It may sound silly, but while video is a powerful and interactive media, the fact your content is captured in video does not guarantee success.
To capture the attention of viewers and to make the journey from video view to website visit you will need to follow the essentials of making great video.
Quality video needs to tick a few boxes – it needs to be informative, entertaining or educational and it must be share-worthy, unique or unexpected, speak to a social community and have a call to action.
If you can make a video that follows some of these rules you’ll be able to boost your website traffic with video in no time.
http://youtu.be/kJtU1ztFikE
Social Media Optimisation
Social media is a great avenue to market your video and direct social users from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ straight to your website.
The video thumbnail that accompanies your video link and the text in your social posts will play a big role in enticing users to click on your video content. Due to the social nature of these sites, getting views won’t be too tricky, but your video will need to include a key call to action to ensure users click through to your website.
YouTube SEO Basics
As the second largest search engine in the world, YouTube is full of users searching for video content every minute of every day. Therefore, just like traditional SEO on Google you are going to need to put a few video SEO basics into effect if you want to stand any chance of capitalizing on searching users and converting them into valuable website traffic.
Fill out all the metadata available in the Upload process of hosting your video on YouTube. This means using relevant keywords and phrases in your Tags, Descriptions, Closed Captions and your video Title. It is also worth filling out all the data fields provided from the date your video was produced to the location it was filmed in.
Video Infiltrates Google Search
Since the introduction of Google Universal Search in 2007 video has been a major player in the search rankings and a far more favourable link to click for users than standard URLs. This is another opportunity for you to make use of the SEO power you have created on YouTube to get your video to infiltrate the top search spots on Google for your crucial keywords.
With your video now impacting Google search thanks to YouTube you can ensure the web traffic for your keywords is moving from Google to your website.
Video Ad Placements
The alternative to stirring up video views through SEO and social media optimisation is to go for a financial option of paying for your video to be an ad on YouTube or similar on-demand video sites.
YouTube’s TrueView offers a great opportunity when it comes to video ad placements because YouTube is, at its core, a social website. Due to YouTube’s standing as a video sharing website it is home to users that are more likely to share and talk about your video socially, and click through to that all important web page.