30-second summary:

• According to various studies, videos help engage your page visitors as well as get them to remember your value proposition better and help them make purchase decisions
• When creating marketing videos to add to your landing page, keep them shorter than 2 minutes and position them prominently on the page
• Make sure to add convincing CTAs within your video to drive action
• While videos can boost on-page engagements, they can slow down your page (which may hurt its rankings), so make sure to lazy-load your videos and keep an eye on your Core Web Vitals
• Optimize your video page to increase its chances to rank in Google and generate traffic and product awareness

Video marketing has been on the rise for over a decade now. Consumers are getting more and more used to watching video content wherever they go, be it on Facebook or on a product page.

Which may make one think:

Isn’t video content expected by now?

Shouldn’t we produce a video every chance we get?

However, the real question is: Will videos be a conversion ignitor or a conversion killer?

Let’s find out!

First, some tempting stats…

There are plenty of case studies and reports claiming that using a video on a landing page is a great idea for boosting conversions:

• How-to videos is the most popular type of videos. According to Google itself, it is the most popular format of the video, even more popular than music or gaming.
• Viewers tend to remember 95% of a message after watching a video, and only 10% after reading it. Moreover, videos are capable of boosting conversions by 10-20% (Studies vary here, so numbers can even be much higher).
• Consumers tend to watch a video about a product rather than to read about it. Forbes Insights found that 83% of people prefer watching video to reading text.
• In an older Animoto survey, nearly all the respondents (96% of them) found videos helpful when making purchasing decisions online.

Now, some important technical stats…

1. The longer a video, the lower its engagement

You have about 10 seconds to grab the attention of viewers with a video marketing clip. According to Facebook, people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for at least ten more seconds, so there’s a pretty tight window here.

Once your video manages to grab a viewer’s attention, they will likely engage for two more minutes. After two minutes the engagement is sharply declining. Obviously, the more interesting a video is, the more people will watch but since we are talking about the engagement with a landing page, it is not about narrative videos that are able to hold viewers’ attention for 30 minutes or more.

That being said:

• Make sure your video’s first 10 seconds will grab attention
• Then make it no longer than two minutes to ensure your page visitors will perform a desired action on the page, instead of feeling bored or vice versa too engaged with your video.

2. In-video CTAs work!

Lots of landing page videos I’ve seen are missing in-video CTAs which is unfortunate because a video on a landing page is a very essential part of most buying journeys. In fact, a call-to-action within a video may drive as much as 380% more clicks to a landing page.

The whole purpose of a video on a landing page is to drive conversions, so create a video that leads into the sales funnel and gives detailed instructions on what to do next.

In-video CTAs can be in the form of verbal messages (i.e. the narrator encourages users to follow certain steps) and graphic end screens (an end screen with a call-to-action).

Don’t forget that your video may also be a traffic driver (i.e. people from Youtube clicking a link in the description to get to your landing page) as well as the discovery channel (people watch that video elsewhere and become aware of your product).

So make sure those CTAs can be followed directly without visiting your site, for example, where possible provide a phone number to call right away. On a similar note, make sure that desired action can be performed any time without direct involvement of your team. Set up smart AI-powered communication technology that can engage your leads during off-hours, like IVR or chatbots.

3. Video placement matters

Video placement is never something to take lightly. There’s no single tactic here, because no product or page is the same. A/B test different layouts and then experiment more.

From an SEO perspective, Google recommends using a video prominently on a page for it to index it and potentially generate video rich snippets.

Prominent videos can boost engagement by 50%. Additionally, repeating a video in the product image carousel and then lower on the page can improve performance of a page.

If your site runs on WordPress, there are a few themes that have video landing pages already coded up. I have found a few great ones on this list, so check it out when you have a moment.

4. Videos can slow down your page

Embedding any third-party content, including videos, will slow down the page, and lower your Core Web Vitals score. This can, in turn, hurt your page rankings because Core Web Vitals are official ranking signals. As an examples, here are scores before I embed a video:

And here’s the same page but with a video embedded:

Depending on your content management system, there may be different solutions to make this step easier. Here’s the workaround for WordPress (which will also help speed up your whole site, not just that specific landing page), and here’s a tutorial for Shopify. Wix claims to handle video lazy-loading for you. Check with your current CMS if you are using an alternative one.

