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

Not Your Typical CPA Firm: A CEO on Mission to Guide Companies Through the Ever-Changing World of Tech Compliance (Brains Byte Back Podcast)

In today’s episode of the Brains Byte Back podcast, we speak with Mike DeKock, the founder…

1 day ago

‘Social problems in substituting humans for machines will be easier in developed countries with declining populations’: Larry Fink to WEF

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink tells the World Economic Forum (WEF) that developed countries with shrinking…

2 days ago

Meet Nobody Studios, the enterprise creating 100 companies amidst global funding winter 

Founders and investors alike were hopeful the funding winter would start to thaw in 2024.…

2 days ago

As fintech innovation picks up pace, software experts like 10Pearls help lead the way

Neobanks and fintech solutions hit the US market more than a decade ago, acting as…

3 days ago

CBDC will hopefully replace cash, ‘be one hundred percent digital’: WEF panel

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) will hopefully replace physical cash and become fully digital, a…

4 days ago

Ethical Imperatives: Should We Embrace AI?

Five years ago, Frank Chen posed a question that has stuck with me every day…

1 week ago