This is the second half of a two-part series on using YouTube to build your brand and business. Here we review how to optimize your video content and then how to report on and measure your video content performance. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading part one.

Optimizing Your Video Content

Assuming you’ve read the first part of this series, you now know how YouTube-based content boosts your search engine positioning and domain authority, plus the factors in which YouTube videos are ranked. We have identified the four main categories and how they determine video rankings. The next step is leveraging these categories so your videos are positioned as optimally as possible. Here’s what to know:

1. Video Content

The factors in this category that determine ranking include file name, video title, description keywords, tags, and so on. What can you do to make sure these factors are working best for you? The first step is choosing a descriptive file name for your video. Although the file name doesn’t appear to viewers, including keywords in it can be read by YouTube search crawlers and is one of the signals matched to a user’s video search query, so a descriptive file name can help position your video higher in search results. After that, focus on the video title. Make sure that it is optimized for the best keywords and is relevant to your audience. This philosophy also applies to picking tags and writing video descriptions. For the tags, include any keywords that aren’t in the description but are also relevant to a user’s search query. For descriptions, a longer description with important details helps maintain relevance in searches. Need a refresher on how to start the keyword research process? We have you covered with our blog on how to conduct keyword research. What’s often underutilized is including closed captioning and video transcription. By including closed captions and a manually-written transcription, you’re casting your net for people searching not just for keywords, but for the text content within your video. Think about the times you’ve searched for something specific but nothing helpful came up, even though you knew there were videos that covered what you needed. This is because most videos don’t include closed captioning or have transcriptions. Even though that one content creator had exactly what you needed, it was buried under a glut of irrelevant content. There are still videos to this day that I (and thousands of others) stumbled upon a decade ago and haven’t been able to find since, all because the one quote we remember isn’t searchable. Lastly, remember the length of a video matters. About five to 10 minutes long is ideal — any longer and viewers typically don’t have the attention span, much shorter and it will often be thrown aside with the assumption that it’s not comprehensive. Longer videos also give you more opportunities to write long descriptions, more closed captions, and longer video transcriptions – more content means more opportunities to include relevant keywords in your content.

2. Channel

Optimizing your channel is just like optimizing a LinkedIn page, Twitter account, or website. Think about it from a visitor’s perspective. If they came across your channel, would they see a homepage for your video content that is put-together and professional? Or would they see a half-filled channel that lacks competence. Remember: Just like in real life, looking good creates a perception of authority and standing, legitimizing your voice, content, and brand. This means adding channel tags, just like you would with videos and, where applicable, grouping your videos into playlists to make it easy for viewers to find what they want. It also means including primary keywords about your channel in your channel’s title and description and making sure you maintain your “About Us” section. As stated above, a well-written description is important, and the title and description frame your content. These will either help or harm your video’s viewership and rarely anything in between. While optimized titles and well-written descriptive content can propel you forward, the opposite muddles your brand and costs you viewers. The good news is that you don’t have to be Jane Austen to write an effective, professional description. Take note of other professional-looking channels and the written media they include on their page and learn from that. Like with so many things, half the battle is paying attention. If, however, writing is not your forte, hire a professional SEO firm to do it for you! Remember, good content is wasted if you can’t present it right. It doesn’t matter how great your videos are — if the written media framing them looks sloppy, you’re losing qualified brand traffic.

3. User Actions

Unlike with your channel and video factors, there’s less you can do relating to user actions. That doesn’t mean you can’t encourage users to engage in a way that improves your rankings. The most obvious way of encouraging a viewer to engage with you is by incorporating a strong call to action. Ever heard “Please like and subscribe!” at the end of a video? While that phrase is often parodied (not to mention associated with clickbait-y content), the digital marketing tactic still stands. Engaging, via comments, likes, shares, subscribing, etc. increases your ranking in searches. Although you can’t control how or how often people interact with your content, you can increase engagement by responding frequently with comments. If you prompt viewers to interact, when done correctly, you can create a stronger sense of community around your videos which will bring back return viewers.

4. Recommendations

The last things you can do to optimize your content is to make sure you’re in a position to be recommended — whether manually or via YouTube’s algorithms — to the largest audience possible. This means, first and foremost, making engaging videos that viewers naturally want to share with others. These videos can be shareable either because of their entertainment value or because they provide helpful or important information. If you’re a business and your content is related to your industry, the latter is a better path to take. As always, the best thing you can do is simply to create the best content. While this principle bleeds somewhat into the “Video Content” section above, quality, helpful content is more likely to be shared, viewed, and recommended.

Reporting and Measurement

After all that work optimizing your videos, channel, and creating engaging content, you need to be able to track and report on the progress of your efforts. YouTube videos that bring in views are only half-useful if you don’t know how to interpret their metrics. There are a handful of programs that measure meaningful metrics from your videos. The first is YouTube Analytics, which is complimentary for anyone with a YouTube account. With YouTube Analytics, you can see basic metrics like video views, channel views, number of subscribers, and the amount of time people spend on your videos. If you want to get more in depth, it can also show your traffic sources, the demographics of the audience, audience retention, likes, dislikes, and data related to videos being shared externally. Not bad. There are also several Chrome extensions for analytics for YouTube. There are a few options available, they provide real time analytics data without having to log in to a platform, giving easy access to the metrics that matter most. Beyond YouTube specific analytics, you can use your website’s CMS or Google Analytics, to measure video performance, allowing you to see how many visitors are coming to your site as referral traffic from YouTube. Analyzing video performance will allow you to understand your videos effectiveness and improve your YouTube strategy. If producing the best content is the most important factor to success, then knowing how to optimize your content and utilize analytics are factors 2a and 2b. YouTube allows you to expand and engage with your audience while bringing more traffic to your site. The next step is simple, start creating.