YouTube is a great way to expand your business, and many people are making a lot of money off of filming YouTube videos. What not everyone is as aware of is that, as with your website, there are some tips that you can apply to your YouTube videos that will boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and get you more views and a higher click-through-rate.

Five easy ways to boost your YouTube SEO:

1) Use the Preview-Proof-Preview framework for YouTube SEO:

a) Preview what the video is all about. A great way to do this is to go with a short intro that hooks watchers by telling them exactly what to expect in the first 10 seconds.

b) Proof. Tell viewers why they should listen to you. People like to quickly know what they are going to get out of what you are offering. Provide reasons as to why they should continue watching your movie; including accomplishments, experience, and showing proof that you've done your research.

c) Preview-again. Repeat what you are going to cover in your video, but be more specific. Refer to something that you are going to cover later on in the film. This will pique their curiosity and encourage the viewer to continue watching.

2) Optimize for the target keyword in the title and in-video.

Put the keyword in the title, but do not stuff and use it only once, at the beginning. Next, say the keyword in the video. YouTube's algorithm has become super smart and can listen to your words in the video!

3) Solicit user interaction.

To increase user interaction signals, use simple annotations in-video asking people to subscribe, like, and comment. This gets you some feedback, but also keeps your viewers engaged.

4) Optimize for click-through-rate.

In the YouTube video search engine results page, use a custom video thumbnail that includes the current year and stands out from the competition. For the description, have attention-grabbing user copy that appeals to potential watchers. You need to know who you are targeting and make sure that the potential watcher can see the title clearly.

5) Longer videos mean longer watch time.

This is one of the ranking signals that YouTube uses. Yes, believe it or not, YouTube is intuitive enough to consider audience-retention, and the longer your video keeps people on YouTube, the higher search ranking you will get!

YouTube is the #2 Search Engine in the World!

YouTube is only gaining in popularity and use. In fact, according to the 2018 State of Inbound report, 45% of marketers planned on investing more in YouTube over the course of this year. It is also the #2 search engine in the world, with more than 3 billion searches a month in 2017- amounting to more search volume than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL combined, according to Forbes.

Your goal should be to get your video to rank high in Google (meaning preferably on the first page, near the top) so that it gets more traffic and views. The way to do that is to apply the above tips and watch your views rise! Remember, it’s not only about the views; you want to have people subscribe to your channel, so remember tip #4 and don’t forget to ask your watchers to subscribe while they are watching the video! In addition, you can explore the Key Video to improve your video marketing.

Ali Jaffar has been building dazzling websites and creating amazing online experiences for over a decade. His mastery of the latest innovations in web development results in world-class website experiences set apart by show-stopping style and seamless functionality. A Google Mobile Sites and Google Analytics qualified individual and award-winning web development guru, Ali lends his talents to build and bolster digital experiences for a wide array of clients. When Ali’s not helping his clients grow, you can find him doing yoga, walking his dog, and enjoying a nice bike ride around Philly.

Pro Tip: the more love your website needs to be optimized, the more you should consider investing in a website redesign or a whole new website built with SEO in mind from the start. Key Medium can conduct a thorough technical website and SEO audit and walk you through recommendations to develop an action plan customized to your business goals, needs, and budget.

Let’s face it. Every business is presented with unique challenges. And that is never more so than when dealing with SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you have an organization or company that markets directly to other companies then when it comes to SEO, there are a few mistakes that you need to be sure not to make.

The top ten SEO mistakes that you need to avoid making:

1. Use the right vocabulary: While there is a lot of behind-the-scenes with SEO, it’s good not to lose sight of common sense. Drop the fancy lingo and think like as the person searching for your product or service. Use search terms that anyone might be typing into their browser.

2. Stop the PPC: One big mistake businesses make is believing that they need to continue to pay for advertising while incorporating SEO. Do you know that 70% of the links clicked on are not paid? Try to stay focused on one thing and don’t spread yourself too thin.

3. Don’t try to be #1: While it’s fantastic to be the top search result, don’t be too concerned about making it there. The top 3 search results get 61% of the clicks. So in the case of SEO, being second or third is every bit as great as being first from a search visibility perspective, especially considering that B2B decision makers make on average 12 searches, according to Google data points.

4. Keep is basic: Google has recently made some adjustments and made things simple. Don’t try and include a ton of keywords. Stick to one good keyword and one related keyword.

5. No broken links: There’s nothing someone hates more than clicking on a broken link. Broken links will earn you a bad rap, fast. Make sure that all your links are working.

6. Avoid duplicate content: Don’t try to increase sales by having the same pages and product linked all over the place. People will easily be annoyed by the repetitiveness. Google is only going to index one of the pages anyway, so it’s going to be gaining you nothing.

