How to Rank Your Company Video On the First Page of Google
2 This is a free ebook written and presented to you by Sean Marshall of Social Rocketship. YOU ARE FREE TO SHARE THIS EBOOK so long as the document stays in its original, unaltered PDF form. The information presented herein is for informational purposes only and the author is not liable for the validity of the content of the links and websites contained herein. The author will not be held liable for any damages caused either directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this guide, or by the software or hardware products described herein. Copyright 2013 Social Rocketship
3 Introduction Video marketing is huge! Just recently, YouTube surpassed over 1 billion videos views per month! As a business owner, you need to have a presence on YouTube. In fact, just after your website, it s the most important piece of internet real estate your company could own. Why? Here are 8 quick reasons: 1. It s free! You can t get any better than that! 2. Content is powerful! As the saying goes, content is king and leads to real sales 3. Viral potential huge exposure potential for your business 4. Huge audience this is both local and global 5. Demonstrate your expertise using video to show your stuff proves you re the best 6. Selling 24/7 a video is like having a virtual sales person selling for you around the clock 7. Gives a face to your business 8. Video is SEO friendly want to get found in the search engines? Use video! We re going to dive a lot deeper into the last point. In fact, you ll learn exactly how to get your video ranked on the first page of Google. I don t say this lightly. I ll base everything I share with you off of real world experience with our own clients at Social Rocketship.
4 We ve had countless examples of clients we ve helped to rank on the coveted first page of Google even for challenging terms in competitive markets. If you would like examples, just personally send me an email at Sean@SocialRocketship.com. Based on your industry, we might even have some examples of companies just like yours. What I ll share next is a no-fluff, boiled down version of exactly what to do to get your company videos ranking on the first page of Google. How to Get Ranked on Google My goal here isn t to tell you why it s so important to use YouTube videos to market your business. You can learn more about that here. My goal is to show you, step by step, what to do to get your videos ranking on the first page of Google. Ready? Here we go! STEP #1 Start Your Own YouTube Channel You can easily do this through a Google account. Set one up specifically for your business. YouTube gives the option of naming your channel so you ll want to make sure it matches your business name. So it will look like Youtube.com/YourCompanyName (just like your website)
5 Another option is to include keywords. Let s say you re a dentist in the Las Vegas area. You could put something like Youtube.com/LasVegasDentist for example. In my experience, having a company name is just fine and makes it easy for branding purposes. STEP #2 Do Keyword Research All internet marketing begins with finding the right keywords for your business. You can even use Google s own keyword tool to help you research the best keywords to use. One bonus tip is to get as specific as you can. For example, instead of Las Vegas Dentist try Henderson Dentist or even Henderson Dental Crown Replacement. Yes, there are less people searching for those terms, but you re sure to rank for them. And when you do enough of those with various keywords, you ll have an army of videos marketing your business. The result? Your phone will ring a lot more. This is not just talk it s absolutely true based off our experience with our clients. STEP #3 Optimize Your Video Channel Be sure to go through every single page on your new channel and add any and all information you can. The more information the better because it gives Google more to work with and to rank your videos. You can also set your video defaults here to save you time in the future.
6 STEP #4 Record Your Videos and Save with the Correct File Name We won t go into detail here about the many ways to actually do videos. What you should know here is how to save your video file with your ideal keywords in the title. For example, this means instead of video2233.mp4 or save your video as lasvegasdentist.mp4. Even though this is a seemingly insignificant step, it s been shown to boost results. STEP #5 Upload Videos to Your Channel A lot of people don t understand why they would load up their videos to YouTube and not their own website/server. First, video files are usually pretty big so let YouTube worry about the space by using their servers. Also, YouTube is a search engine itself. By loading your videos up there, you re dumping them into a place where people are already searching for your content. In turn, this exposes your videos to the mighty Google. So be sure to always upload any and all videos to your YouTube channel. STEP #6 Correct Video Title When loading up your video, be sure to title it correctly. Be sure to put your keywords go up front. Then you can put your brand or company name.
7 Example: Henderson Dentist Customer Review John Smith Dental Office. By leading with the keywords, you re making it easy for Google
8 STEP #7 Good Description The description of your video is actually really important and it s so underused! There are a few key things to do here. First, start off by putting the full URL to your website. That means writing out the full http://www.yourwebsite.com. By doing that, it makes it clickable and also serves as a backlink to your website. Both very good! Next, be sure to use all the space you can with your copy. You can post your video transcript here. It s effectively serving as a mini-article or blog post. Very good! Next, be sure to list out your business information including the full URL to your website, your phone number, address, and any other contact information you want. This helps with local search optimization. Very good! Then at the end of your description, be sure to link to the very same video you re loading up. YouTube will give you a link even as it s loading. You re basically linking to your own video but it s been shown to help boost rankings. As always, make sure your description has your keywords mixed into it. But don t overdo it! Make it natural and you ll be fine.
9
10 STEP #8 Good Tags Another key section is the tag section. It s a small but important one. Be sure to load up this section with those keywords. Add the most important keywords first. For example, if you re hoping to be ranked for Henderson Implant Specialist, then put that first. Then follow it up with your other keywords that may be more general like Las Vegas Dentist and so forth. STEP #9 Other Settings The next step is to set the privacy settings. In most cases, you re going to want it to be Public. Also, you can choose which category to place the video. And here you can also set up both Facebook and Twitter to automatically post your video once it s published. STEP #10 Add Your Video Transcript It s important that you give Google all you can. This includes adding a video transcript. It s very easy to do. Simply edit your video. Then go to Captions. Then upload your.txt file. You can use a program like Notepad for this.