5. Videos rank!

Wherever you are hosting your video (Youtube, Wistia, or else), don’t forget the basics: Use your keywords in the most prominent places (title, description, file name, etc.). Remember: Videos rank incredibly well and they can actually drive more people to your site and build awareness, not just help boost conversions.

Video page optimization is not much different from any content optimization process: You need relevant and useful content surrounding your video. You can also check out my Youtube optimization checklist to get your videos to rank higher:

So, should you start pumping out videos?

Videos can be very expensive and time consuming to produce. Which makes creating them difficult to justify if you’re a conversion focused organization.

What it really comes down to is your list of conversion hypotheses. Every growth team and conversion optimization team should have a running list of hypotheses to test. Each hypothesis should be ranked (at the very least) by:

• Test ease (or difficulty).
• Test cost. Consider developer-hours, video production costs, designer costs.
• Potential reward. How much do you expect this particular hypothesis to move the needle and why?

By creating a list that ranks your hypotheses, you can make better judgment calls as to what tests to run immediately and what tests you should put on the back burner.

You may have significant data (qualitative and/or quantitative) that suggests creating videos will produce a large return on investment. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid – get your director’s hat on and start pumping out video!

Side note: The system you create for your hypothesis list will most likely require continual improvement and tweaking to get it right. The important thing is to start one now if you haven’t. As you run tests, you’ll figure out what other metrics or ranking factors help you make better decisions for choosing what tests to run. Just be sure to iteratively improve your system according to your new findings.

Do you feel up to it?

Using videos to increase conversions is yet another risk vs. reward calculation. The upside can be huge, so don’t shy away from this conversion boosting technique.

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Five video optimization tips to help boost your landing page conversions appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

But can videos also enhance your SEO strategy? 

Well, we don’t know everything about Google’s ranking signals, so we cannot be sure if there’s a direct factor there. Whether Google “likes” pages with videos on them more than pages without videos remains a secret.

But there are more indirect SEO benefits that are contributing here:

1. SERP real estate

Videos are taking a lot of real estate within Google’s search result pages, both on mobile and desktop. Google uses so-called “video carousels” to display related videos for many search queries.

In fact, on a mobile device, a video carousel takes the whole screen, and for many search queries it takes quite some time to scroll past:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

According to Mozcast, video carousels appear for the third of search queries. That’s a lot of SEO opportunities to dominate your target SERPs!

If you brand your video well and optimize your video Youtube page, one of these videos in a carousel will remind your target customer of your brand and increase your chances of conversion.

2. Rich snippets

A video-rich snippet is an enhanced search snippet that displays a video thumbnail next to your link. It is a good way to make your search snippet stand out.

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Video rich snippets are also surprisingly easy to get.

Unlike video carousels, video rich snippets send traffic to your site, versus the YouTube video page. To make this easier:

The best-case scenario is when you manage to grab both: A rich video snippet on page one of organic results and your video inside the video carousel on the same page:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

This will help you generate more brand awareness through a video thumbnail and generate both video views and clicks.

To increase your odds of getting a video rich snippet, you need to:

• Embed a video on your page. This doesn’t really have to be your video but mind that Google will display the channel name below your snippet om desktop, so it makes sense to use your brand’s channel
• Use video schema. Here’s a handy video schema generator for you to do that. There are also quite a few plugins that make this step easier.

Image source: Screenshot by the author

For desktop video rich snippets, mind that they also pull the date when you uploaded the video, so make sure your video is fresh to avoid your snippet looking outdated.

When embedding a video on your page, don’t forget to double-check your page load time. Surprisingly, Youtube videos do negatively impact page performance when you embed them, even though Youtube belongs to Google (so publishers usually assume it is optimized for Google by default).

