Top 10 Tips to Capture More Video Views
Your branded product or service can appear in a recommended video “up next” on YouTube! Follow our top 10 tips to help you construct your content and metadata to take advantage of this influential social media phenomenon. Attract more people to your brand and maybe even strike gold with a popular, trending, or viral video.
A few years ago, after posting a video about a new cloud technology, my team and I were surprised by the videos that YouTube suggested next in the related video list. Thinking these were personalized for one user, we each tried simulating the customer experience. Several of us cleared our browser history but it happened again. YouTube (a product from Google, long-known for sometimes mysterious search and user experience algorithms) was again suggesting that videos on the economy and fast food were somehow appropriate related videos to follow our new hybrid cloud platform video.
We were not logged in, and reasoned that had we been, our individual profiles would have determined what videos were up next in the flow. However, even after we logged in, we still felt as though we could have named dozens of videos that would certainly have made better choices.
We vowed to take a deeper dive into the mysterious world of video search engine optimization (SEO). Since then, we compiled our top 10 tips to help you construct your content to take advantage of this influential social media phenomenon, attract more views to your brand, and even strike gold with a popular, trending, or viral video.
#1: Understand How YouTube ACTUALLY Works
Every second, someone uploads on average one hour of video to YouTube where about 4.5 billion videos are viewed each day.
At the heart of the YouTube video factory, approaching its 15th anniversary, are relatively simple concepts. A viewer, without logging in, begins a browser session and after watching one video and then another, builds a history with enough descriptive tags to categorize that history, profile the viewer, and point to what that viewer might want to see next.
It gets significantly more complicated after the viewer signs in, becoming a registered user. The following user metrics and settings now enter the picture:
- Long-term user viewing history
- Channel subscriptions
- User watch time
- User behaviors such as allowing auto-play or skipping longer running ads
- User profile
While a viewer has a short-term session history, a signed in user has established a long-term viewing history, preferences that shape what other content is relevant, and a record of content worthy of likes, dislikes, comments, and shares.
Whether they are watching as viewers or watching as signed-in users, you want your video to appear to them next.
#2: Accept What You Can’t Change
Understand that with videos, as is the case with key search terms for websites, SEO is not a pure science. You can optimize and make technical adjustments for weeks and still not have direct control over where your content appears. However, consider the opposite end of the spectrum. If marketing teams could manipulate and control the entire viewing experience for all users, would viewing videos be the carefree, fun, edutainment experience it is today?
Accept the fact that YouTube, and other video sites, can and should, recommend other content to its users, including what is trending or even competing with your brand, or completely unrelated to your brand, all based on the unique preferences of each user.
When you review and test your video, if you repeatedly see content that is offensive or inappropriate in the Up Next top spot following your video, contact the video platform to complain. However, just because the next video is about the economy, fast food, or even a competing viewpoint, does not mean it is inappropriate. Unless the user only wants to see content from your channel exclusively, they are entitled and even expecting to see more of what is out there, appropriate to their preferences.
#3: Optimize Your Video Titles
Take the time to assign a smart title to each video. You are not just writing a descriptive title. You are writing a line of code rich with meaning. You can capture key search terms, brand, and serialize a set of videos all in one title.
For example, the following fictitious video titles will help a user find and continue watching your related video series:
- CDI Security Episode 1: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
- CDI Security Episode 2: Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
- CDI Security Episode 3: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
In addition to appealing to your market, your titles serve as metadata for the algorithm. You still cannot bank on episode 2 appearing immediately after episode 1, but you stand a greater chance; and if not up next, users are given a clue that will invite them to continue viewing the series.
A proper title gives your content a relevance score used to rank its affinity to other videos. This means a user could search on a key term, and if your video was not immediately seen, after they watched another video, your video would be suggested next.
#4: Optimize Your Metadata
The same SEO concepts for traditional web traffic apply for videos including 70 to 100-character titles, the first 160 characters after the title as a metadata description, and other tags. You can assign 300 to 500 characters for a video description. The maximum is 5,000 characters but ask yourself if it is worth authoring that many characters and if your audience will read it.
Try to write up to ten descriptive sentences with 12 to 32 words in each (too few can sound unprofessional and too many make your content difficult to auto-translate into other languages for international audiences; remember 80% of all video views take place outside the United States). Be truthful, informative, and slightly edgy if you want to invite comments or opinions.
