So knowing that video is going to be a must going forward in our affiliate marketing businesses doing SEO for our videos on YouTube is just as important as doing SEO for our articles.

YouTube Is a Video Search Engine

Just like Google, YouTube is a search engine as well. As a matter of fact, Google owns YouTube so it all makes perfect sense!

In this post, I will list a few techniques you can use to SEO your YouTube videos so that you can get them ranked better on YouTube.

Video Length

Some say that shorter videos are better which would make sense with the increasingly shorter attention spans of people. But since YouTube is owned by Google longer videos just like longer word count articles are getting better rankings.

One reason for this is because YouTube wants videos that they can put advertising on and the longer the video you produce the more advertising it can add to it. So as a rule of thumb 5 minutes or longer videos rank better than shorter videos.

Consistency Matters

How often you post your videos is important. Once you have a following you're going to want to feed these followers with persistent content. Subscribers will start anticipating and expecting your videos. So make sure that you post on a consistent basis.

If your posting on a certain day and time of the week make sure you post on that same day and time every week. If your posting content daily then post your videos daily at the same time. When you don’t follow a schedule your subscribers will start to lose interest and you will start to see a lot of unsubscribes and potential traffic loss to your website.

Before Publishing

Make sure you have all your ducks in a row before you publish your videos. You will want everything optimized that can be optimized before even publishing your video.

Going back later and doing the SEO for your videos will not do much good for your rankings. Once YouTube ranks your video it usually stays where it is at in the rankings, unlike article SEO.

How to SEO Your Videos For Better Rankings

Doing SEO for your videos is much like doing SEO for the articles that you write. First, you will want to do keyword research just like you do for your articles. A good place to start is in our very own Jaaxy tool. Find low hanging fruit keywords in Jaaxy that fit all of the qualifications for great keywords to try and rank for.

Using Google Trends for YouTube keyword research. There is a YouTube keyword search tool in Google Trends so give that a try.

Searching right on YouTube for keywords is another great option. YouTube like Google will give you suggestions of what to use and you can use the alphabet soup technique doing this as well.

The title of your video needs to be optimized just like the titles in the articles that you write. Make sure the title is captivating and has your keyword in it. Your title is one of the most important parts of the SEO process so take your time and make sure that the title is as perfect as possible. A lot of the time the title will determine if someone watches the video or not.

Don’t rely on the thumbnails that YouTube generates for you. Make your own thumbnail. Use Canva.com to create your own YouTube thumbnail. All you have to do is search in Canva for YouTube thumbnail and boom they will give you a template of the right size for YouTube thumbnails.

Make a thumbnail that has the title in it and that stands out and catches the eye. There are a sea of videos on YouTube so you want the thumbnail to be unique and stand out from the crowd.

Put as much information about the video in the description. If you are doing a video about an article that you wrote, put the link as close to the beginning of the description as possible. Above the fold before the show more is the best place to include any website links.

You will also want your keyword to be at the beginning of the description as well. The description is like your meta description that you include for SEO in your articles but with YouTube, the description can be much longer.

Include tags for your videos but don’t overdo it. 3 to 4 tags should suffice. Use descriptive words that in your tags that are relative to what your video is about.

Make a transcript for your videos. YouTube provides an automated transcript of all your videos but they are not very good so you will want to make sure you edit YouTubes transcription of the videos or make your own.

To get the most of your videos, include a Call to Action or CTA at the end of your videos. You can include an option where they can click to subscribe to your email list with an arrow or something obvious pointing to it.

That’s How to Rank on YouTube

Video use for your affiliate marketing business is becoming more important so if you use the techniques that I have laid out here you should see better rankings for your YouTube videos. Let’s recap.

• Do keyword research using Jaaxy, Google Trends, YouTube search, and the alphabet soup technique.
• Produce videos that are 5 minutes or longer in length.
• Before publishing make sure your videos are optimized.
• Optimize the Title of your videos.
• Create a custom Youtube thumbnail using Canva.com or some other imaging service.
• Include an informative description with any links showing above the fold.
• Use no more than 3 to 4 Tags with descriptive words that are relevant to your video.
• Edit YouTubes transcription of your video or make your own.
• Include a Call to Action at the end of your video.

Thanks for reading. I hope you got some useful information out of this post. If you have experience producing videos for YouTube I would like to hear about it in the comments.

What are some other techniques that you use to get ranked on YouTube?