To demonstrate the impact, here’s my page score without a YouTube video embedded on it:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

And here’s the same page with a Youtube video added:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

You can cope with this by using the trick described here which worked wonders in my case above. 

One of the unexpected benefits of using that method was the related videos Youtube shows at the end of each video when you embed it. Using the steps in that tutorial, I found those related videos disappear and my own video showing up instead.

Finally, don’t forget to use Google’s Search Console to find out how your video rich snippets are behaving.

In your “Performance” section, create a new filter “Search Appearance: Videos” to see which queries are triggering rich snippets for your site and monitor your CTR for those queries.

3. On-page engagement

There’s no official confirmation that Google uses on-page engagement as a direct ranking signal. In fact, I believe they denied using such a signal.

And yet, getting people to take a pause and do something on a page has a lot of marketing benefits that are normally part of an SEO services strategy. These include:

• Higher chances of a conversion
• Lower chances of them bouncing or returning to search results (which, again, may or may not be a direct ranking signal)

Videos make great on-page engagement boosters, so if you feel like your page is failing to trigger some sort of action, try embedding a video on it. Again, mind your core web vitals when you do.

4. Referral traffic

Just like on-page engagements, referral traffic has never been confirmed to be a direct SEO signal. We know that Google likes when a link is clicked but we don’t know whether a page with 0 referral traffic from external sources  has lower authority in Google’s eyes than a page with high-quality referral traffic.

And yet, referral traffic increases a page’s chances to get backlinks and shares. And well-converting traffic is always good, whether it is coming from organic search or another site.

Youtube doesn’t make it easy to build referral traffic from your videos. You can have your clickable link in the video description which is rarely read or even seen (especially on mobile).

You can also link build direct traffic using Youtube by giving your domain name in the video intro and outro. Here’s how to create an engaging Youtube outro.

But then again, one should really find your video relevant and/or awesome to type your domain name in the address bar after seeing it in the outro.

That being said, Youtube does send traffic to a site but only if you are doing a great job creating outstanding videos and then using verbal CTAs inside the video to encourage clicks from the video description or direct type-ins.

A great thing about Youtube traffic is that, while it is hard to get, it’s highly relevant, so you will see highly engaged clicks that become your subscribers and customers:

Image source: Screenshot by the author

Conclusion

Using videos is a solid way to help your SEO strategy. While there may be no confirmed direct signals involved here, there are a few indirect SEO benefits of investing into video creation and marketing.

The post How do videos help your SEO strategy? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Videos engage and convert, and they also rank incredibly well in organic search, making them the perfect medium for converting searchers into buyers
• Videos can help guide customers to your brand at every stage of the buyer journey
• Here’s how to create video content that caters to each stage specifically

The process of acquiring a customer begins with your first contact. There are several stages a consumer goes through before becoming a customer and then a loyal customer. A buyer’s journey starts with identifying or expressing a need. This need then has to be fulfilled in some way or the other. 

With over eight billion searches per year, real buyer journeys are complicated and may take weeks or months. However, to simplify things, here is a snapshot of the key stages a person goes through to become your customer. Since nearly 68 percent of online experiences begin with a search engine all these stages can very well happen in Google itself:

• Awareness: when a consumer finds out that you have a solution to a problem, they wish to be solved. In many (but not all) cases, this searching journey starts with a “how to” query. 
• Consideration: when a consumer adds you to the list of prospective solution providers
• Decision: when a consumer believes you have the best solution and becomes a paying customer.

Businesses need to help consumers make the right decision by providing information, assistance and instilling trust in your brand through the process.

With video content showing up all over search results, it makes sense to use videos for all these three stages in the consumer’s journey. The best thing about videos is that they rank incredibly well, especially if you host them on YouTube and practice video optimization.

The two distinct sections where video can assist your potential customers at each stage of a buying journey are:

• Featured snippets: When Google includes a video in a featured snippet, that’s a strong signal that people are searching for a video tutorial to solve their problem. If that’s your target search query, creating a video is a must, especially when optimizing for the “awareness” stage in the funnel.
• Video carousels: Google includes video carousels when a video intent is implied. It is not at all difficult to rank your video there, especially when it comes to specific (low-search-volume) queries, like brand-driven queries.