7. Use those analytics: Using some form of analytics is a must. It’s how you are to keep track of how you are doing, if your page views are going up or down, where traffic is coming from, and what pages are being viewed the most.

8. Know your goal: Yes, it's to increase sales, but how are you going to get there? With more service or product feature page, high domain authority backlinks and earned media, or creating new content? It’s one thing to rely on your Google results, but there are other aspects, that involve your website, also to consider.

9. Keep it real. Don’t ever, ever copy a competitor. While your customers may not necessarily notice, Google will spot duplicate content, and you may even be penalized for it. Stay unique.

10. Offload: Don’t try to do it all. If you don’t know what you are doing, and aren’t ready to put some hard work into your SEO, then maybe it’s best to consider outsourcing. There are many reliable SEO companies out there prepared to help you, and you just need to find the right one for you and your business.

SEO is an organic, and inexpensive way to increase sales, build pageviews and convert leads into sales. Done correctly, you can see wonderful results for your company. And the great news is that whether you do it yourself, or you hire a company to do it for you, you can use all the above tips to help you avoid common mistakes and get the results you are looking for!

Need help updating your SEO keyword intent content planner or want to understand how this fits into the Search Journey?

Free SEO Analysis

Run an SEO audit to determine your website issues:

Ali Jaffar has been building dazzling websites and creating amazing online experiences for over a decade. His mastery of the latest innovations in web development results in world-class website experiences set apart by show-stopping style and seamless functionality. A Google Mobile Sites and Google Analytics qualified individual and award-winning web development guru, Ali lends his talents to build and bolster digital experiences for a wide array of clients. When Ali’s not helping his clients grow, you can find him doing yoga, walking his dog, and enjoying a nice bike ride around Philly.

Local SEO helps small companies take on big brands, and large companies reach engaged customers.

Improving your local SEO standing could boost your company revenue by nearly 20% — and it’s not that hard to achieve once you get your local SEO strategy aligned.

Here’s how to nail your local SEO strategy using social proof and tactical optimization.

Ask your customers to review your business

Google wants to give its users the best possible results.

When you ask for a Philly cheesesteak, you need to know it’s going to taste incredible. Your customers trust reviews from their peers as much as their family members, which is why Google uses customer reviews for local SEO rankings.

This is what I got when I searched for Philly cheesesteak:

Each of the top options has lots of reviews and ahealthy star rating. For your company to win at local SEO you need good reviewsand a high rating. Asking your customers to leave a review is a perfect way toget more reviews. Don’t believe me? Check these figures:

80% of online reviews come from businesses sending follow-up emails to customers.
68% of customers have left a review because a local company asked them to.

There are many ways you get your customers to leave a review of your business, such as:

Offer a discount.
Give them a free trial.
Just ask (sometimes it’s enough).

Creating a customer testimonial video is great wayto engage future reviewers. It adds credibility to your existing reviews byputting human faces to them. If you want to give it a try, Vidyard is aplatform designed to make creating videos as simple as possible. I’ve tried itmyself and can tell you it’s quick and simple to use. You can request a demo here.

Optimize your business to target “near me” searches

The average mobile searcher will want the company closest to them. Think about it — how many times have you asked Google for a bar, drug store, or gas station near you? Optimizing for “near me” searches helps your business win those SERPs.

Not convinced? Google Trends proves that the number of people making “near me” searches is steadily increasing overall. You can see for yourself below:

The key to targeting “near me” searches is incorporating your city and state into the various on-page elements that factor into SEO. This includes your:

Page title.
Image alt-text.
Website content.
Subheadings.
Meta tags.

Thankfully, it should be easy to make thesechanges provided your website runs on a somewhat-modern CMS. WordPress hasbecome an exceptional choice for SEO (particularly with the excellent Yoast SEO plugin available to everyone for free), and of course high-end ecommerce storefrontsoftware such as Shopify’s slick hosted service will be a breeze — good technical SEO ismandatory at that scale. Speak to your web designers or developers if you’re not sure.

All you need to do here is distribute your location keywords smartly and prominently, and you’ll achieve two things at once: making local searchers more likely to choose your site, and making Google more likely to rank you for those searches.

Increase the authority of your website with link building

Authority is one of the most important rankingfactors for local SEO. The more authority your website and pages demonstrate,the higher you’ll rank on Google. You can increase your authority by buildinglinks to quality local blogs and businesses. Not sold? This is what the experts say:

75% of experts believe links are as important in 2018 as they were in 2017. The other 25% think they’re more important.
72% of local gurus say link-building is crucial to local SEO.

