How to Use Video Marketing and YouTube SEO to Increase Your Brand Awareness and Traffic

Intro

Sisletter, a YouTube content creator, makes content on home organization and cleaning. She has 593,000 subscribers and 80 videos published on her YouTube channel.

Even though she's published fewer videos than other creators, she has still been able to gain a massive subscriber list and increase the engagement rate on her YouTube videos.

Sure — quality matters. Along with high-quality content, she strategically implemented video marketing and YouTube search engine optimization (SEO). Like her, you can garner good audience engagement on your YouTube videos with this digital marketing strategy.

In this article, we'll share eight SEO strategies to help you improve your YouTube SEO efforts and increase your visibility on the platform and Google.

Let's dive in.

7 strategies to increase your YouTube SEO efforts

Here are seven YouTube SEO strategies that'll help you optimize your search results and increase audience interaction and viewer attention. Oh, and increase brand awareness.

Strategy #1: Include focus keywords

Keywords help you identify which terms and phrases the target audience is using on YouTube to search videos similar to yours.

To conduct YouTube keyword research, you should know the three types of popular keywords that make your individual videos discoverable.

• Primary keywords: These have a higher monthly search volume and are difficult to rank.
• Secondary keywords: These sister keywords sit along with the primary keywords. They have less monthly search volume compared to primary keywords but have less competition, which makes them easier to rank for.
• Long-tail keywords: These niche phrases are related to primary and secondary keywords. For example, if your primary keyword is “couch,” your long-tail keyword would be “green mid-century modern couch.”

Let's say your YouTube videos are related to a home with Victorian decor. So, you can type the video keyword "Victorian home" in the YouTube search bar.

Screenshot by Nidhi Kala

Based on this keyword, you'll get the following results.

Screenshot by Nidhi Kala

So, use the YouTube search bar to find primary keywords, secondary, and even long-tail keywords. When you type in the primary keyword in the search bar, YouTube will give you relevant keyword suggestions like Victorian design, Victorian home renovation, and so on.

These are the keywords the target audience is searching‌ for. And so you can use them in your content as well.

Alternatively, use keyword research tools like Keyword Finder by Ranktracker, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Google Keyword Planner, Moz, and Semrush.

These powerful tools will help you find the terms and phrases people are using in their online research to improve user engagement. You can then use these keywords to check if the audience on YouTube is using similar keywords.

Strategy #2: Add keywords to your videos strategically

Once you have defined the target keywords you'll use in your videos, it's time to add these keywords to the following key elements:

• Video title

• Video description

• File name

• Video tags

• Title cards and overlays

• Bite-sized chapters

For example, Ali Abdal, a YouTube content creator, published a YouTube video. For this video, the target keyword is The Feel-Good Productivity Model, which he's used in his video title.

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He also added the keyword in his video description.

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For the video title, the content creator has added the keyword in the beginning. For the video description, they have used the keyword in the first few lines.

As a rule of thumb, while writing the video title and video description, include the keywords right in the beginning.

Strategy #3: Add timestamps to your video posts

Imagine your target audience doesn't want to watch your video but scans through it to find the important information mentioned in the video. That's where you need timestamps; you can use a YouTube timestamp generator.

With the help of timestamps, people will know the important parts where the video begins and ends.

Adding timestamps also triggers the YouTube algorithm as it helps YouTube understand your video content better. This, in turn, helps improve your video search rankings.

Plus, timestamps create opportunities for ranking in featured snippets and ranking in search results, which further increases the visibility of your videos.

💡Pro Tip: Add timestamps to your video and video description.

For example, Ali Abdaal adds timestamps to his videos:

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And here you can see he adds them to his video descriptions.

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To add timestamps:

• Choose the video you want to add timestamps (or chapters) to.
• Note down the key moments from the video to highlight in the timestamps.
• Go to YouTube's editor and type “timestamps”.
• Start adding timestamps in the list format along with the time.
• Click Save.

Strategy #4 Embed videos in blog and social media posts

Cross-promotion is a great way to promote your YouTube content and make it visible to your target audience, who actively read blogs and are present on other social media platforms.

This strategy further helps you in increasing the retention rate. For example, 3veta has embedded its YouTube content into its long-form articles.

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When embedding Youtube shorts or ‌videos into your blogs, make sure the context of the content is relevant to the blogs..

Pro tip: When it comes to video marketing, branded video is the most essential element. This type of format seeks to connect with the audience in a deeper way, and at the same time, helps build organic reach on social media.

