30-second summary:

• As the world starts to return to normalcy, the gaming and live streaming industry need SEO, social networking, and online marketing for continued growth
• I spoke with industry influencers Alinity, Matt Rehwoldt, and eUnited’s General Manager and VP, Matt Potthoff on the industry’s current scenario, the obstacle course for amplified audience engagement, and the budding need for innovation

Over the past five years, the boom of the live-streaming, esports, and gaming industries has been stealing headlines not only in the tech industry but also in mainstream media.

That boom only increased its radius during the pandemic, which saw astronomical highs in terms of viewership numbers for the Amazon-owned Twitch streaming platform, Google’s YouTube, and even Facebook Gaming, who jumped more aggressively into the marketplace with the acquisition of Microsoft’s Mixer platform during the summer of 2020.

Since then, much of the world has started getting back to more normalcy, which means that studios are back to work on big project games, esports teams are heading back to regular competitions, and the streaming landscape continues its evolution.

Despite the boom, the industry lacks some key ingredients

But despite the impressive numbers, the industry as a whole still lacks some key ingredients that can not only take the industry to the next level, but also improve the business landscape of content creators as well.

More often than not, the industry is splintered off into a number of sectors that, aside from annual conventions and events, don’t often regularly network efficiently.

Compounding the limitations of networking efficiency is the void in marketing practices such as search engine optimization (SEO) and traditional internet marketing that content creators and brands are leaving on the table.

Some of the core complaints among streamers and content creators, among others, is – the lack of discoverability provided by their platforms, and how their growth seems bottlenecked and capped due to the lack of visibility.

Furthermore, content creators and brands often find themselves in the cycle of social media posting, which can lean heavily into monotony and automation – two major factors that drive down engagement.

Sure, you can blame the platforms themselves and you would be partially right. Social media platforms are a wide net of interests and demos, so posts may not hit at high percentages consistently. Streaming platforms seem to be staying the course, which is smart business as it has proven to be profitable, even during the most challenging economic crisis in nearly a century.

That leaves content creators, esports teams, game studios, and the industry as a whole, at a crossroads. Where innovation has seemed to bypass the needs for more connected networking and growth potential, many are forced to double down on the work despite the lack of return just to stay afloat.

Natalia Mogollon, better known as Alinity, is one of the most popular streamers on the Twitch platform, boasting over one million followers to her channel and had leveraged the platform to build one of the more recognizable brands in the streaming industry.

Streaming and content creators

To get an objective perspective on the matter, I caught up with gaming content creator, Alinity and Matt Rehwoldt, former WWE wrestler and content creator.

“In regards to networking with other creators, I feel like most creators currently use Twitter for that”

“The problem is that I don’t know which creators are genuinely interested in networking and which just want interactions in order to increase their following. It’s probably 50-50.

“But again, I think the market for small to medium size creators is huge. People that are starting to grow and want to meet other creators”

And it’s the market that remains largely untapped or maximized.

Outside of the most famous streamers in the world, many streamers may be stuck under a ceiling or bottlenecked when it comes to growth, and that is where the streaming side of the industry needs to evolve.

A few years ago, professional wrestler and content creator Matt Rehwoldt was involved in the WrestleMania 34 United States Championship match between Randy Orton, Bobby Roode, Jinder Mahalm, and Rusev, performing in front of over 78,000 people in New Orleans, Lousiana.

And while Rehwoldt is back in the industry with promotions such as New Japan Pro Wrestling and rumored to be heading to Impact Wrestling, the ‘Drama King’ has carved out a home for his brand on both Twitch and YouTube.

Despite his name recognition and work on some of the biggest wrestling stages in the industry, the limitations that platforms present can still negatively impact his content.

“The biggest challenge facing content creators is always discoverability,”

“Twitch struggles with this the most and it’s been said to death by any “How To Grow On Twitch” video you see on YouTube – which is the very point. You need to bring people to Twitch from other sources as their search and discoverability is extremely limited.”

“Here I’ll refer your readers to Alpha Gaming’s Harris Heller. He makes some great points about Twitch’s weaknesses with the most glaring being its searchability.

The inclusion of things like highlights or clips is very cool, but why can’t I search “Crazy FRAG” and find a whole list of clips around those search terms? Then through watching things like that I find new creators.  So there needs to be more searchable content on Twitch where you don’t have to just go to the search bar and type the exact name of the stream you’re looking for.”

“Browsability is key,” he said.

But Rehwoldt also points out that YouTube may present better discoverability but also has its own setbacks.

“YouTube is better but there you’re competing in an even larger ecosystem against clickbait warriors and what feels like the whole world”

he points out.

Rehwoldt goes on to point out how SEO is not only impactful but a valuable resource to learn and utilize.

“That said, if you can take the time to teach yourself a little SEO and how to use titles and keywords properly, it’ll help you a lot. It’s something I still struggle with and am learning too.”

But like many streamers, Rehwoldt has been frustrated with the issues that hold back his content. He stresses the importance of understanding that it all comes down to patience and hard work.

“I’m still learning,”

Rehwoldt says.

“My channels are growing but not nearly as fast as I’d like them to.  So for me, it’s more about keeping my mind right. Do good work that I love and the growth seems to come. Not letting myself get discouraged because some video or stream didn’t “pop off” is key too.”

“Everyone points to people like Ludwig or other creators who blew up seemingly overnight and then get frustrated when they feel like they make similar quality content and the same doesn’t happen to them.”

Well there are two things to consider here: First, that often those creators didn’t blow up from “nowhere” and they’ve been working hard either behind the scenes or prior to launching their content and got seen by the right people at the right time. A classic case of preparation meets opportunity.

Secondly, life is also full of incredible exceptions.

People who explode into stardom because they went viral etc.  But never ever try to compare yourself to the exception. I’ve known and spoken to so many creators, those who make a living at it, and it takes years of trying and putting out content that you later look back on and shake your head. Trial and error everyone. Have patience with your work and yourself.”

Esports

While SEO is not prominent in sectors such as streaming, and the collective industry as a whole, it has trickled in with regards to the Esports industry.

Matt Potthoff is the general manager and Vice President of eUnited, and a former professional esports player who has won championships as a player, coach, and general manager.

“eUnited has blossomed into a staple esports organization in North America since its inception in 2016”,  Potthoff said.

“We have competed across many titles and have accumulated over $3 million dollars in prize winnings.

eUnited’s most notable championships are winning the 2018 Smite World Championship and the 2019 Call of Duty World Championship. We pride ourselves on growing amateur talent into championship contender players over numerous gaming communities.”

Part of their growth has been the incorporation of SEO and internet marketing through leveraging social media.

“eUnited does use elements such as SEO to increase visibility when selling merchandise or showcasing new sponsors. Additionally, we help players revise their stream titles and descriptions for better chances of obtaining new viewership when users are searching for different topics on Twitch”

Potthoff points out that the integration of internet marketing, SEO, and targeted social networking can provide results and those results can impact profitability.

“eUnited leverages streaming platforms to grow their players’ brands and sell ads to sponsors by utilizing their player’s streaming audience. Most sponsorship activations in esports that aren’t held in person are done over streaming platforms like Twitch”

Innovation and moving forward with solutions

Regardless of the sector of industry, it seems the problems remain the same, and some success can be rooted in the implementation of SEO and optimized networking.

• But how does the industry innovate to address this?
• How do content creators address the areas of need?
• How do we implement better networking and more meaningful connectivity between these different sectors?

Many brands and content creators face hurdles with finding these solutions. They may not have the budget to consistently contract a quality Internet Marketing & SEO agency, and the SEO agency market certainly doesn’t hone in on these offerings.

So, what is the solution?

I considered all of this when I initially launched Gamactica in October 2018. I asked myself these same questions, and I saw the very issues pointed out in this article when I started streaming.

This is why the foundation of what we have been building with Gamactica is rooted in SEO, internet marketing, and intuitive social networking for the industry. Award-winning internet marketing company Elite Rank Media is the backbone of the internet marketing initiatives and processes. Since 2009, the company has been providing marketing services to brands around the world and has been recognized for its work in both Medical SEO and localized Miami SEO marketing, among others.

An industry where content creators, streamers, gamers, esports teams, esports players, game studios and developers, and cosplayers are spread out so distantly on the social space is one that needs the innovation of improved connectivity.

Our purpose is to provide a professional social network to streamline social networking, bring these sectors together more efficiently, and provides the tools and resources that empower these brands and content creators to reach new levels.

And these are the innovations that can help push through the ceilings, break through the bottlenecks, and clear the hurdles that everyone seems to face, regardless of the industry sector.

Gamactica is implementing those innovations.

“I think the idea is very interesting,”

Alinity says of Gamactica.

“Most current social media platforms focus on relationships with our followings, but a new focus towards networking is innovative. It almost makes me think of LinkedIn.