Some of the best ways to build links include:

Guest posting.
Establishing web directory links.
Commenting on local forums.
Writing testimonials.
Buying them (perfectly legal!).

Building a linkable resource is particularly greattactic, because it gives blogs and businesses a reason to direct their visitorsto your company site. All you need to do is turn existing data into somethingfresh. This can include interviews from your experts, or data you’ve uncoveredfrom a government website. I found some great tips on how to do this at Quicksprout. Read this free article to find out more.

1 in 5 of customers buy an item within 24 hours of making a local search, so why wouldn’t you want a bigger slice of that pie? Remember: you could increase your revenue by almost 20%. Put these local SEO tips into practice, and you’ll be on your way to making more local sales.

This local SEO article was originally posted at Key Medium and was contributed by:

This SEO audit guide was written to help for creatives, webmasters, SEO specialists, and business owners alike.

It lays out exactly what you need to know. The process for an SEO audit, the specific steps and data points to look to improve your website's organic traffic and ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Most SEO audits are too technical and hard to decipher, we get it. Sometimes they are manually created and compiled- that would only make sense if there wasn't an SEO checker like Running SEO around.

The 7-step SEO audit process involves:

Once complete– you’ll be in a much better place to kickstart your growth and conduct important next steps.

1. Prepare. Here's what you'll need for your SEO Audit:

- Running SEO (for running a representative crawl of your pages and identifying issues automatically)

2. Do you know what your website objectives are?

- The goal here is to know what your goals are for long-term growth that will be achievable through SEO for your business.

- SEO is something that you use to get to growing your business, and you should think of it as a road to growth and not a means to an end.

- Your strategic goals, if you don't know what they are, can be identified by following the S.M.A.R.T. framework.

To add an additional layer on top of the SMART framework, the expert web design and SEO experts at Key Medium have added additional steps to the framework to make it SMARTER. These are:

A solid optimization plan requires constant tending to through a nonlinear, agile-like process. If you need help with this or any strategic process, we urge you to connect an SEO expert to ensure maximum likeness of success.

Let’s move on to the nitty-gritty part of your audit to optimize your site to gain rank and organic traffic.

3. How exactly do you perform an SEO audit?

We created the Running SEO checker to help here, for free. We were bothered by the expensive tools on the market and this led to the creation of this site and optimization resource. Simply run our automated analysis tool to get started.

The first piece of this would be to have your publicly-accessible website link handy.

Then, use crawl your site and take a representative sample of interior pages, not just your homepage.

4. Check Google Search Console to determine technical website issues Google knows about (and probably dings you on)

If you couldn't find that in Google Search Console, don't fret. There's another method you can use.

Simply navigate to google.com and type in site:yourdomain.com to see what google sees in your index.

This is also pulled as a data point in your Running SEO Audit report, so you can skip this part if you'd like.

Not seeing your website crawled in Google's inde? Not showing up in the search results? Your site may not yet have been crawled and indexed if it's new. If it's been around for over a month, then the issue is likely that your website is not crawlable.

Is your site not crawlable? You can start by identifying opening up the robots.txt in your root folder (if it exits) and also check your website to see if a robots meta tag exists. Then, determine whether or note you're telling google not to index your site.

5. Start an issue log for your websites audit

Compile a list of issues in a website issue log. If you don't have one yet, go ahead and create your first website issue log with the following columns:

6. Create your tactical SEO action plan

In your newly created website issue tracker, also include the following critical and strategic pieces of information and weigh them by priority for maximum results and efficacy:

7. How to Improve Your Website SEO

If your SEO score was disappointing, don’t fret. In fact, it’s a common problem. So many businesses with top-rated products and services have difficulty gaining new customers online simply because their website isn’t primed for people to find them.

The best way to boost your search rankings? Hire a professional to conduct an SEO audit and spend your time and effort being awesome at your running your business and engaging with clientele.

Next steps involve more tactical SEO and business activities such as keyword research, an in-depth content audit/inventory, and competitor analysis, and preparation of an action plan that will help you gain more organic traffic for your site.

You can hire a professional SEO firm to conduct an SEO audit at any time and in any capacity. For the best results, the more love your website SEO needs, the more you should consider investing in a website redesign or a whole new website built with SEO in mind from the start. Key Medium can conduct a thorough technical website and SEO audit and walk you through recommendations to develop an action plan customized to your business goals, needs, and budget.

Five easy ways to boost your YouTube SEO:

1) Use the Preview-Proof-Preview framework for YouTube SEO:

2) Optimize for the target keyword in the title and in-video.

3) Solicit user interaction.

4) Optimize for click-through-rate.

5) Longer videos mean longer watch time.

YouTube is the #2 Search Engine in the World!