11 STEP #11 Have a Voice-Over When Possible Another way to give Google all you can is to make sure to load up a voice over when possible. Narrated videos make for great content and Google has speech-to-text conversion. What this means is that they are trying to hear what s being said in order to rank it well. Make it easy for them! STEP #12 Add Your Video Location For our friend the dentist in Henderson, be sure to add Henderson as your video location. This helps for local search optimization.
12 It s great if people in Brazil are watching your video, but most people searching for businesses want locals. This adds one more layer of Google being able to find you and rank your business accordingly. STEP #13 Put Keyword as Annotation in Video At some point, enter one of your primary keywords as an annotation in the video itself. Some video creators even like to add a message to increase likes. For example, our dentist friend might have an annotation that says, Thumbs up for Pain-Free Dentists! See the keywords there AND how it s also working to get more likes?
13 STEP #14 Get Views One of the most important aspects of your video is to get it seen! This means getting lots and lots of views. In fact, a big part of YouTube s (and Google s) ranking of videos is based on the amount of views they get. Once your video is loaded up, it s time to tell everyone about it. Email your video out to your list. Tell everyone on your social networks. Share with your friends and colleagues. Tell everyone! The more views the better. Also, you want to be sure to get as many likes and comments as possible. Ideally, you ll also want to get subscribers to your channel too. Just like any other online platform, the more people that are watching, liking, commenting, and subscribing, the better. STEP #15 Embed Videos on Your Website Be sure to embed your videos onto your company website. This works perfectly with your company blog (which is another topic!). By showing your videos on your website, you ll get more views and introduce your videos to people who might not find them via Google or YouTube.
14 Additionally, having your videos on your site just plain makes for great content! STEP #16 Video sitemap Adding a video sitemap for your videos is another way for Google to learn more about your video and rank it. This can get a little complicated, but if you re using a Wordpress-based website (which I strongly suggest you should again, another topic), there s a plug-in to make it easy. It s called Google XML Sitemaps for Videos. STEP #17 Get Backlinks Just like with your website or blog posts, you ll want to get as many backlinks to your video as possible. Basically, the more links you have pointing back to your video (which is its own webpage effectively), the more Google is inclined to rank it. This starts by sending the video out to your email list and social networks like you should have already done. Ideally, your video will also show up on other content sharing sites. All of these link back to your video. Social bookmarking is another key way to get vital backlinks to your website and potentially get your video in front of lots of people at the same time. OnlyWire is a great tool for this. STEP #18 Video Sharing Sites Once you re video is loaded up to YouTube, you ll want to get it loaded up to as many other video sharing sites as you can.
15 This includes sites like Vimeo, Vevo, DailyMotion, MetaCafe, Viddler, and more. In fact, you can even find services or freelancers who will load the video up for you to the various sites. *Important* Just like in YouTube, you can enter a description to all of these other video sharing sites. Be sure to enter your YouTube video URL in the description of these other sites. This provides yet another backlink to your YouTube video shooting it up higher in the search engine results. STEP #19 Add Playlists with Keywords Once you have a number of videos on your channel, you can add playlists. Playlists are a way to organize your videos into categories or topics. Be sure when creating your playlists to do so using your keywords. For example, let s say our dentist friend has the following lists: Henderson Dentist, Implant Specialist, Henderson Dentist Customer Review, and so on. Naturally, the videos that are organized into the lists are going to correspond to the content of that video. STEP #20 Track and Test Once you ve uploaded a video, start to watch it in the search engines. Simply Google your video title and see where it is. At first, it might be buried on the 6 th or 7 th page. It depends on a lot of factors but especially how competitive your keywords are.
16 However, rest assured that if you ve taken the above steps, you ll be able to see your video climb in the results. Give it a week or two. After that time, if it s still not climbing as high as you like, go out and actively seek more links and more views. I can tell you that nothing feels better than seeing your hard work pay off in the search engines. You know then, that your customers will see your videos and you will get more business as a result! STEP #21 Repeat Often The more videos you can upload the better. Google is much more likely to rank videos that are on an active channel versus a one-off video. Also, be sure to upload your videos on a consistent basis. In fact, posting regular videos should be a BIG part of your online marketing campaign. Every time you upload a video, go back through and repeat the above process. That s it!
17 Resources Google Webmaster Tools Video Google Video Best Practices Video Sitemap YouTube Creator Playbook Thank you Thank you for reading this guide. I sincerely hoped it has helped you get moving towards optimizing your own videos to be found online. If you feel so inclined, please share this report with everyone you think might also be interested. Naturally, if you would like any help with getting your videos ranked on the first page of Google, we can help!
18 About Sean Sean Marshall is a hyperactive online marketing activist and principal at SocialRocketship.com - a results-based Online Marketing Firm that specializes in Social Media, SEO, Blogging, Content Marketing, Website Design, and more. Sean has spoken to groups small and large about getting online to take advantage of the tools available to grow one s business. He s worked with small, local independent business owners all the way up through international corporations. Most of Sean s ability to grow businesses stems from his passion for the power of the Internet. In his words, Nowadays, hands-down no matter what, your business must be online. If you re not online, you re just leaving money on the table. Sean Marshall Social Rocketship
19