“I feel like it has a lot of potential for connecting brands and creators, I think there is a big need in that regard. It seems like some streamers are really well connected and get lots of sponsorships, whereas the new creators have no idea how to get these. I think there is a big untapped market within the creators with about 100-500 concurrents (viewers)”

she adds.

“They have more tight communities and often get overlooked but I think there is a huge potential for brand deals with high return on investment for brands, as they tend to be more connected with their viewers. This connection becomes difficult once you get over 1000 concurrent viewers”

she continued.

Alinity points out the vitality of the current market size, the need for better networking, and industry innovation.

“I think the market for small to medium size creators is huge. People that are starting to grow and want to meet other creators. I think the large “whale” streamers would be a good influence for smaller ones to join.”

During the journey of Gamactica, it has been key to stand out as a unique platform, and showcasing how it stands alone is vital to the continued growth.

“I love the idea of something like Gamatica”,

Rehwoldt said.

“But I will be blunt – I’ve seen many trying to compete in this niche space as well. I myself have been approached by several ‘gamer social media’ sites where you open an account, you can link all your streams, socials etc, and it involves you in a like-minded community with the idea that you can all discover each other.

“The key here will be offering something to truly stand apart! Think outside the box!”

And that outside the box thinking is structured in Gamactica’s platform, community, and directories. Streamlining popular social networking features and intuitively interweaving them with the marketing and branding impact that is needed on a larger scale.

“I do think a platform that offers a solution to increase visibility for players is needed,”

Potthoff said.

“My only problem is that a majority of the users are on platforms such as Discord, Twitch, and YouTube.”

“I feel anyone can be discovered in gaming,”

he added.

“It just takes the right moment and presence to take advantage of a situation. If another platform is increasing the odds for a player or company to be discovered, they should definitely sign up and take advantage of it.”

Pushing the needed innovations is at the core of Gamactica’s journey, and implementing the proper concepts while listening to the industry, as a whole, will shape its continued growth.

Not only is the focus on connectivity and marketing, but also helping structure the platform to help combat the harassment and toxicity issues that plague the industry, and also help empower female creators and brands that are operating in a male-dominated sector.

The future requires innovation to achieve growth and continued success, and that journey is what Gamactica is dedicated to continuing.

Stay tuned for more articles in this series.

Anthony DiMoro is CEO of Gamactica. He can be found on Twitter @AnthonyDiMoro.

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30-second summary:

• The pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before.
• Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online since the beginning of 2020.
• We caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.
• Know how CMOs can find value in SMM efforts, conduct market analysis, and run social media campaigns that actually succeed in the eyes of top management.

From learning banana bread recipes to connecting with loved ones, hunting jobs, and now shopping holiday gifts, the pandemic drove people inside their homes and onto social media like never before. 2020 has shown us how people have resorted to Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn. While Hootsuite has closely been monitoring the changing behaviors of consumers online, we caught up with Henk Campher, VP of Corporate Marketing and Head of Social Impact at Hootsuite, to help you derive a cream level perspective for your digital strategies.

Q. Paid ads have their own cons like reduced page reach, how do you maintain an upward graph for organic page reach and boost relationships, engagement, and direct sales?

Henk Campher: Never take a one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing, especially with organic content. To reach a large audience, organic posts need to be optimized. To do this, you need to understand the platform and audience you are optimizing for. Start by focusing on the platforms that make the most sense for your business. For example, if you’re a B2B company, you may find the most value on LinkedIn or Twitter whereas a B2C company may gravitate towards Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok to reach a younger crowd. 

If you want organic content to perform well on social media, create engaging and personalized content that is fitting for the platform you are using. Give people a reason to follow and engage with your social posts. To better understand what content resonates with your audience, start by using social listening tools—at Hootsuite, we integrate directly with Brandwatch so our customers can navigate social intelligence capabilities directly from their dashboard.

Beyond creating the right content for the right platform, it’s essential to connect with people. Show your audience the human side of your brand. You can do this by lifting up your employees on social media and sharing their stories or connecting with the wider community through an employee advocacy tool, like Hootsuite’s Amplify tool. If you want to boost engagement on posts, ask your audience relevant and interesting questions. This is also a great opportunity to learn about what interests them. If you focus on value and creating the right content, you’ll be able to successfully develop relationships with your audience, boost engagement, and drive sales.

Q. What are the top social media metrics that can help CMOs see direct value in marketers’ social media marketing efforts?

Henk Campher: For both B2C and B2B brands, the key to successful social measurement is to keep your metrics simple. Trust classic cross-platform metrics like return-on-ad spend and lifetime value, as these measures also tie directly to your organization’s business goals. Once you choose the content you think will resonate with your audience, test your ideas to identify which posts generate the most engagement, shares, and impressions, and do this for each social platform. Continue to test, learn, and optimize. But when it comes to measuring your efforts on social, it is important to keep your business objectives in mind and develop KPIs that match the overall goals and expectations of your organization. Metrics such as impressions and reach should be analyzed consciously.

If your goal is to build brand awareness, focus on overall engagement and how long visitors are staying on your website. This will help evaluate if your content isn’t just “content-for-content-sake” but is actually resonating with your audience and driving conversions. 

Q. What are the typical touchpoints/aspects marketers must include in their social media campaigns to reflect value for the brand and meet CMO expectations?

Henk Campher: One of the most important aspects of a social media campaign is social listening. A robust social listening tool allows you access to real-time insights into consumer sentiment, shifting trends, and competitive intelligence. These insights are key to helping a brand better understand how consumers feel about a campaign and what they want from your brand.  

The best social media campaigns also have specific goals in mind and are purpose-driven. You must understand the customer segment you’re trying to reach through a specific campaign. To achieve this, create profiles or personas for your core constituencies that integrate data and insights from marketing channels (including social) and CRM. Understanding how, where, and when to engage with your constituents requires a clear picture of their motivations and their needs.

Another important aspect is social data integration. Our ‘Social Transformation Report‘ uncovered that only 10% of marketers feel they have mature practices around integrating social data into enterprise systems like Adobe, Microsoft, Marketo, or Salesforce. However, according to our ‘2021 Social Trends Report‘, 85% of organizations that integrate social data into their other systems have the confidence to accurately quantify the ROI of social media. While data integration is a complex process, a much more accessible entry point that can help marketers better connect social engagement to customer identity and measurable ROI is integrating paid and organic social media activity.  We found that mature organizations with completely integrated paid and organic social strategies are 32% more confident in quantifying the ROI of social media. 

Q. How important is it for any brand to have involvement in social matters and social investments?

Henk Campher: The most successful brands this year didn’t put themselves front and center of the conversation—they decided to listen instead. After taking the time to listen, brands must find creative and empathetic ways of adding value to the conversation instead of trying to lead it. Brands should stay true to their identities and their audience by asking:

• “What is my role?”
• “What conversations make sense for me to weigh in on and why?”
• “How can social media contribute to my business objectives?”

Having a voice in important conversations is powerful for a brand. However, if a brand is posting about topics that don’t align with the brand’s personality and identity, customers will notice. As a wealth of different conversations are taking place across social media at all times, it’s important to create a blueprint for how to comment on a conversation, if at all. 

Q. What methods can CMOs implement to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn for effective market analysis?

Henk Campher: There are various tried-and-true methods CMOs can implement when using social media platforms for market analysis. Before you begin your analysis, always have a clear goal in mind. It’s important to look at what exactly you want to analyze whether it’s your brand, product, or competitors. Doing a quantitative content analysis by assessing the engagement rate of your social posts can give companies an idea of if a message or product is resonating with your followers. Social listening is another incredibly powerful tool for analysis. Through social listening, you can zero in on how people are talking about your brand.  It’s also important to not be shy. Be empowered as a brand to implement tactics like polls and surveys on social to get in touch with customers and glean informative insights into how your audience is thinking about your brand. 

Q. How would you push an online event that involves employee referral on social media for a maximum turnaround?

Henk Campher: Develop an effective social media strategy in advance and provide your employees with the right resources and tools to promote the event. You can do this by crafting the content and social platform guidelines in advance so it is easy for employees to spread the word on social media. At Hootsuite our Amplify tool allows brands to extend their social reach and increase employee engagement. Using platforms that are suited for employee advocacy will garner the most successful results. 

Q. What are your expert tips on the most effective ways to run a social media campaign, especially during the holiday season 2020?

Henk Campher: The holidays are a great opportunity for brands to increase engagement and drive sales on social media. Here are my four tips to create an effective social media campaign and stand out from the competition: 

1. Tweak your social media posting schedule to accommodate changing workdays or times. B2B businesses often have higher engagement rates during the day, as employees are leaving early and working less in the evening. B2C companies generally have a better reach when it’s not during typical work hours. 
2. Continue to curate content over the holidays, even if there might be a downturn of activity on social channels across the board. If you go quiet on social, your customers will notice. 
3. Maintain community engagement as relationships, connections and engagement are key to any successful social media campaign. Always respond to customer issues or comments promptly.
4. The holidays are a great time to showcase the ‘human’ side of your business. Take advantage of platforms like Instagram to showcase the company, employees, and interact with the community at large. 