Here’s an example of both of these sections ranking on the very top of the search result page, pushing organic results way below the above-the-fold part of the screen. Notice a very-well branded video by Lowes being featured for a very relevant – albeit longtail – query. I bet this generates quite a few leads for them. There’s also another brand – The Home Depot – ranking its video in the carousel below. Looks like, both of these brands are doing their homework well:

There are many different kinds of video content that can be used at each specific stage.  These videos help to encourage the consumer to continue their journey with you rather than with your competitor.

Awareness

As the name suggests, this video optimization strategy ensures that your target customers become aware of your brand.

The types of video marketing content that work best at this stage of the funnel include:

• How-to videos
• Q&A videos (especially based on People Also Ask boxes)

Make sure your videos are well-branded to build recognizability: Use your logo and color palette on your video thumbnail, as it is going to show up in search results.

Once the awareness has been created, it is time to consolidate all that effort and transition your consumer to the next stage of consideration.

Consideration

You can enhance your customer experience at this stage through videos that position your product in a way you want it to be positioned. A good reason to use videos at this stage is that they put your product in a real-life context, that is, they show exactly how other people are using your product.

The most effective videos for this stage are:

• Explainer videos to introduce your consumer to the product and describe what you offer in detail. The explainer videos present the problem, discuss how your company can prove the solution and highlight the features of the product and its benefits to the consumer. Think of these videos as lead magnets: You want them to provide value, not just talk about your product. 
• Product demo videos to explain how a product or service works in detail. They highlight all the advantages of using the product in an easy to understand format. They often use step by step instructions to show how to use the product and may include some innovative ideas about where to use it. A good script and excellent presentation make it a standout product demo videos of all time. It is a good idea to create an on-site video gallery on your site to share these demos with your site visitors. Videos do slow down your pages, so mind your page load time when using embedded content.
• Storytelling videos to show a lighter side of your business, humanize it to make it connect with the consumer. These videos tell a story about your business, its hopes, aspirations, and values. Usually, company employees and executives speak about the company, their experiences with it and their work. They are designed to create an emotive response that will strengthen the consumers’ relationship with your company.

As all of these videos are supposed to be ranking in Google, make sure to match them to the actual search queries that have higher commercial intent.

Decision

The third stage of the consumer’s journey is convincing the interested consumer that your product or service offers the best solution to their problem. 

This is the stage where the consumer is already committed to buy and needs a gentle nudge in the right direction. This is the time when you need to emphasize on trust-building so the consumer trusts your brand and buys your product. The most effective videos at this stage are peer testimonials and reviews.

• Video testimonials: These are the best types of videos for trust and confidence-building in your potential customers and a must for the final stage of customer acquisition which is lead conversion. 
• Customer-driven storytelling videos showing how your customers use the product in a more creative context.

Your target search queries for these types of videos include:

• Your product and your brand name: If you have an established brand (or if you are working towards that), your brand name is being searched in Google, and these videos will ensure you’ll have yet another asset you control in brand-driven SERPs. If you are doing a good job tracking your brand in organic search, you already know your important brand-driven search queries.
• Competitor-driven search queries: These are search queries exploring your competitors’ alternatives and comparing two competitors.

These videos should also be reused in two important ways:

• Embed them on your key landing pages: Video content is a well-known way to boost conversions but in this case it is a good way to help your customers feel at home as they will see the same video on the page after clicking the link on YouTube. It is also a good idea to curate these videos on your dedicated customer reviews page.
• Use these videos for your remarketing campaigns. You can use retargeting on YouTube to serve them to people who already went through stage #2 in the buying journey but haven’t converted yet.

Conclusion

Using videos in your organic search strategy to engage customers at each major stage of their buying journey is one of the best examples of how SEO and sales can help each other. Include videos in both SEO and CRO strategies and you will likely see much better results on both fronts.

Ann Smarty is the Founder of Viral Content Bee, Brand and Community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas. She can be found on Twitter @seosmarty.

Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.

Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The post Using videos to optimize engagement in search-driven buyer journeys appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• Google surprised marketers with a few changes in 2020 – an updated search query report, new ad extensions, and new audience targeting, to name a few — which forced advertisers to adjust their SEM strategies and tactics in order to maintain or increase their ROI.
• B2B advertisers are testing and investing in different campaign types besides the traditional search and display campaigns, and are seeing good performance with Discovery Campaigns.
• In the wake of the changes Google made to the search query report in September, Dynamic Search Ads can complement existing search campaigns and improve CTR, CPC, and ROAS.
• Expect to see higher adoption of auction-time bidding, dynamic extensions, and dynamic search ads.

2020 was a tough year for many industries, but for the B2B industry, demand remained strong. Paid search budgets increased in many cases, as B2B companies invested more in digital marketing. The end of Q1 hurt performance, but things started to normalize in Q2, and we observed the usual seasonality the rest of the year.

In addition to the pandemic, Google also surprised us with a few changes – an updated search query report, new ad extensions, and new audience targeting, to name a few. All such changes forced advertisers to adjust their SEM strategies and tactics in order to maintain or increase their ROI.

After an eventful 2020, here are 6 PPC trends B2B advertisers should watch in 2021:

1. SEM campaigns diversify 

Given the high competition in the B2B space, advertisers need to differentiate themselves in order to get their target audience’s attention and drive demand. B2B advertisers are testing and investing in different campaign types besides the traditional search and display campaigns. B2B advertisers are seeing a good performance with Discovery Campaigns – with CTR higher than display, and CPL more efficient than search – so we expect them to increase their investment in this campaign type in 2021.

Quick tip

When launching Discovery Campaigns, be patient. Let them run for a couple of weeks without making changes as the bidding algorithm is learning during that period and you will see fluctuations in all metrics. After that, you can prioritize the audiences that are performing well. Performance improves consistently after 4-5 weeks of launch.

2. Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) gain in popularity

DSA campaigns will become even more popular with B2B advertisers after the changes Google made to the search query report in September 2020. Now that the report includes only terms that a significant number of users searched for, and with advertisers losing visibility into low-volume keywords that drive traffic and can generate leads, DSA campaigns offer an efficient way to find new keywords. Their search query reports can help reveal gaps in keyword coverage. DSA can complement your existing search campaigns and improve CTR, CPC, and ROAS.

Quick tip

For lead generation accounts that have strict lead and CPL goals, create separate campaigns for DSA so you have more control over the budget. Start by targeting your SEM landing pages so you can have some control over potential queries and headlines.

3. PPC managers embrace automation

More B2B advertisers are using automation tools and machine learning in order to improve performance, increase efficiency, and save time. Some of our favorite automated features – automated bidding strategies, responsive search ads, and the optimize ad rotation in Google Ads – will continue to gain popularity in 2021. We should also expect to see higher adoption of auction-time bidding, dynamic extensions, and dynamic search ads as B2B advertisers seek to optimize and scale their paid search campaigns.

Quick tip

When evaluating automated bidding strategies for lead generation accounts, don’t worry about higher CPCs as you will likely be paying more for higher quality clicks. If you are seeing a high volume of leads at a low CPL, you are going in the right direction. And always set your target CPA based on the last 30 days’ average, even if it is higher than your goal. Otherwise, you will see a decrease in lead volume.

4. YouTube ad investment increases

Online video ads have become more important for B2B marketers during COVID-19 times. B2B buyers are using online video ads more often to inform purchase decisions: 64% of B2B buyers have increased their use of online video and 51% have increased their use of search, according to eMarketer.  We expect B2B advertisers to increase their YouTube investment in 2021 and to launch video campaigns both to generate brand awareness and to generate leads. In addition, B2B advertisers will invest more in creating video content — and YouTubes’ new betas will make that content easier to create.

Quick tip

For a full-funnel video strategy, prioritize videos that are 6-, 15- and 30-seconds long as short videos engage users the most. Also, avoid salesy videos and try to create videos that show the personality of your brand so you can connect with your audience.

