YouTube automatically generates meta tags for every view page. The name of the video becomes the title tag, the description (found in the "more info" section) becomes the meta description tag, and the YouTube tags become the content of the page's meta keywords tag. Of course, Google has publicly stated that its search engine ignores the meta keywords tag, so this feature of YouTube doesn't make lots of sense -- but nobody's perfect.
There are two types of YouTube channels: brand channels and user channels. Brand channels are given out to advertisers who spend a lot of money on YouTube, and these have some distinct advantages over user channels, including auto-play when a user lands on the view page, multiple sub-channels, a 960x150 banner, a 300x250 side column image, a branding box, contest module support, support for YouTube's Carousel, Video Walls, custom gadgets, a larger background image, and support for Google Analytics. But since most of us will be stuck with plain old user channels, the following tips are written for the average user. Additionally, YouTube has great help files for customizing your user channel. Google's YouTube help page is a good place to start.
Quick tips for optimization
- Include links in profile pages wherever possible. First decide where you want to drive the traffic from your channel/profile page, and then include links to those pages as much as possible. Ideally, you will be linking to other social media profiles like Facebook and Twitter in order to extend the social media experience, but you also might want to drive clicks to a customized landing page. There are many more opportunities to place clickable links than there appear to be at first glance.
- Include appropriate keywords in the name of the video, and use the word "video" when appropriate. The title is the most important piece of information that the search engines have about your video, and considering that most searchers include the word "video" when searching for a video, this inclusion boosts the relevance of your page as a search result.
- For each video, write a unique, keyword-rich description that includes a URL. Put the URL at the beginning. This way, even when the "more info" option is collapsed, the user will still see the link. Also, a video's description is the next-best indicator to search engines of the video's content, right behind the title. Use this space to place relevant keywords when appropriate.
- Provide video transcripts if possible. Until the technology improves, YouTube and other online videos are practically invisible to most search engines. Therefore, the search engines are only guessing about the content of your video based on the information they parse from the title, description, and tags. But if you have a full transcript of your video placed in the description, the search engines will fully understand the video.
- Take advantage of YouTube's captions and annotation features. You can add notes, subtitles, descriptions, and links directly over the top of the video. Currently only links to other YouTube pages are clickable, but try this: You remembered to add a link at the top of your description, right? Place a call to action over the video that says, "Click here to become a fan of our Facebook page."
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