Q. What are the most common mistakes you see brands making in their social media pushes?

Henk Campher: The most common mistake brands make is thinking of social media merely as a broadcast medium. With nearly three billion people on Facebook every month, more than one million on Instagram, and hundreds of millions more on Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Snapchat, it’s tempting to think that way. While social media started with organic posts and later turned to paid social advertising, brands should never lose sight of social media’s core value: establishing and maintaining relationships. Take the time to invest in relationship building, as this helps brands build strong bonds with their audiences and boost customer loyalty, which ultimately benefits their business. Rather than pump out promotional content, take the time to establish your brand’s personality, and connect with customers by taking on an empathetic “human-first” approach.

How is your brand making the most of social media marketing this holiday season? Are there challenges you’re facing with regards to creating value from a board room perspective? Feel free to share your thoughts on our interview, drop a comment!

30-second summary:

• Video marketing is more than a trend; it’s a must. But most companies are leaving out a key ingredient to ensure customers engage with their videos: captions and subtitles.
• Captioning videos in English or subtitling them in other languages has been proven to greatly boost the success and accessibility of online video content.
• Adding captions, subtitles or a transcript to videos allows Google to index the entirety of video content, rather than just indexing the video title.
• Captions and subtitles ensure videos are accessible by all: those who don’t have their volume on and the 37.5 million Americans who are deaf or hearing impaired.

No matter what industry you’re in, video content is likely part of your marketing strategy. And if it’s not, it should be. According to a report by Cisco, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022. And 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by video. Even still, videos aren’t some magic token that’ll get you to the next realm of marketing success and customer engagement. The online landscape is crowded, competitive, and moving at lightning speed. You don’t just need users to slow their scroll, you need them to engage. And when it comes to video content, the solution is quite simple, but often overlooked: closed captions.

Captioning your videos in English or subtitling them in other languages will greatly boost the success of your online video content. As a professional captioner and subtitler, I’m here to help you understand why:

1. Google can’t watch videos, but it can crawl captions

If you’re looking to improve your video’s SEO, adding captions is a quick and easy way to do it. Search engines like Google can’t watch your video content, but they can crawl your captions or transcripts and rank your video based on the keywords they find. Although your video will also be indexed for SEO by its title, description, and tags, captions will increase your keyword density and diversity even further. 

Next time you’ve got video content creation on the horizon, make sure you incorporate keywords into the script with this tip in mind, as it will pay off when it comes to video performance and SEO results in the long run.

2. Video captions drive more social engagement 

Adding captions to your videos is almost guaranteed to boost engagement, interaction, and conversion. According to a case study by Instapage, call-to-action clicks increased by 25% after they added captions to their Facebook videos. Another study found that captions increase the time viewers spend watching a video by almost 40% and make viewers 80 percent more likely to watch a video through the end. Simply adding captions to video content drives up clicks, overall view time, and view longevity.

3. A lot of people don’t (or can’t) turn on video sound

Have you ever insomnia-scrolled through Facebook for some entertainment while your partner slept soundly next to you? Or decided to take a peek at your feed during a boring class lecture? Or what about when you’re riding the public bus, having a cup of joe at your favorite coffee shop, or dining out solo? In all cases, playing a video aloud is not ideal… or socially acceptable.

As much as 85% of Facebook videos are played without sound. That means, if you don’t have captions on your video, it’ll be skipped by anyone watching with the mute button on, which could be a sizable chunk of your target audience. If you want to ensure your followers can view your content no matter where they are when they watch it, then do your part by adding captions. 

4. Captions boost comprehension, memory, and attention

Hundreds of studies have proven that captions improve comprehension of, attention to, and memory of video content. I’m a native English speaker, but my husband is Spanish. To improve his comprehension while watching TV shows and movies in English, we always watch content with the captions on. I was surprised to find that this also improved my comprehension and understanding of the content, and I now watch all video content with subtitles, whether or not my husband is sitting next to me on the couch. Including captions is the best way to ensure your takeaway hits home and leaves its mark on your viewers.  

5. Captions make videos more inclusive and accessible

Over 37.5 million Americans are deaf or have trouble hearing, so video audio serves little to no purpose to this group. And, only 36% of organizations caption all their video content. So why not get on the right side of that number? Without captions, you’re missing out on connecting with a huge audience. But remember, it’s not all about business and money, ensuring your video content is inclusive of all viewers is simply the right thing to do.

6. Most of your viewers likely live outside of your country of origin 

Making your content available worldwide is another way to grow your reach and the impact of your video content. According to YouTube, approximately “two-thirds of a channel’s views come from outside the creator’s home country.” Think about that: a huge portion of your audience might not fully understand your message or recognize your call to action. That’s a deep pool of potential customers you are missing out on.

Look at your analytics, figure out where your viewers live and consider creating subtitles in other languages to reach new markets. Make this a very strategic decision. Quality translation and subtitling are an investment, so you’ll want to make sure you choose the right language(s) to reach the target markets you’re able to serve. 

A word of caution: Resist the urge to DIY your captions and subtitles

While there are free machine translation, transcription, and captioning tools available on the market, take it from me: you don’t want to DIY your video captions. Leave this task to the experts. 

Captioning and subtitling are skills unto themselves, and without training and experience, can be time-consuming and delicate tasks. Captions and subtitles must follow strict rules, including character limits, reading speed, and cue-in and -out times (when the text appears on-screen and when it’s taken off the screen). Poorly timed captions and subtitles are difficult or impossible to read, which defeats the purpose of captioning or subtitling in the first place. 

Use resources such as the American Translators Association Directory (go to “Translation Service(s)” and choose “Dubbing/Subtitling” from the dropdown list) or visit GoSub’s job board to find a professional subtitler or captioner.

Don’t spend tons of time, money, and effort on creating the perfect video and leave out the key ingredient to ensuring your message reaches as many people as possible. Well-captioned and -subtitled content will increase your views, boost engagement and comprehension, and improve the overall success of your social media video content. Plus, for once, this is a quick and easy marketing fix that can make a big impact!

Molly Yurick is a Spanish to English translator, professional captioner, and subtitler. She is also Deputy Chair of Public Relations for the American Translators Association (ATA), which represents more than 10,000 translators and interpreters across 103 countries. 

30-second summary:

• Visual content offers a ton of value for your website.
• It can boost critical statistics such as time on page.
• Visuals guide the reader through your content more smoothly.
• They make your content more consumable and increase sharing.
• Google loves images that are optimized for search.
• Read on to learn more about how adding optimized images to your site can boost your search visits from your target audience.
• See examples of how companies are successfully incorporating visual content into their marketing and websites.

It’s no secret that visual content is hot right now (queue the Zoolander references). You know content formats like video, infographics, GIFs, memes, and more should be a part of your content strategy, but did you know these also impact your site’s SEO?

How does visual content impact SEO?

There is so much value to adding visual content on your website. While your written content serves the purpose of enabling you to naturally incorporate keywords and create more content to rank in search engines, the visual content you add to your site and elsewhere can help give that content a further boost.

1. Video content keeps visitors on the page

One stat Google loves is “time on page”. If visitors are checking out your site and leaving after an average of 10 seconds, that signifies to Google that your content is bad or isn’t relevant. By placing a video in the middle of your written content, you can keep people on page longer.

Think about it. Let’s say it takes someone 10 seconds to read the first two paragraphs of your article. Then, directly on your site is a video your visitors can easily click on that adds more value to the piece.

They click to view and end up watching the full two-minute video. This intrigues your visitors to dig deeper. Before they know it, they’ve been on your site for five minutes. This can give a huge boost to your time on page stats.

Video also impacts critical stats like your bounce rate, which is also a critical factor used by Google. The last thing you want is people visiting your site and bouncing away after just reading a few lines on one page. Video can help reduce your bounce rate and convince people to stick around.

While we’re on the subject, here’s a video from Neil Patel that explains this concept a bit more. In the video, Patel highlights a few ways (including video) that you can use to reduce your bounce rate.

2. Visuals help guide the reader through your content

Reading straight through a 1000-word article, no matter how well-written, can become tedious quickly. To keep site visitors flowing through the content, you can add things like infographics, screenshots, and more to help visualize the concepts you’re presenting and push your visitors further down the page.

Breaking up your content with related visuals allows readers to take a break from soaking up the copy and instead check out a few related graphics, videos, or other visual content. It also provides an opportunity for the reader to pause and look at a graphic that might more easily explain a complex subject you’re presenting or highlight some related stats visually to really drive home the impact, so they don’t get lost in the text.

