When the average person goes online to get information or to find something, they have traditionally used a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing.
With the dramatic increase in the use of video these search engines have developed methods by which to include videos as part of the results they provide to their users.
Two other types of search have evolved over time in addition to the above. These are social search and the search function within the video sharing site you are using.
Examples of this could be someone asking a question on Twitter (Social search) or someone using the search box on YouTube to find something they are looking for.
We will leave social search for the moment (otherwise this page is going to turn into book!) and concentrate first on the steps you need to take to get your video showing up in the search engines and in the sharing site’s search results.
The first concept you need to understand is the concept of keywords. A keyword is something that a person enters into a search engine to find something.
E.g. If you want to know how to change a tire on your car you may type in “how to change a car tyre” or “change car tire.” Even though these are technically “keyphrases” we always refer to them for simplicity as “keywords.”
Once you type in the keyword the search engine displays a page containing (usually) the top ten results for that keyword.
This page is called the SERP. (Search Engine Results Page.)
If you are beginning to worry that this is going to start getting technical with all the new words… don’t. I’ll keep this really simple because you don’t need to understand too much more.
What most people don’t do is ask themselves how those top ten results on the SERPs got there.
They kind of assume that “somehow” research was done to find the best website for the search query and these really are the top results. Not true!
Search engines rank web pages in the search results by using very complex mathematical formulas called algorithms… which is a really big word meaning… complex mathematical formula!
For the search engines to get information to make these complex calculations they first need to get some raw data and to get this data they have… spiders and bots!
Yes, it’s all turning into a B-Grade Sci-Fi movie!
The search engines have special programs constantly running that are endlessly crawling around the internet finding pages. They take data snapshots of those pages and send the information back to the mother ship (the search engine).
So it’s easiest to think of these as spiders or bots that are endlessly crawling around gathering data. (No actual robots or spiders are used!)
Back at the mother ship the data is fed into the algorithm and the search results for any particular keyword is decided.
So let’s continue the example above about changing a car tire.
Let’s say you have made a “How to” video on this subject and uploaded to YouTube. Of course it is of good quality because you read part two of this series on how to do that!
Now let’s say that someone types that keyword into Google search.
They not only get a page back with the top ten results but they also get an indication that there are:
- 90,800,000 other results available and
- Google considers video to be an important part of the results because there are two videos at the top of the results.
The illusion here is that Google has discovered the best ten web pages to answer this question, two of which are videos.
There is no way a human has actually checked all 90,800,000 pages to decide! It has all been done automatically by computers crunching numbers.
The truth is that Google has presented in order, the top web pages (including videos) that have provided the exact information to the algorithm to make it “think” these are the top pages.
That information falls into two categories and to put it simply they are:
Stuff you have told the search engines about your video.
Stuff others have told the search engines about your video.
So what I am going to show you is how to provide as much information as is possible to convince the search engines that your video should be seen in the SERPs.
That way if someone is searching for something similar in nature to your video’s contents you have a greater possibility of them clicking on the search result and seeing your production.
Rather than swamp you with a ton of information I thought it would be easier to present the information in the form of a checklist of things to do when uploading to YouTube or whatever site you choose.
Part One – Introduction
Part Two – Referrals and Quality
Part Three – Optimizing Your Videos
Part Four – Video Optimization Checklist
Part Five – Optimizing Your YouTube Channel
Part Six – Advanced YouTube Techniques
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