Earlier, we had discussed how keywords play an important role in promoting a video for YouTube and SEO, and the various places in which these can be placed. Now, we shall discuss how the content (irrespective of keywords) should be formulated when it comes to devising videos for YouTube and SEO.
Should the Length of the Videos be Short or Long?
While it may be very obvious that having high-quality content is the key to having more viewers in terms of YouTube and SEO, a lot of people forget that the people viewing it have to be engaged to view it. While you may think that your video is very informative, if it is long and boring, most people will stop watching it and move on.
This is very dangerous as YouTube has ways of measuring if the video was viewed till the end or not. If it wasn’t, the assumption is that it was not relevant to the search. This way, its search ranking will automatically be lowered for that keyword and the entire purpose of the YouTube and SEO exercise will be lost.
If your video ends at 10 minutes and you have 2 minutes of trailers or advertisements, and your viewer simply stops the video or navigates away, that is a negative against the content, in the eyes of the search engine. The trick, therefore, is to make sure that the length of your video is appropriate for the subject being covered. This is why it is imperative that the content of your video engages the viewer right till the last second!
Quality of Content in Terms of YouTube and SEO
The quality of the content of your videos also adds up in raising your channel authority. What is channel authority? It is the ‘respect’ your channel gains in the eyes of the search engines by virtue of its content, viewer engagement, relevance of the videos to the keywords, etc. A channel that consistently offers videos that are rich in content, has a high viewership, and boasts of high viewer engagement (which includes comments, responses, video responses) gets a better ‘reputation’ and its videos are ranked higher than others, all other factors being the same.
Delving Deeper Into the Element of Viewer Engagement
Since we have mentioned viewer engagement, it might be a good idea to explain it in detail. YouTube places a lot of importance on viewer engagement. Their logic is that if the viewer was moved enough to comment on the video, it was relevant. Positive comments obviously hold more weight that negative comments, but having any kind of comments is a good thing.
If comments are thought to be important by the search engines, having responses and video responses are deemed Very Important by them. Going by the same logic as for the comments, having someone make a video response for your video must mean a high level of engagement on the part of the respondent. This gives your video a very huge search ranking boost!
Another asset when it comes to viewer engagement is having people share or embed your video on their pages or sites. This, again, sends out the message that your video has content that is shareable, relevant, and engaging.
What to Take Away?
When it comes to promoting your company or site in terms of YouTube and SEO, the most important factor becomes the content. To sum up what is important for search engines, your content should be relevant for the keywords you have provided, it should be interesting and engaging enough for people to view it till the end, and for them to respond to it, whether by commenting, posting responses, or by sharing it. YouTube goes as far as to give a better ranking to videos that are High-Definition, simply because it reasons that anyone who went through the effort of making a good quality video would be more likely to have good content!
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