By creating videos that are fresh and engaging and speak directly to consumers in a compelling way — where you share your brand story and talk about what you do and how you do it, you'll help your audience become increasingly familiar with your brand and your products or services.

Adding these to blog posts is a no-brainer. It's a simple way to increase the reach of videos you've worked so hard to create.

In another example, you can repurpose your videos by sharing them across platforms.

Form Health uses platforms like Instagram to release compelling video content. These videos, packed with information and tailored to those seeking weight loss information, underscore the powerful combination of experience and video marketing.

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By effectively strategizing their video content, they not only inform but also engage and attract a wider audience, demonstrating the power of video marketing for brands in specialized industries.

Strategy #5: Build a playlist

Playlists are a great way to organize your YouTube videos and signal YouTube about the type of content you create.

By doing so, YouTube will direct people to your content whenever they look for similar videos. Plus, organizing your videos into playlists helps viewers navigate your content better and even find older videos.

For example, Downshiftology, a YouTube channel that creates food content, has created different playlist themes such as summer recipes, spring recipes, chicken recipes, and so on.

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If you want to create your own YouTube playlist, follow these simple steps:

• Inside YouTube, select Playlist, and tap on New Playlist in the top right corner.
• Enter the title and description.
• Go to Visibility settings, set it to Public, and click Create.
• To add a video to your newly created playlist, click on the three dots on the top and click “Add videos.”
• To reorder the videos, drag and drop the YouTube video from its position.

Step #6: Use end screens

End screens appear in the last 5–20 seconds at the end of the video before another video starts playing.

By using end screens in your YouTube videos, you get a chance to subtly promote other videos, increase subscriber count, or point ‌viewers to your playlists.

By doing so, you can increase the viewer's attention span engaged with your content a little longer, which improves your ‌YouTube search engine rankings.

For example, Alexandra Gater, an interior designer, and YouTube creator, added the end screen in one of her YouTube videos.

On the end screen, she added another YouTube video, which enables more video views for her content.

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Step #7: Use captions

Using captions is a great way to improve social media accessibility. It benefits the audience with hearing impairments and also helps people to understand your content better, especially people who don't understand the language you've created your content for.

Let's say you've created a YouTube video in Spanish. So, having a caption in English helps your target audience (who are native English speakers) to understand your content. This ultimately increases the average view time for your video.

For example, Apartment Therapy, a YouTube channel focused on home decor and home improvements, uses captions in their YouTube videos. Because they target English and non-English-speaking countries in their videos, captions help them reach a wider audience.

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If you want to use captions in your YouTube videos, you can add them manually by uploading a text transcript or with a timed subtitles file. Using captions also gives you an opportunity to insert keywords.

However, make sure the keywords are mentioned in your video and not just in the captions. Why so? If the keywords are solely added in your captions, it impacts ‌video SEO negatively.

Alternatively, you can add automated captions using YouTube's speech recognition technology.

However, they aren't a good option because automated captions don't capture the right words. Instead, you can use transcription tools like Descript.

Step #8: Continuously monitor your performance

Video marketing isn't just about creating and uploading videos. You also need to measure and analyze your performance using tools such as Google Analytics and YouTube Analytics.

These tools can help you track various metrics, such as views, watch time, retention rate, click-through rate, conversions, and revenue. You can gain insights into your audience's behavior, preferences, and feedback and use them to improve your video marketing strategy.

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Or, if you want to take your reporting up a notch, you can leverage a tool that can help you with this operational reporting. Operational reporting is a type of business intelligence that provides real-time data and insights into your business processes and activities.

For instance, you can use operational reporting to compare your video performance across different channels, regions, or segments or to see how your videos affect your sales funnel.

Operational reporting can also help you automate and streamline your reporting process, saving you time and resources. What's not to love?

Wrapping Up

Every social media marketing channel has its ups and downs — YouTube is no different.

But once you know the platform in and out, you can drill down on audience engagement and increase search traffic to your social media channels (and even your website).

Before we leave you with these strategies, let's recap what we talked about in the article:

• Find primary, secondary, and long-tail keywords and use them in the video title and video description.
• Add timestamps to your video and video description.
• Use the end screens as calls to action to direct the viewers to take action — be it driving potential traffic to another video or asking them to subscribe to your channel.
• Create playlists separated by the different topics you've created sleek, well-made videos on.