5. Mobile investment drops

Lower mobility driven by COVID-19 has decreased the number of mobile buyers while increasing time in front of computers, leading to strong desktop growth. During the pandemic, paid search desktop traffic is up 60%, while mobile traffic has dropped 7% compared to the pre-COVID period. Moreover, the conversion rate for desktop has increased by 4% while the conversion rate for mobile decreased by almost 19%. 

Quick tip

Leverage automated bidding strategies to save time and prioritize the devices that are performing best. And don’t forget to look at the assisted conversions report when evaluating mobile performance if you are still using last-click attribution.

6. Paid search messaging becomes increasingly customer-centric

B2B buyers are looking for new solutions as they accelerate purchases, and are expecting more from their solution providers according to the 2020 B2B Buyer Behavior Study. So, we’ll see more ads from B2B companies highlighting features, functionality, customer support services, product training, and implementation support in order to attract and engage B2B buyers. For successful SEM campaigns, promoting relevant content that speaks to industry needs will be a must.

Quick tip

If you have lead generation campaigns and prefer to drive traffic to a landing page with a form, use site links and callouts to highlight the additional services or training you have available for your customers.

With new campaign types and messaging to test, and more automation features and tools at hand, 2021 promises to be fun for B2B advertisers.

Lucia Rodas-Estrada is Senior Search Director at Merkle | DWA.

The post B2B paid search forecast: What to expect in 2021 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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. 

The post Top six reasons you should caption your social media video content appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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.

The post Google’s featured snippets: How to get your YouTube video featured in Google appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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.

The post Five YouTube promotion mistakes that even experienced professionals make appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• The majority of TikTok users are under the age of 29. So, TikTok is the perfect place if you want to reach Millenials and Gen Zers.
• TikTok allows users to create short videos with filters, voiceovers, soundtracks, and other additional features.
• If you want to promote your business, there are multiple paid advertising options. You can run branded hashtag challenges, brand takeovers, and infeed content ads.
• Influencers are a big deal on TikTok. By partnering with influencers, you can expand your reach and grow your TikTok audience.
• Countries across the world are raising concerns over TikTok’s data and security policies. Therefore, before you start creating a marketing strategy for TikTok, it’s worth checking the local regulations.
• Find out how you can take advantage of TikTok for business.

Early adopters of Instagram demonstrated that if you can find the right strategy to leverage the platform during its initial days, you can easily become the top influencer and monetize your success. So, if you’re looking to stay ahead of the competition, the game of signing up for new social media platforms is worth the candle. Are you thinking of TikTok for business?

If you haven’t already, now is the best time to create a TikTok account for your business. Being the fastest growing social media of the decade, TikTok has around 800 million active monthly users globally. This makes TikTok the seventh most popular social media platform in the world. Given the numbers, it should not come as a surprise that so many businesses are moving their marketing efforts to TikTok. 

So, where do you start your business’ journey on TikTok? This article is a great start! We’ve gathered all the important aspects your business should know about this trendy platform. 

Audience

The first important thing you should know about Tiktok is that it has a very specific audience. The platform is extremely popular among Gen Zers. In fact, 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. When it comes to gender demographics, 55.4% of TikTok users are male compared to 44.4% of female users. When asked why they like TikTok, platform users say they enjoy watching someone else’s videos, liking content, and following other users. 

Source: Global Web Index 

So, TikTok is a perfect platform for targeting Gen Zers. Keep in mind that Gen Z is a tech-savvy audience that’s unlike other generations. They are not interested in hard sales and are immune to typical marketing campaigns. When marketing to Gen Zers, it’s important to focus on the experiences rather than the benefits of the product. That’s why if you’re primarily targeting Gen Z, your business can’t afford to ignore TikTok.  

Content

Source: TikTok for business 

Another important thing you should consider about TikTok is its unique content format. Often compared to Vine, TikTok is a short-form video platform. It’s not the place for your traditional perfectly polished advertisement campaign. As stated on the official website, TikTok is made for real people to create real videos. 

Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok is a creative and entertainment space rather than a social space for communication. So, a smart way for brands to maximize their influence on TikTok is to understand the content popular within the platform and have their creative teams brainstorm content ideas. 

So, what are the most popular content types on TikTok? Studies show that entertainment, dance, prank, and fitness videos are the most popular within the platform. DIY videos, skincare reviews, makeup tutorials, and fashion videos are beloved by TikTok users as well.  

Source: Statista 

Advertisement options

There are multiple ways you can use TikTok to promote your business. Firstly, you should create a channel to share relevant videos. Yet, if you want to maximize your reach, it’s helpful to use in-app advertising. Let’s take a look at three popular ad types, so you can better understand how to market on TikTok. 

1. Infeed content ads 

Similarly to Snapchat and Instagram story ads, infeed content ads are short videos displayed in the user’s feed in between other content. Infeed ads take the full screen, but users have an option to skip them. So, if you choose to create native ads, they must be engaging enough to grab users’ attention within the first two seconds of the video. 

Here’s an example of an infeed ad on TikTok. 

GIF Source

2. Branded hashtag challenges

Launching a branded hashtag challenge is another way to promote your business on TikTok. In fact, it’s one of the most popular ways to advertise products and business on the platform.

So, what exactly is a branded hashtag challenge? A hashtag challenge is a unique TikTok’s content format where brands ask users to post a certain task using a specific hashtag. When TikTok users see your hashtag challenge, they will be redirected to the main challenge page which includes instructions on how they can participate along with other important details. The most popular branded hashtag challenges make their way to TikTok’s trending page where millions of users can see them. 

Here’s an example of a branded hashtag challenge on TikTok. 

GIF Source

3. Brand takeovers 

A brand takeover is a full-screen ad that appears on users’ devices when they open TikTok for the first time a day. Brand takeovers typically run for three to five seconds and are either videos or images. One great thing about brand takeovers is that you can link them to your TikTok profile, website, or a hashtag challenge page. TikTok allows only one brand to take over a category each day, meaning that your ad will play on a single day only. 

Here’s an example of a brand takeover. 

GIF Source

4. Influencers

Partnering with influencers is another way to promote your business on the platform. Influencers are a big deal on TikTok and businesses are increasingly putting the pedal to the metal and invest in TikTok marketing campaigns. 

If you want to use influencers to promote your business on TikTok, consider starting with micro-influencers. Unlike macro-influencer, micro-influencers have a smaller reach in the range of 1,000-10,000 followers. Even though they have a smaller audience, micro-influencers usually have higher engagement and are, therefore, more likely to help you with conversions.

Potential challenges

Even though TikTok gained enormous popularity over the last few years, governments have raised security concerns about the app. India banned TikTok over security concerns despite the 200 million users in the country. 

The talks around the TikTok ban have escalated fast into reality as countries continue to investigate the potential security threat and the platform’s data and security policies. In the meantime, Tiktok users found a way around the ban using NordVPN and other virtual private networks. Even though the destiny of TikTok in the United States is still up in the air, companies nonetheless continue marketing within the platform. 

The bottom line

TikTok keeps millions of users glued to their screens, and offers unique opportunities for brands to promote their products and go viral by using TikTok for business. By understanding these aspects, you can create relevant marketing content that will resonate with your audience on the platform. Hopefully, now you have a better idea about the addictive scrolling app that Gen Zers are so obsessed with.

The post What you must know about TikTok for business appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

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.

The post How to get your YouTube videos appear in Google’s video carousel appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

30-second summary:

• TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular, addictive social networks.
• President Trump issued an executive order threatening to ban the platform in the US, and TikTok filed a lawsuit in response. If it can continue to operate, it’s slated to become one of the most powerful marketing tools for brands.
• Beyond creative users and an open, democratized essence, TikTok is designed for the user.
• CEO and founder of Heartbeat, Brian Freeman, dissects the TikTok algorithm and highlights three key features that make it one of the biggest consumer engagement platforms on earth.