Here’s a great example of an infographic that grabs readers’ attention and gives them something more to soak up in addition to just text. These are a few screenshots from a larger infographic that appeared in an article highlighting the state of SEO in 2019.

To view the full infographic, click here.

3. Google’s machine learning is learning to read visuals

While it’s not 100% clear how this works, it’s out there and known well enough that Google is actively learning how to read images on pages. With billions of images online, Google’s machine learning becomes adept at using shapes and other elements to compare and comprehend what the images on your site represent.

I mean, is there really much more I need to say here? If Google is focusing on learning how to crawl something and then attribute it to the value your site brings to the Internet, you need to pay attention. That’s why it’s so important to ensure your images are relevant and are formatted in a way Google can read them.

How can you use images to boost SEO?

So, now that you know the “why” part, let’s dig into the “how” part. It’s important to dig a bit deeper and explore some of the ways you can apply visual marketing to your efforts to boost your SEO.

1. Make sure your images add to the story

There is a ton of value in adding things like graphs, screenshots, and other content that actually relate to your article and adds value. There is decidedly less value in adding generic images that simply represent the concepts and don’t really add anything. Since we’re on the topic, why don’t I use some visuals to show you what I mean?

For example number one, you can see instructive screenshots dropped into this piece of content. These are screenshots from an article I recently wrote that details how to use HARO for SEO and backlink building. I used screenshots to walk readers through each step and provide them with actionable guides like the image of the email template and the walkthrough of how to set up an email.

On the opposite side, you have the images below that show an example of using images that relate to the topic but don’t really add value. This is another article on my site. I decided to test out generic images on this piece, as you can see in the screenshots below. The images relate to the content, but they really don’t add much extra.

As you can see, both do add a certain level of appeal to their respective articles. That said, for example one, the HARO article, has 12 times the number of page views, 11 more comments, and double the time on-page. So, you can see the value is clear that adding relevant images that add to the story brings a boost to your SEO.

2. Optimize your images

It’s not enough to just add images to your pages and posts. You also need to ensure they are optimized. If you ignore this step, you can run into issues with the performance of your site. For example, images that aren’t optimized can lead to slow load times on your site, and site speed is a critical ranking factor for Google.

To ensure you aren’t bogging down your site with heavy images, try using appropriate image types. The best formats to use are JPEG, PNG, and GIF. And as for videos, host the videos elsewhere (YouTube, for example) and then embed them on your site rather than uploading them directly.

Another important factor in optimizing your images is the tags you add. Just like you need to add meta tags to your posts, you need to add tags to your images as well. This serves as a way to tell Google (and let’s not forget other search engines, of course) what your images are about.

Source: Kayako

3. Take advantage of off-site search

You’ve likely heard this before, but it deserves being restated. YouTube is the second largest search engine. Second only to…drumroll please…Google!

So, why not take advantage of posting videos to YouTube and optimizing those videos to give you more content to rank in search?

While this is obviously an off-site strategy, if you create excellent video content and then optimize it properly to appear in search, your videos can grab some SEO value.

You can then add links back to your website in your video descriptions and on your YouTube channel, and as your videos become more popular, clicks from the links on your YouTube channel will give a boost to your site traffic.

Wrapping it up

So, you get it now, right? Images are good for the health of your website and the impact of your SEO strategy. They not only add some life to your website and grab readers’ attention, they also help you improve critical stats that can help give your SEO a boost.

If you’ve been using visuals in your content, your first step should be to review those visuals to ensure they are optimized. Make sure they add to the story and then check to catch any missed opportunities to enhance your files with the right file types along with proper tagging.

Using images and video content on and off your website is a no-brainer. In today’s visual world, it’s important to stay on top of the continuing trend toward a preference for visual content. Make sure to work visuals into your content to give your SEO a serious boost.

Anthony is the Founder of AnthonyGaenzle.com a marketing and business blog. He also serves as the Head of Marketing and Business Development at Granite Creative Group, a full-service marketing firm. He is a storyteller, strategist, and eternal student of marketing and business strategy.

30-second summary:

• Recent data from Roku shows that 85% of Americans are now streamers. Making them feel excited about some new CTV app is not a piece of cake but also not totally unfeasible.
• In the dark, dark woods of AdTech, Connected TV (CTV) apps are a dime a dozen. This may sound spooky enough for a proper Halloween horror story.
• The market is currently dealing with many potentially brilliant content creators having cold feet when thinking of launching their own CTV channels.
• Alex Zakrevsky, CEO of Allroll, helps you overcome these fears.

In the dark, dark woods of AdTech, Connected TV (CTV) apps are a dime a dozen. This may sound spooky enough for a proper Halloween horror story. In reality, the impressive growth of the CTV market strengthened the competition and endowed it with many “survival of the fittest” features. As a result, the fact that the number of connected TV devices in the US reached 400 million this year, as per Leichtman Research Group, is not that appealing and comforting for channel owners anymore. The market is currently dealing with many potentially brilliant content creators having cold feet when thinking of launching their own CTV channels. To overcome these fears, it’s important to embrace them first.

1. Failing to start

There is a belief that developing a channel from scratch requires either proficient coding skills or paying a fortune to those who have such skills. So, instead of starting, let’s say a Roku channel, content producers tend to be terrified of the prospect of coding or not being able to make ends meet. To lower the level of anxiety, it’s always useful to look at available options. 

If watching someone building a channel for you is the most preferable model, specialized agencies are the best choice to make. These companies usually have their own in-house developing teams and charge a set price or a revenue share, which gives room for maneuver. Alternatively, there are freelance developers whose price tag normally starts from $25/hour on Upwork.

The downside of both solutions is that they will depend on developers’ availability and may eventually turn out to be slow-moving and quite pricey. Yet, they will definitely help have less on one’s plate. At the same time, there are ways of developing a CTV app without going bankrupt or going full-on with programming languages.

In addition to custom channel development, some CTV platforms, such as Roku or Amazon Fire, offer their no-coding solutions for channel owners. Roku, for example, has its on-the-house model called Direct Publisher. Yes, this tool limits customization, monetization, and third party analytics options, but it does save time, money, and, more importantly, keeps channel owners with no coding experience sane. As a compromise between basic and advanced features, there’s a moderately-priced service for developing Roku channels that is cloud-based and code-free. Instant TV Channel costs $45.95/month. It creates and maintains a video feed as well as offers a range of customization opportunities. Consequently, if coding isn’t a channel owner’s strong suit, it’s needless to pay millions or spend months trying to make sense of programming. What’s crucial is the idea that drives a publisher and the content that will drive potential viewers. 

2. Being mediocre

As CTV ad spend is surging and has already increased by 19% this year, based on IAB’s figures, more and more publishers are getting on board each day. This makes creating original content pretty challenging. Ultimately, channel owners are surrounded, on the one side, by fears of meeting their channel-doppelganger and, on the other side, being ‘eaten alive’ by channels-giants, like Netflix, Animal Planet, and others. Sounds quite dramatic, doesn’t it? If someone is still wondering whether there’s any space left for new apps in the CTV universe, it’s worth checking on how many people delightfully watch channels, which others would not even think of, in the screensavers or special interest sections on the Roku platform. 

As for the chances of becoming a copycat of your own concept, great minds do think alike but most of the time not so literally. Therefore, becoming a successful channel owner calls for out-of-the-box thinking, doing some research, and being generally both strategic and brave.

3. Having zero installs

Recent data from Roku shows that 85% of Americans are now streamers. Making them feel excited about some new CTV app is not a piece of cake but also not totally unfeasible. So, if there is a genuine fear that no one will ever install a new Roku channel, here are several promotional techniques for not letting this happen.  

First of all, it’s essential to make as many people as possible aware of a new channel via a website, emails, and social media. This is absolutely free, a bit time-consuming but worthwhile. Secondly, it’s important to attend online/offline events and accept all networking opportunities where a channel owner can meet potential viewers and introduce a channel to them. Then, it’s good to think of collaborating with like-minded channels so as to make friends with indirect competitors and promote each others’ content.

Additionally, it would be beneficial to be included in one of those guides with top new channels one should install. For this purpose and in general, getting feedback on the content from influencers can be really game-changing. Finally, in case there’s a request to level up the current promotional approach, it’s time to consider monetization. 

Roku has its self-serve platform for growing publishers’ audiences using the tailored display and video ads. While its CPM rates can range significantly with no guaranteed number of installs, the platform is quite flexible in terms of budgets and can meet various needs and wants. What’s more, there’s the Allroll marketing platform aimed to drive viewers to Roku channels by the means of advanced targeting options and personalized advertising messages. It provides higher apps’ exposure and, ultimately, + 60% installs with the same budgets as those required for the native platform. So, there’s definitely a lot one can do to enhance the channel’s results without getting overwhelmed.