Do not overuse terms or keywords. If they do not appear in your content at realistic density rates, the algorithms can reject your content as artificial.
You can also use embedded annotations during the video playback, including links to other content. We also recommend including your own transcript or closed captioning because it not only serves your ADA Section 508 obligations for accessibility, but also improves your SEO ranking.
As a final suggestion, remind viewers about your brand in the channel description.
#5: Create Popular Content That Delivers Value
- Your content should be appropriate for your audience and appeal to their interests. To get them to watch and keep coming back, apply one or more of the following techniques:
- Create content in a uniform series to tie related products or services together.
- Mix up content periodically to demonstrate new and emerging products.
- Mix video durations (more views result from shorter videos, but more qualified lead generation accompanies longer videos).
- Mix up to three color palettes periodically, even for the brand, to remain fresh.
- Mix production methods including animation, live action video, indoor and outdoor settings.
Videos that keep users watching other even longer videos are given special treatment by the YouTube algorithm. More watching inspires more watching, both in terms of videos and watch time, and this is good for the ads that YouTube runs. I know you have been told to keep it short, typically under two minutes, but much longer videos often find their way to the top of the recommended section.
#6: Check Your Analytics!
Google offers free and premium paid analytics services. Use the data to refine the experience and content for your audience. For example, if users searched on “waffle iron” and found your lawn mower video, it could be time to update the metadata and create a new Waffle Iron video. As a second example, if 90 percent of users stopped viewing your new four-minute video at the 1:25 mark, review what might be edited to keep them watching longer.
Pay special attention to the bounce rate. Be on the lookout for a rising bounce rate, high page views, and a recurring last page viewed before leaving the site. Your video content should attract viewers. If they are leaving your channel and the YouTube site entirely, your ranking will fall, and your videos will not appear in the suggested videos list as frequently.
#7: Encourage Engagement
You’ve heard the classic phrase, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” While recent headlines might invite disagreement with the old saying, nevertheless, it holds true online. You can spark user engagement in the form of shares, comments, likes, even dislikes, and leverage that popularity to increase your recommended video ranking.
Remember that a like is really a form of sharing; a way to share a basic message with those who also view that video that it is worth watching. And a dislike is just the equal sharing of an inverse opinion; it may equally inspire another user to watch again in full to judge what there was to dislike.
Either way, engagement drives up relevance. Engagement on longer videos translates into more session viewing which drives up ad rates and, in theory, the successful impression and conversion rates for those ads.
Comments, questions, replies, and links inside comments offer more content and metadata, further helping the SEO ranking for your video page.
#8: Extend the Video Viewing Session with Annotations and Playlists
Use text annotation overlays that users can click or tap to keep watching more content. For example, “to learn more about our new cloud services, watch this new video.” You can cycle users through an entire library of content, or even use annotations to jump to a specific playback marker inside the current video. Break up a longer video into chapters and provide users with a list of the major topics or sections with links to their starting times.
Build new playlists and link to them from videos that are inside and outside the playlist. Playlists extend view duration metrics, keep users in active sessions longer, and increase individual video views.
#9: Design Eye-Catching Thumbnails
Even more important than a strong title, a custom thumbnail frame for the video is the best way to invite users to click through. Do not settle for the first frame or even any of the first 50 frames if they do not look amazing and capture the main theme of your video. You can design your own custom thumbnail that is engaging. Be careful not to alienate or mislead your audience by showing a thumbnail that promises certain content will be shown if it is not in the video. That practice can ruin your view duration metrics which won’t get your video the recommended status you seek.
#10: Spark New YouTube Sessions
Post your video, define the metadata, and link to your video from other sites to improve your SEO ranking. You want to demonstrate new viewership from your videos, including the honor of bringing users to YouTube to start their new session because of your video, which was viewed first. If content from your channel is driving up views and starting new sessions, YouTube positions your content among the “up next” and other suggested videos more frequently.
This one gets a little tricky because you could spend time and money marketing links to your video, and even be recognized as the brand responsible for starting new sessions; however, it is possible for a user’s eyes to wander once they’re in. Stay the course! Build social media buzz and traditional promotional excitement for the launch of your newest videos as ways to attract new viewers who tune in just to see your content.