TikTok is quickly dominating social media. In less than 18 months, the app has seen its adult user base in the US multiply 5.5 times. Its revenue has grown more than 300%, and it boasts nearly 60 million active monthly users in the US. In recent months, as people have quarantined at home because of the coronavirus pandemic, TikTok’s average daily traffic increased by more than 15%. What’s the secret sauce to this global craze, you may think? That’s where the TikTok algorithm comes into light.

TikTok has its best quarter ever pic.twitter.com/zLhasaDhgq

— Adam Blacker (@AdamBlacker25) January 3, 2020

With the latest news on TikTok about President Trump issuing an executive order threatening to ban the app from operating in the US, added to the summer heat. In response, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the US government on the grounds that the ban prevents due process for the company. While we’ll have to watch how the legal proceedings pan out, if TikTok is allowed to keep operating, it is slated to become one of the most powerful marketing tools for American brands.

TikTok’s power goes beyond its democratized, creative essence. While the app’s design and ability to foster a creative community caused it to surge onto the social media scene, it’s exploding because of the way it gathers and harnesses data to enhance the user experience. Personalized content has become even more important as brands compete for the attention of people spending significantly more time online while navigating stay-at-home orders.

A big part of this is influencer marketing, which is also known as “creator” marketing on TikTok. Audiences connect with influencers because they provide a sense of authenticity — and during stay-at-home orders, normalcy. Seeing someone advocate for a brand or products that they’re using is an incredibly personal form of marketing. People are hypersensitive to the messages brands are putting out during this pandemic, which means this personal touch matters more than ever.

The best, most masterful platform to let brands and influencers do this? TikTok. Let’s dissect the TikTok algorithm to point three key features that set it apart:

The TikTok algorithm offers a streamlined feed

Within the app, the main feed is a stream of content curated for individual users each day. It’s quite literally called the “For You” page, and it’s where 99% of people spend their time on TikTok. As a marketer, this gives you a ton of real estate to showcase relevant content and generate high engagement.

The TikTok algorithm pushes engaging content to the top of its feed, which gives those trending videos more exposure, more frequently. And views, shares, comments, and likes, relative to how often a video has been seen, determine distribution on TikTok — not the number of followers. Momentum builds quickly on this platform and can keep going for multiple days.

2. It leverages what you love (and what you don’t)

TikTok has an intuitive way of assessing user preferences. When a user watches a video through to the end, it triggers TikTok to pull similar content into that user’s feed to keep them coming back for more. Of course, this can backfire (like when I watched a pimple-popping video all the way through), but users can easily tell the app they don’t want to see more of a particular type of content.

The result? Creative matching leads to relevance and can help your brand’s and influencers’ posts go viral. While Instagram influencers focus on getting impressions and increasing engagement, and Twitter posts go viral largely when key distributors such as Ellen DeGeneres or Jimmy Kimmel share them, TikTok doesn’t demand that users or influencers have a global platform. If your brand influencers truly create content relevant to and aligned with your target, it’s likely going to be far more visible on TikTok than on any other social network.

3. The team hand-picks content

Everything you see in TikTok isn’t picked by robots. The user experience also relies on a creative team that combs through content and decides what to push to the top every day.

Why does this matter to you as a marketer? Never before have you had this opportunity to get a fantastic distribution because you create fantastic content. It’s not like Instagram, where you have to buy your way in with brute force. It is organic, authentic power through content, which is precisely what all brands and influencers should want.

These features are clearly working for TikTok. ByteDance’s ad revenue for the first half of 2019 reached seven billion USD, which far surpassed Twitter’s $1.4 billion. The platform has reached critical mass — now it’s just a question of how businesses will embrace yet another new social platform. There will be billion-dollar brands built on TikTok and market share lost by companies that don’t act quickly. The race is on.

Brian Freeman is the CEO and founder of Heartbeat, the first platform for ambassador-powered marketing at scale. Driven by empowering real women, Heartbeat has more than 140,000 on-demand female brand ambassadors for launching turnkey ambassador solutions and has done campaigns with Amazon, Laura Mercier, Saks Fifth Avenue, Warner Bros., Netflix, and other big brands.

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