4. Surrendering to YouTube

When talking about video channels, there is always an elephant in the room. This elephant’s name is of course YouTube. Some publishers are still skeptical about CTV platforms, thinking their videos will never perform there as well as they do on good old YouTube. They might as well imagine having to stick to one platform to have windfall gains. In fact, there’s much more to this than meets the eye.

No matter how successful, YouTube is just a service. At least for a content owner and not an employee of YouTube. Thus, there is no need to choose between different stages on which to play the content. On the contrary, it is better to use as many platforms as one can manage to reach out to as many viewers as possible. This is the smart way of promoting video content, raising brand awareness, and maximizing profit in the soaring digital space. 

5. Getting lost in streaming obscurity

It’s not particularly a secret that the world of streaming is currently run by four major operating systems: Roku, Amazon Fire, Android TV/Google TV, or Apple TV. The first two have the biggest share of 100.2 million (Roku) and 72.7 million (Amazon Fire) users, according to eMarketer. The rest of the players are of somewhat a lower caliber. Picking one platform for an app may seem like a tough job, bearing in mind their characteristics resemble each other in so many ways. For instance, Roku uses Audience Network with broad geolocation options for targeting and a revenue share model for monetization within its Direct Publisher mode. In the meantime, Amazon Fire’s code-free Amazon Creator offers extensive data on consumers’ preferences collected from Amazon devices and a commission-based monetization. This may rightly seem quite confusing.

The reasonable tactic for not getting puzzled by the best bets is to follow the audience. People mainly prefer streaming platforms that relate to an operating system they are plugged into in their everyday lives. So, if they have an Amazon Prime account that they actively use or they are fond of Alexa, these consumers are likely to go for Amazon Firesticks in their streaming experience.

Similarly, Apple products’ adepts will favor Apple TV, whereas Android users will stand for Android TV. Roku is sort of a black sheep in this family, as it has always been solely TV-oriented. Though, it’s extremely user-friendly, very affordable and its devices were voted the best of this crowd on numerous occasions. Without beating about the bush, knowing your audience is the key. 

Takeaways

The CTV market has been on the rise offering publishers more advanced opportunities to reach their viewers. Meanwhile, the stakes of being bog-standard or outdated got higher, as the competition became more severe. This left some content producers panicked about their chances to succeed instead of being focused on bringing new creative ideas to life. After all, living in fear is counterproductive. Hence, the best method of facing fears is to meet them in person. The launch of a new CTV app will consist of a series of important rendezvous on each of the steps: a platform or platforms to use, development strategy, content ideas, promotional tools, and monetization models. It’s vital to pay attention to every single decision throughout this journey. Now, time to get down to business.

Alex Zakrevsky is the CEO of Allroll marketing platform for CTV/OTT channel owners. Innovator, product lover, CTV, and programmatic enthusiast. He believes that the quality of the product always wins.

30-second summary:

• YouTube is one of the most featured domains in Google.
• Unlike any other heavily featured sites, YouTube.com provides any brand an easy way to host a brand-owned asset for it to get featured.
• To capture more video-driven featured snippet opportunities, create a video version for each keyword-driven content asset you create.
• There are tools that make video creation quite scalable. Those include online video creators and Zoom.
• Regardless of how you create those videos, make sure there’s a meaningful (even search-optimized) voiceover as Google is using that (and the video transcripts) to generate featured snippets.
• Use traditional SEO practices to let Google discover and rank your videos. Like with regularly featured snippets, video featured snippets heavily depend on the organic rankings.

YouTube provides brands with all kinds of unique marketing opportunities, one of which is an ability to build extra organic visibility through both video carousels and featured snippets.

Why YouTube?

According to Ahrefs, YouTube.com ranks in the top five organic searches for 139,830,455 queries. Of those, it is being featured for 1,177,203 queries (as of September 2020). 

[Screenshot source: Ahrefs as of September 2020]

This makes YouTube one of the most featured domains out there.

For comparison, en.wikipedia.org is being featured for 2,644,918 search queries (again, according to Ahrefs data).

Unlike Wikipedia, YouTube videos can be owned by brands. Anyone can create a YouTube video and get featured with it. This means the video creator holds full control over the message of the featured asset.

This is gold.

It is not easy to determine why YouTube is being featured so heavily:

• Are YouTube videos being featured because they tend to rank so high
• Or are YouTube videos being featured because Google has found those search queries to be best satisfied with video content

Either way, one thing we know for sure: You should be providing videos if you want to build additional brand exposure in organic search.

How to get your brand feature more through creating video content?

1. Create more videos

This one is pretty obvious but this is the fundamental step that needs to be covered.

You are welcome to go fancy and capture all relevant search results in your niche that feature videos and try to capture all those opportunities with your own videos. This strategy has the right to exist but it does have some problems:

• You are competing with existing assets that have by now accumulated all kinds of solid signals (views, backlinks, and other such factors). So don’t expect this to come easy.
• You are limiting your strategy with existing opportunities that all your competitors may be aware of. You are doomed to always be behind.
• Featured snippets are dynamic. By the time you finally have a solid asset to compete, that opportunity may no longer exist.

Instead of chasing each individual opportunity, create a more comprehensive strategy that would ensure you’ll create your own opportunities, and gradually capture all of the existing ones as well.

Put simply, turn all your text-based content into the video format.

This sounds intimidating but it is actually totally doable. I am using two tools that make the process unbelievably easy:

2. Zoom to record walkthrough and tutorials

You can record yourself explaining any process using the free version of Zoom. It may take you some time to get used to the process but going forward, you will find yourself more and more comfortable with it. After 2-3 video tutorials, a 3-minute video will take you 30 minutes to create, trust me.

[Screenshot created by the author: September 2020]

I am sure other virtual meeting solutions can work for that purpose as well:

• Nextiva offers a more robust solution that also includes live streaming
• Here’s a nice list of more options to check out

The best thing about Zoom is that it is free and offers a nice HD export of recorded videos.

3. Renderforest to turn text into videos

While Zoom may take a bit of time to get adjusted to, Renderforest provides video creation tools that take no time to figure out. It is easy-to-use and can be used to turn any article into a video.

To get an easier feel of the tool, simply grab your article subheadings and use their text-to-video option to turn those into a video:

[Screenshot source: Renderforest]

Renderforest provides templates to create whiteboard videos, explainer videos, step-by-step tutorials, and more. 

Overall, of all the online video creators I’ve tried over the years, this one seems to be the easiest to adjust to. And it saves a ton of time. It costs around $7 a month which is also quite affordable.

4. Use meaningful well-structured distinct voice-over for your YouTube video

Now I don’t have any serious study behind this claim, so take this with a grain of salt. Based on my own experience, unless your video has a meaningful voice-over, it will not be featured.

Look at one of the examples of featured videos: There’s a text instruction in the box:

[Screenshot source: Google search as of September 2020]

This is generated from the video captions which are auto-created based on the video voice-over:

[Screenshot source: YouTube as of September 2020]

This seems to support my claim: Unless Google can find some text, it will not be so willing to feature a video.

So invest some time into creating a voice-over.

If you use Zoom, you can simply read instructions while recording your tutorial. If you are using Renderforest, you can sync your voiceover with your video. Both methods are pretty doable.

4. Optimize videos using traditional SEO

YouTube SEO is not much different from any SEO process. This article outlines the process pretty well here. Basically, all you need is:

• A keyword-optimized name of the video (which is also going to be the page title)
• A detailed video description (also use your keywords there as well). Feel free to create clickable timestamps to take viewers to particular sections of the video. These get indexed by Google as well.

More importantly, you need some links to your video. At the very least link to each video from your own site (both manually from your articles and also using some plugins which send sitewide links to your videos). This will help it rank.

Conclusion

This video strategy will hopefully get your brand featured more. But it will also help you create more content assets which you will be able to market on social media to boost engagement and create more traffic generating channels. Good luck!

Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

30-second summary:

• Targeting the wrong audience can lead to poor engagement on your YouTube channel. Competitor analysis will help you solve this problem.
• A well-structured plan for promotion will help you measure the results of your YouTube marketing campaign.
• By setting the right metrics, you can set your campaign in the right direction from the very start.
• Optimization of your YouTube channel is just a multiplier of quality.
• Creating user-centric titles will help you make content more clickable and user-friendly.

YouTube is a great platform to introduce your product or services to new audiences. In fact, YouTube has an overwhelming reach of two million active users globally. Yet, if you want to use Youtube promotion for your products, there are some common mistakes and pitfalls that can prevent you from succeeding. 

1. Targeting the wrong audience 

Many marketers make the same mistake of failing to identify their target audience. This often leads to the poor performance of their YouTube channel and poor engagement. So, if you notice that your YouTube channel doesn’t perform as well as expected, while the content quality seems to be in place, the problem may be rooted in targeting the wrong audience. 

How to avoid this mistake?

