the YouTube site. As far as I can tell, you can only link one URL with your channel so choose carefully.

Once the link has been verified, it gets linked with your account. It took me a few refreshes and logging out and back in to my account to get it to “take” but once I’d done that it’s gone smoothly since.

If you don’t have website that you want to associate with your channel, you can link to other videos and a few other options.

This makes the video more interactive – you can also call attention to various things as they happen. There will be plenty of tutorials on YouTube to explain how to do that or you can just experiment.

There are other fancy things you can do – Mike from Maine includes the option to sign up to his autoresponder mailing list at the start of his videos and does other fancy things that you could investigate when you want to get beyond the normal routine.

Video Captions

YouTube will attempt to transcribe your videos and will supply an automatically generated caption file soon after your video is uploaded.

Depending on how clear your accent is and how many uncommon words you use (town names can be interesting!) this auto translation varies in quality.

Most people who’ve done tests on using captions suggest that they are worth getting right. YouTube obviously have access to the captions, I’ve not found where Google get access to them (but I’ve not looked hard) but it’s generally thought that they can. Which would mean they would get indexed and that would relate to your video.

Transcription is available at sites like Fiverr or GetArticlesDone if you don’t to do it yourself.

Tags

You are allowed, even encouraged, to add tags to your video.

The first few are used in the keywords meta description tag included in your video’s page. Generally speaking, keyword tags are near enough ignored by the major search engines but it’s thought that YouTube uses tags to help decide on the content of video and to decide which videos to show in the related ones that currently appear towards the right of the screen on YouTube.

Which means it’s worth including some relevant tags in your video.

Video Thumbnail

YouTube will give you a few options for the video thumbnail or you may have the option to choose a different thumbnail.

Personally I’m relatively lazy about this and just choose one of the ones that are suggested.

Since the thumbnail is shown in both YouTube and Google search results, it pays to at least choose the best from the 3 that are offered.

Video Views, Likes and Comments

The number of views, likes and comments are all taken into account by the YouTube algorithm.

Whilst it’s possible to buy these at various places, that’s almost certainly a breach of the terms of service so there’s a very big “buyer beware” warning that happens if you go down that route.

YouTube takes account of how long people watch a video for as well as where they are located in the world and several other factors that help it decide the importance of your video.

If you have a mailing list, it is worth letting them know when you’ve posted a new video.

It’s also worth sending out a Tweet, mentioning it on your Facebook page and possibly adding it to your LinkedIn page. There are “share” buttons below your video which make this an easy process.

Anything that helps get natural views from real people is worth doing.

Embedding your video

YouTube gives you the option of putting your video on your site – this is called embedding.

Again, there’s a link below your video that will give you various bits of code to do this.

On a WordPress page like this one, all you need to do is copy the URL from the address bar of your browser or copy the link from your video manager. Like I did to embed this video:

It appears as raw code in the WordPress editor but gets translated to the video when you press the “publish” button.

Make a checklist!

Like most other things, there are lots of steps involved with online video marketing.

It’s definitely worth making yourself a checklist (and actually checking it) to make sure that you complete all the steps as between them they can make the difference between success and failure for your video.

If you’ve got any comments about this post, feel free to add them below.

Or you can click the various “share” buttons if you prefer.