Categories: Web

YouTube SEO: Make your videos more searchable by adding context

While the age-old metaphor of ‘content is king’ is more important than ever in today’s Internet of ubiquitous publishing, context must not be overlooked.

In this brief article we describe the importance of providing context to video published on YouTube. However, the principles applied here can be used and replicated on just about any other publishing platform.

In an article posted to YouTube’s blog this week, the video sharing site outlines the importance of adding context to videos, and specifically the role of context in assisting YouTube’s review team when assessing flagged content (content that break YouTube’s Community Guidelines – like graphic videos).

The main benefit of context from a user’s point-of-view is that video is more easily searchable and understandable, and garners more views, shares and YouTube channel subscriptions as a result.

Similar to other forms of search engine marketing, choosing an appropriate video title is hugely important. As described by YouTube, avoid vague titles like ‘Shocking deaths and fighting’, but instead choose a very specific and informative one, like ‘The Maspero Massacre | 9/10/11 | What Really Happened’. Think about how those that might be interested in your video would search for it, and perhaps add a date to disambiguate it with similar events.

Write two to three sentences about your video in its description field. Include the very obvious; who, what, where, when and why. As if narrating the video, provide a brief synopsis of its contents, and add video annotations where appropriate.

Categorise your video and add five to seven relevant, descriptive keywords. Choose an enticing video thumbnail to increase video click through rates within YouTube video search, but also on Google Search.

You’ve gone to the trouble of capturing a great video. Now contextualise it so that others can find it.

Albizu Garcia

Albizu Garcia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gain -- a marketing technology company that automates the social media and content publishing workflow for agencies and social media managers, their clients and anyone working in teams.

View Comments

Recent Posts

What sitting all day is quietly doing to your body and why you don’t even realize it (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

Adults today spend over nine hours a day sitting, according to national health data. On…

11 hours ago

Kryterion and Automattic partner to create a gold standard in WordPress developer credentials

The web has a WordPress problem – not the platform itself, but the people who…

22 hours ago

Consciousness computing tech exists, ‘whoever governs identity governs society’: World Forum

Neural rights was a hot topic during a session called "Approaching Singularity: Our Brains Interfacing…

2 days ago

Decision Points: The “Tiger” Methodology for Decisive Action

At some point in the last 10 years, I started viewing Colonel John Boyd as…

6 days ago

Architecting Zero-Click AI Eval Pipelines

When I started designing an AI Evaluation pipeline/framework at my organization, I had no idea…

6 days ago

Tech executive Bob Reisenweber named Director of Operations at Source Meridian

This week software firm Source Meridian announced that Bob Reisenweber was named its new Director…

1 week ago