It’s really easy to slip into believing that your product suits everybody or chose the wrong audience. Yet, there is something you can do to avoid this mistake altogether. 

Competitor analysis is one of the best ways to indicate the right audience for your brand. Evaluate what your competitors are doing and who their target audience members are. Chances are that if your niche aligns, your audience will align too. 

Besides analyzing your competitors, it’s useful to conduct analysis through the YouTube search. Go to YouTube and type in multiple search queries that match the user intent of the audience you’re targeting. Then, check out the demographics details of the audience who watches the videos from search results. 

2. Not having a clear strategy 

Not having a clear strategy is a common mistake many marketers face. Beings caught up in creating videos, marketers typically tend to forget about creating a well-structured plan for promotion. 

When it comes to promoting your videos on YouTube, intuition isn’t the best thing to rely on. Any successful promotion strategy relies on a specific plan and calculations, rather than inner marketing instincts.

How to avoid this mistake?

You can’t build a YouTube promotion campaign without first developing a strategy. You can’t put your video out on the platform and hope for the best. So, make sure to set clear objectives and goals to measure the performance of your campaign. Also, you should have a content plan that includes detailed information on the role of your YouTube content as a part of the broader branded content efforts. 

3. Tracking the wrong metrics 

While it’s important that you know the goals and objectives of your YouTube promotion campaign from the very start, the type of metrics you’re tracking is important as well. Being caught up in the pursuit of views, comments, and likes, marketers often fail to set the right metrics. This may set your campaign in the wrong direction from the very start. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Likes, shares, and comments are important. Yet, there are metrics that can do a better job indicating customer engagement. Here are just a few metrics worth measuring to evaluate the performance of your YouTube promotion efforts.  

• Conversion rate: Conversion rate is a must-follow metric you should keep an eye on. If your YouTube efforts are aimed at promoting a particular product or business in general, the conversion rate is your go-to metric to track. 
• Average view duration: The total number of views can be misleading. Out of 100 people who watched your video, only 10 could have watched it till the end. That’s why it’s important to measure the average view duration. The average view duration is the total watch time of your YouTube video divided by the total number of plays and replays. This metric will help you get the best estimate of how well your videos perform. 
• Views to subscribers ratio: If you’re trying to grow your channel with promotions, you shouldn’t be concerned about the number of views your promotions get. Instead, you should be looking at the ratio of views to subscribers. If a video you promote is getting lots of views but none of the viewers subscribe to your channel, you’re not getting anywhere. So, you should aim at keeping your views to subscribers ratio between 8% and 12%. 
• Traffic source: Keeping track of the traffic source won’t help your video promotion efforts directly, but you can gain some valuable insights from keeping track of this metric. Traffic sources will help you understand which promotions deliver the best results. 

4. Valuing YouTube optimization over content quality 

Let’s imagine that you’ve uploaded a video on YouTube and have been hugely disappointed by the number of views it got. What is the first thing you’re going to look at? Most people’s answer is optimization. 

When getting fewer views than expected, marketers often think that they didn’t use the right keywords or metadata.  Here’s what they fail to realize – optimization on YouTube is just a multiplier of quality. If the quality of content is poor, no amount of optimization can suddenly make it an instant viral sensation. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Optimization can have a major impact on the performance of your channel under one condition. Your content must be of high quality. So, focus on the quality of your content first and don’t rely on optimization tools alone.  

If you’re not particularly sure how to start your journey towards the top quality content, seeking advice online is certainly helpful. Search for online resources and eLearning courses, like LinkedIn Learning, to diversify your content and ensure its high quality.   

5. Writing titles for SEO 

Often professions who are comfortable with SEO, write titles for YouTube algorithms rather than the user.  Here’s a problem with this approach – if the title isn’t interesting enough, users are far less likely to click on it. 

Click-through rate can have a major impact on the performance of your YouTube channel, far more impact than any SEO benefit that a well-optimized title can provide. 

How to avoid this mistake?

Make sure all video titles are user-centric. If you want to strategically format titles, make sure that the first part of the title is written specifically for your audience. Getting users interested has far more value than your SEO efforts. 

Final thoughts

These five mistakes can drown even the most well-implemented YouTube promotion. Now, as you’ve learned how to avoid these mistakes, you can incorporate a better performing strategy and see the improvement of results. Good luck implementing your newfound insights in real life.

Connie Benton is a chief content writer, guest contributor, and enthusiastic blogger who helps B2B companies reach their audiences more effectively. You can find her on Twitter at @ConnieB34412379.

30-second summary:

• Google is giving a lot of visibility to video content through its interactive SERP section called a “video carousel”.
• Getting your video ranked in Google’s “video carousels” can drive lots of views to your channel but it will also allow you to control more elements in your target SERPs.
• Ranking in Google’s video carousel is quite doable and doesn’t require months of work or waiting. All you need is keyword research and video page optimization.

YouTube is one of the most popular social media networks out there allowing brands to get discovered by their customers. While creating a popular YouTube channel takes time and a lot of effort, it is well worth it. One piece of a puzzle many YouTube creators are missing is optimizing your videos for organic discoverability through Google’s video carousel.

Here’s a comprehensive guide that looks into all the elements that you can capture to win your spot in Google’s top SERP real estate.

What are YouTube video carousels?

Google offers a huge deal of organic visibility to YouTube videos through so-called video carousels, that is, interactive boxes featuring videos relating to the target search query:

Source: Google as of August 2020

There’s even more organic visibility for videos in mobile search results where videos carousels take almost the whole screen:

Source: Google as of August 2020

Whenever my video starts ranking in Google organic, it brings in lots of well-engaged views, especially as compared to other videos, even for very new/inactive channels:

Source: YouTube as of August 2020

But this strategy is not only helpful for driving views to your own channel. It is also a good way to better control your target Google SERPs. 

There’s no denying a fact that videos are highly engaging and convert well, and we are pretty sure that visuals (in this case video thumbnails) may be stealing a lot of attention from Google’s organic results (in fact, there’s a real science behind the visual impact on consumers’ behavior), so ranking your video there will help you drive more exposure for your brand.

The good news, YouTube SEO takes less time than traditional SEO does. I have seen my videos ranking in Google within a week after I upload them to YouTube! So this is a pretty fast way to boost your channel views by ranking your videos in Google’s video carousel. 

Craft a detailed and factual title

Your video page title is what you type in the “title” field when uploading your video:

For SEO purposes (which implies organic search visibility), the title of the page is the most important on-page element, so treat it with care.

Optimizing a page title is always about maintaining a fine balance: You want it to be creative and original enough to get clicks while still being able to add some searchable keywords.

You can only make your title 100 characters long max which is not much!

Here are a few suggestions for you:

• Always include a searchable keyword (here’s a quick guide on identifying one)
• If your video includes entities (names, places, events, brands, products, etc), include those in the video title
• Titles that include numbers generally get more clicks, so experiment with adding numbers to your video title
• Titles that are worded as questions may spur curiosity and get more clicks
• How-to titles always perform well for guides and instructions

Tip: Create videos around your target queries

You can go the other way around: Instead of trying to find a searchable keyword for your video idea, you can create videos around keywords you already know are popular with Google’s users.

You can easily do that with tools like Placeit that allows you to turn text content into the video format:

Screenshot source: Placeit as of August 2020

Placeit doesn’t require subscription payment, plus it offers free templates which makes it the most affordable video creation solution on the market.

The way it could work:

• Grab any article from your site that received Google traffic
• Use Google Search Console to find which search queries exactly drive clicks to your page
• Create videos around those queries (using your existing article)

Another way to find opportunities to get your video visible on Google’s video carousel is by using Ahrefs:

• Run your domain in Ahrefs and click to “Organic keywords”
• Click the filter called “SERP features” and check “Videos”

Here you go. There are all keywords your site is ranking for in Google and those are also search queries showing video carousels. 

Source: Ahrefs as of August 2020

Ahrefs is my preferred SERP analytics tool due to its usability but of course, there are many more cool tools that can help you with this task.

Create a longer description

While for the video titles, we don’t have too many characters to work with, the video description field allows more characters than enough, so take the full advantage of those.

The video description field allows creators to put up to 5000 characters. It is important to create more detailed description for your video because search engines still rely on text content to index and rank your video.

Here are a few ideas on creating a more detailed and high-ranking video description:

1. Create your script

If you are uploading a video interview, a webinar, or conference coverage, chances are you have more than enough text spoken to create a detailed description.

Fiverr is full of gigs offering you to transcribe a video and turn it into text, so it is a pretty easy way to create the text version of any video:

Source: Fiverr as of August 2020

2. Use semantic analysis

I turn to semantic analysis at any time I am writing content. It always helps me discover more topics to cover and identify more questions to answer.

Text Optimizer is an easy and effective semantic research tool that analyzes Google’s search snippets to identify underlying concepts which will make your content more relevant to your target topic:

Source: Text Optimizer as of August 2020

I don’t think I know an alternative to Text Optimizer for creating an optimized context so easily, but here’s more on semantic analysis and why it is useful.

3. Create a time-stamped video outline

Don’t miss this step! YouTube allows you to add clickable timestamps that take viewers deeper into your video to where you discuss that subtopic.

Here’s a detailed tutorial on creating YouTube timestamps:

1. Play your video up to the point where it starts discussing a new topic
2. Pause your video at the point you want to timestamp
3. Type the time exactly as you see in the video player into the video description field.

Source: YouTube as of August 2020

This clickable video outline in the video description will drive people deep into the video, so you will see more engagements.

On top of that, your video may enjoy even more exposure in search, because Google sometimes grabs that outline to show right inside search results:

Source: Google as of August 2020. (Google giving extra visibility to a video by showing its clickable outline right inside search results)

Add more tags and a few hashtags

YouTube tagging is still a good way to categorize your video the right way. They help search engines to better understand what it is your video is about and rank it accordingly.

You can up to 500-character worth of tags for each of your videos, and there’s no reason saving on those characters. Feel free to use all of them.

Hashtags were introduced not so long ago, and creators still confuse the two, so to help you out, here’s a quick list of how they work and:

While tags are mostly for YouTube search rankings, hashtags appear as a visible part of the page, so they send some relevancy signals to search engines:

Source: YouTube as of August 2020. (Enter hashtags into the description area and tags in the separate “Tags” field)

If you need help brainstorming more tags for your video, try Rapidtags.io which generates tags:

Source: Rapidtags.io as of August 2020

Create an eye-catching video thumbnail

A video thumbnail is what shows up in Google’s video carousel, so it will directly impact your click-through. This makes your video thumbnail one of the major assets for your video:

Source: YouTube as of August 2020

Luckily creating an eye-catching and, more importantly, click-inviting video thumbnail is not difficult. There are tools to create one for free, as well as cool templates to come up with your own unique recognizable style:

Conclusion

YouTube video optimization strategy is very much like any SEO strategy: You need to create a lot of relevant context for search engines to be able to understand and correctly classify your video. To optimize your YouTube video page:

• Craft an attention-grabbing title which would include your target keyword
• Write a detailed, semantically optimized video description (and include clickable video outline for viewers and search engines to easily access the part they are most interested in)
• Add tags and hashtags to make your video even more findable

Finally, links play a huge part in organic visibility, so make sure to link to your videos from your own site. This includes both embedding your videos and linking to them directly.

Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

30-second summary:

• In the “coexisting with-COVID-19” world, an average user is now spending “Remote” is the new usual.
• Using the avenue of YouTube for your business can be an open-ended option to help with marketing and product promotions during the COVID-19 crisis.
• If you think this is an approachable recommendation for your business, here’s how YouTube can help you out in the COVID-19 situation.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has led global businesses to a scenario where business continuity has severely been challenged. All kinds of businesses – be it food and beverage, apparel and footwear, beauty, automotive, travel, or hospitality all have been severely impacted. Opportunities that help businesses navigate the strategic, operational, and financial change through the usual ways of marketing and promoting a business might not work anymore.

In the “coexisting with COVID-19” world, an average user is now spending “Remote” is the new usual. Hence, utilizing the avenue of YouTube for your business can be an open-ended option for organizations to help with their marketing and product promotions. So, if you think this is an approachable recommendation for your business, here’s how YouTube can help you out in the COVID-19 situation.

1. Get exposure to international clients

Either they post their own videos or watch the works of other YouTubers. With such a large audience in the funnel, bringing your business marketing to YouTube would be a good move. This holds true for businesses because they can register their presence on YouTube to showcase their resources. So, if you can create a channel on this platform and upload your organizational videos, you are opening yourself to a prospective audience that can be a potential clientele. If you are a setup based on any of the online business ideas, this can increase the sales as well as the overall recognition and reputation of your company.

Here are a few examples of YouTube video uploads for a business:

• YouTube podcasts with an expert panel
• Listicle videos of “Top 10”
• Explanatory videos for your business offering
• Product/service reviews of your business offering
• YouTubeLive
• Company presentations
• New product launch videos

If you are concerned about the geography and language for your videos, it was never a barrier to YouTube, thanks to subtitles. While it is not feasible and easy to record your videos in multiple languages, YouTube does provide adding subtitles almost free of cost. So, that’s a box ticked off.

YouTube is heavily based on the viewership and subscription count of a channel. So, to increase the viewers and subscribers on YouTube, you would have to stay consistently active on this platform.

Tip

Skip the old content format. Create your new blogs in the video format with a voiceover and some animation. Listicles are by far one of the most popular YouTube video formats.

2. Become more visible on Google

As you probably already know, the Google search engine does not only pick up blogs and articles but also accumulates SEO juice from YouTube videos. Since videos are very high on engagement percentage, it is a great time to get on the video platform of YouTube. So, if you create a lot more unique content regularly, then it will be easier for your channel to appear in the search results.

You would also have to choose a suitable title for it. A relatively neutral title can help your videos show up on the “Trending” page. You would also have to provide some brief yet proper descriptions under your videos. This will make it easier for search engines to pick up your video content. Choosing the right time to post your videos should be based on your audience if you really want to maximize engagement.

As YouTube is a part of Google, you can also increase your website’s authority on the search engine by incorporating the same. In simple words, the more popular your YouTube channel is, the higher your website will rank in Google’s search results. It is also highly recommended that you employ the right SEO tools to further amp up the SEO game of your content.

Tip

If a YouTube video has a view time of fewer than 10 secs it’s going to count as a negative count – A huge factor that loses rankings!

3. Build revenue through AdSense

Besides getting popular on the business side of YouTube, you can also generate some amount for your business through YouTube’s AdSense. Almost every full-time YouTuber earns a lot more money than many people. Revenue from YouTube ads came to $4.7 billion in the fourth quarter, up 31% year over year. However, all sectors have been differently impacted by the eventual change in Ad spend.

This is something that can be achieved if your channel has enough of a viewer base. Firstly, a viewer would see your video’s or business’ ad through the video of any other channel and click on it. However, you will have to pay a small amount of revenue for it. Here’s an ideal scenario.

• After clicking, the viewer would proceed with your video and watch it. Nevertheless, if you already have added some ads from other content creators, then your viewer would watch them, too, in the process.
• With each click on those ads, you will earn some.

It does not sound really massive, right? But, if more than one million people watch your videos regularly, then, through AdSense, you can definitely earn some good money.

Tip

Figure out the categories of monetized videos on YouTube and try to jot them with your business content so that you don’t miss those AdSense dollars.

4. Seek inspiration from standard businesses and their YouTube channels

Almost every popular or highly-established company has its own YouTube channel. Check out the YouTube channels from Y Combinator, TED, Skillshare, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Neil Patel. These are a bunch of very popular business-oriented channels that are worth seeking inspiration from. So, if you do follow them, then you will be able to gain a lot of insights about marketing strategies and campaigns.

This can help you learn more about the crucial aspects of business and come up with your own ideas, and self-branding that can boost the growth of your organization.

Tip

YouTube is a trend-heavy platform where creators follow several patterns to bring their video to the “Trending” slot. While those can effectively help you, staying original in your pursuit can carve a niche for you.

5. Keep your content alive with YouTube repurposing

Before COVID-19 hit us, all businesses were on their usual path to creating their marketing content in several formats such as blogs, infographics, videos, whitepapers, eBooks, and more. However, now is the time to repurpose all the content or videos that you have created before and utilize them for aggressively claiming the YouTube business space for your industry.

You do not have to waste your time on the same project again and use it on another channel or place to reach your target audience quickly and easily.

For repurposing, you can use four different formats, which are – video series, infographics, podcasts, and presentations. This approach would help you to keep your audience engaged with works, which, in turn, might help you gain some new audience and clients.

Tip

Repurposing old content for conversion into YouTube videos not only saves your time but also keeps you in a mode where you are able to churn good content and post it out consistently.

6. Make use of YouTube influencer marketing

Based on your take on marketing budget, you can seek Influencer Marketing and rope in YouTubers to promote your products/services through their videos. This way, you might be able to gain some business through the means of their loyal fanbase.

Moreover, if you do enable the comment section of your videos and be active with the interaction, your business might be able to get some active leads for potential customers who are keen to engage with your business offering.

Tip

Influencer marketing is witnessing Micro-influencers making waves. So, do consider tapping this opportunity.

What else matters?

Once you have created your business YouTube channel, you have to focus on optimizing and growing it. Here are some of the checkboxes you need to tick off:

• A channel trailer is a great way to welcome new visitors who are coming across your channel for the first time. They would instantly know what videos to expect.
• Figure out the video length that works for your business. Too short or too long videos can kill the channel’s growth even before you know it.
• Channel art is crucial and can work its way to attract new audiences to your channel and make a lasting impression. Check out GaryVee’s channel art.

• To provide your channel with a visibility boost, paid promotion can always help.
• Organic growth can be your thing. All you have to do is keep producing high-quality videos that are relevant to your business and its audience.

Conclusion

It is true that this virus has highly impacted various segments in the business industry. Businesses are now looking to figure out possible steps and responses to mitigate risks in these uncertainties. As apparent, YouTube is a great platform to grow your business, especially during the time of COVID-19. So, stop waiting for the grass to grow and create a channel on the website and start working on it today.

Catherrine Garcia is an experienced Web Developer at WPCodingDev and a passionate blogger. 

30-second summary:

• Since the lockdown online video content has been steadily replacing traditional television as people spend more time streaming shows and playing video games.
• Advertisers are redistributing their ad budgets making stakes on CTV/ OTT and social media.
• 64% of advertisers terminated their ad campaigns while 24% used this period as an opportunity to launch something new.
• In-stream, shoppable, vertical, and short video formats are gaining momentum as social media traffic volumes are peaking.
• CEO of SmartyAds, Ivan Guzenko shares his thoughts on video advertising trends as he highlights the hottest video ad formats and resolutions.

Digital video advertising trends are booming – when six out of 10 people prefer watching videos online instead of watching TV, it is safe to say that online video content has replaced traditional television. More than 78% of people watch digital videos every week and 55% watch them every day. The penetration of over-the-top video streaming in the U.S. reached 57,3% of the population in 2019, and by the end of 2022, it will rise to 58,2%.

Just like Bill Gates once predicted oblivion to companies that ignored the Internet space, in 2020, something similar can be said about video marketing. In my last article, I mentioned how brands can apply video marketing strategies. Now, it’s time to discuss video advertising trends and explore new formats so that your brand can grasp new opportunities and establish a stronger connection with customers.

OTT and CTV ads

In this time of the coronavirus, TV experiences a dramatic surge in viewing – TV video content consumption has climbed 60% higher on all devices for streaming Smart TVs, and mobiles including. The most significant rise was noticed in categories like entertainment, news, and children’s content. A record number of visitors on Steam was detected in May.

The platform gathered the largest number of visitors over the past 16 years: 21,998 players per 24 hours. 

Thus, even though now many advertisers are forced to close their brick-and-mortar stores and postpone their ad budgets, more than a quarter of them plan to launch new campaigns as traffic across CTV medium peaks.  

April’s data, meanwhile, confirms the growing demand regarding CTV and OTT viewership that outstretches across all dayparts. As seen from the chart below, TV viewership has seen a giant climb across popular channels. 

Connected TV makes it easy for people to consume video content, how they like, and where they want, via Internet-connected gadgets. Thus, even after COVID-19 comes to an end, such TV consumption will only grow in comparison to a much less flexible linear experience. Currently, brands are massively redistributing their spending into CTV and OTT programmatic environments.

Those brands that embrace CTV and OTT programmatic platforms will be doubling their profits in the future, because only these technologies, so far, make TV ad campaign planning, attribution, and management as transparent as on the web. While planning an ad campaign on CTV pay attention to ad slots available at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of streamed content. These ads are called pre-rolls, mid-rolls, and post-rolls, and they last for 15 to 30 seconds. In the same way, you can make use of in-stream ads that appear in the video content.

In-stream ads

So, familiar YouTube in-stream ads are still leading video advertising industry trends and aren’t going anywhere in the near future. After entering the mobile medium, they gained a new definition. These ads are built directly into the video stream, or on-demand videos, and they last for five to 15 seconds after initiation. In-stream ads usually perform very well and result in completion rates that reach 70% on Facebook.

Today, any brand can create short mid-rolls that are optimized for a particular purpose: raising brand awareness, engaging users, generating installs, views, etc. Within the March-May period, in-stream units that smoothly transition in the live-stream grew in demand for at least eight to 13% according to customer data gathered by SmartyAds DSP. 

Personalized and shoppable videos

In 2020, about 71% of consumers prefer to receive personalized messages, which is why data-driven technologies are strategically important for every marketer. Platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have already learned how to manipulate detailed video usage statistics to personalize ads. Additionally, last year, YouTube launched the “TrueView for Reach” option for short commercials, which analyzes the search queries to predict the relevance of advertising.

Instagram, meanwhile, has introduced a shop button, which redirects a customer to the landing directly from the promotional video (shoppable video). Tiktok is currently testing the same feature. Over 49% of advertisers plan to extend their video strategies by investing in smart, shoppable ads in the future since after the COVID-19 period people will be more inclined to online purchasing.

If you religiously keep up with 2020 video advertising trends, employ shoppable and personalized experiences in your video advertising strategy and forget about wasting money on irrelevant impressions. In order to personalize your ads, use the YouTube TrueView tool for short commercials, or choose programmatic advertising personalization. Programmatic technology determines the relevance of an impression based on arrays of collected user data sets that will fit not only video personalization, but also display, native, push, CTV, and other types of campaigns.

Social media video trends

The competition among brands that are trying to win an audience’s attention is difficult like never before. 81% of businesses regularly incorporate video advertising into their promotion strategies (with a 63% increase year-after-year). The freshest trends show that 45% of people spend time on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) more often so the trend is not random. At the same time, it’s no longer enough to reach existing and potential customers. The main objective now is involvement in brand experience by presenting information to the audience in the most convenient format and resolution. In the era of mobile-first experience, vertical videos, short formats, and stories are the best way to do so.

1. Vertical video format

Video advertising and social media trends reflect the most drastic changes in the mobile experience. That’s why such platforms like Instagram prefer to lead the trend and base their strategies on vertical videos. Stats claim that 40% of the top 1,000 most popular Instagram videos are generated by brands. Vertical video trends imply that videos need to be optimized according to the most convenient way of watching – vertical or horizontal (depending on the situation).

• According to the stats, 94% of people usually hold their mobile phones in a vertical position.
• 82% of people find it annoying watching a video that’s not optimized for the orientation they choose.
• Ads that are watched vertically, on average, have 90% higher completion rates than those watched horizontally.
• 40% of people who film videos with their own phones and produce user-generated content still prefer to keep their phones vertically and 60% horizontally.

So what should be considered before you fit videos to user experience? First of all, remember that most vertical videos can be found on social media and entertainment. Keep your audience in mind when optimizing the watching experience, and remember that, ideally, they should be pretty short approximately 15 seconds.

2. Short, yet memorable 15-second-long videos

World video advertising trends tipped marketers off that people prefer brands that appreciate their time. Thus, video content should be crafted so that it easily grabs attention and lingers in the memory, despite the fact that the ad unit duration barely reaches 15 seconds. Sounds like mission impossible, but that’s what the market demands now – 73% of video advertising commercials never exceed the two-minute ‘boredom bar.’

Last year, brands started to actively transform their long videos into bumper ads — a six-second long video format that drives an enormous lift in memorability. For potential customers, six-second video views are perfect. From the customer’s standpoint, such ads help to stay away from excessive details, yet it is enough to resurface the brand in the memory when a purchase is being planned.

https://youtu.be/qeT9nw9dfi8

 Short videos can work wonders for both brand-awareness and performance ad campaigns alike. These ad units are much less annoying than other video types, but they’re also cost-effective tools that drive upper-funnel and bottom-funnel goals for companies with humble ad budgets. At the same time, your ads don’t always have to be 6-seconds long – create and test 6/15/30 second-long videos, include a call-to-action and recognizable brand elements to see how your audience reacts. The shortest version can be set prior to a 30-second ad that runs at the smaller section of the screen and so forth.

3. Stories

Ad formats, such as stories, have also been popular on social media (for a long time). If Instagram stories involuntarily pop into your mind, remember that now it is also used by Facebook and Snapchat, and even LinkedIn is currently testing the waters.

Clearly, video narratives are gaining momentum. Create a story about your brand and pack it into stories format: intrigue first, give clues, and finally, craft a catchy ending. Finally, encourage your audience to create custom content – now they have the opportunity to easily do so on their phones. Good stories and user-generated content will always leave a pleasant aftertaste and increase interest in your brand. During the pandemic, you can also ask your customers to participate in a challenge by using interactive stickers or solicit feedback and opinion surveys.

In closing

In 2020, using the latest trends in video advertising is a sure way to break through informational noise and win the hearts of your potential customers. User-generated content, vertical videos on social media, stories, and short creatives – video marketing is steadily growing user-centric.

Brands need to understand that this is a new challenge. Instead of force-feeding your audience with irritating and irrelevant commercials, choose the right format and resolution. Finally, give preference to data-driven personalization to amplify the effect of your message to let it reach the right audience at the right time.

Ivan Guzenko is CEO of SmartyAds. He can be found on Twitter @ivanguzenko.