by Want your videos to rank on YouTube? Wondering what to do?
In this article, you'll discover how to give your videos more visibility in YouTube search results.
How YouTube Video Helps Customers Find Your Small Business in Search
YouTube is owned by Google and Google search is how people find things on the internet. Whenever someone goes to Google and types in “how to fix a dent in my car,” their search results are based on a combination of factors including location, media, advertising, and SEO.
To show up at the top of this list of search results, you can create YouTube videos that solve the problems your customers have and also are married to the right keyword terms.
Steven Dumala, owner of Excel Dent Removal in Minneapolis, Minnesota, started using YouTube in 2013 as a way to generate leads. As a local business, his income comes from repairing people's cars. His shop does specialty repairs called paintless dent removal, which is a repair method for fixing door dings, small dents, and hail damage. His YouTube videos talk about how these repairs work.
Steven gets leads and builds trust by answering questions that are common Google searches for his business such as “how to clean headlights,” “paintless repair,” and “paintless dent removal.” He also includes his location in his video titles; for example, “Door Ding Repair | Blaine MN Paintless Dent Removal for Car Dings.”
Here's how you can create YouTube videos that will give your business visibility in search results.
#1: Identify YouTube Video Topics That Will Work for Your Business
Here are a couple of different methods for collecting the right keywords for your YouTube videos.
Create Videos to Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Your most frequently asked questions (FAQs) from customers and prospects typically have something to do with what brought them to your business in the first place. You can use these questions as the basis for your YouTube videos.
Real estate agent Malcolm Lawson uses YouTube to give tips, strategies, and advice to people looking to buy or sell their homes. Before using YouTube, Malcolm had middling success generating leads with cold-calling, open houses, and mailers to homeowners. In 2018, he started making videos that ranked well on YouTube, and he eventually doubled down on his YouTube marketing. Now he gets most of his leads from his channel.
He started out by answering questions he gets asked all the time including what you need to know if you're a first-time buyer, tips for staging a house, and the pros and cons of renting vs. buying. These videos have gotten him tens of thousands of views, as well as dozens of leads. The keywords he uses as the foundation of his videos are the questions he gets asked over and over again.
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To generate ideas for your YouTube content, write down your top 10 FAQs and make videos about each of them. If you're just starting your YouTube channel, front-loading your channel with these 10 videos is a great way to get established.
Pro Tip: To get more mileage from these videos, embed them on the FAQ page on your website or add them to your email drip campaign for new customers.
Create Videos to Rank for Frequently Searched Keywords Related to Your Business
In search, a keyword can be a single word or multiple words used to identify a topic. For example, “how to fix a dent in my car” is considered a keyword. Other related keywords include “fix a dent in my car,” “how to fix a dent,” and “fix a dent.”
To create YouTube videos that rank, you need to identify the words and phrases your target audience uses when they search the internet. These include:
- Single words
- Series of words
- Sentences or statements
- Questions
- Phrases
- City or zip code
Start by doing your own Google search for what your business does. For this example, let's use “fix a dent.”
When you Google “fix a dent,” the most popular article in the search results is “4 Simple Ways o Remove Smaller Dents From Your Car.”
Here are the questions people also ask about this topic:
Here are the top-performing YouTube videos about “fix a dent”:
These are the articles related to the “fix a dent” keyword:
When you do this kind of research, there are a couple of key points to keep in mind. First, you can use the questions “people also ask” to help you identify relevant keywords to use and videos to create. You know people are asking these questions in Google searches so make a video that answers these questions or solves these problems.
You'll notice that videos show up before articles on the Google search engine results page (SERP). So if you create a video about the same topic as a competitor's blog post, you have the potential to get more visibility for the topic in search results.
Remember that everything we're talking about has to do with solving problems for your potential customers. By creating a video that solves your customer's problems, you can build trust with them and establish yourself as an expert, which will hopefully lead to them doing business with you.
Evaluate Potential Keywords With Keywords Everywhere
Once you have a keyword in mind, how do you know if it's the right one? Is it oversaturated? Is it associated with what you have in mind? What do the search terms look like for it? What could you do to make this keyword perform better?
That's where a tool like Keywords Everywhere can help. It's a Google Chrome extension that provides additional data about the potential search terms you want to use. It's available in both free and paid versions (around $10/year).
Once you install the extension in Chrome, do a Google search for your keyword. The Keywords Everywhere data will appear on the right side of the SERP.
At the top, you'll see a chart with trend data for your keyword, which you can filter based on time.
You'll also see related keywords. You may want to use some of these keywords as inspiration for the tags you add in the back end of YouTube.
Keywords Everywhere will also show keywords that people search for, which can help you narrow your focus. These keywords could be ideas for future videos.
This information is helpful for evaluating whether the phrase or keyword you want to use makes sense based on the association.
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GET THE DETAILSThe list of long-tail keywords at the bottom is important because they can help you zero in on who you want to do business with. If you're a car repair shop and “fix a dent” is your keyword, you might be attracting people who have dents in their refrigerators or drywall. By using the long-tail keyword “how to fix a dent in a car,” you're more likely to reach your target customer—someone who needs their car dent repaired.
#2: Title Your Videos to Trigger a Personal Reaction From Viewers
While keywords are the foundation of the content you'll be creating for YouTube, your video titles also play a key role in your success. They have to be compelling enough to get people to click.
For this example, let's say you've decided to use the keyword “COVID test for travel” (inspired by the Travel Pro Show, which uses YouTube to get leads and educate customers). The following are tips to create potential titles for this keyword:
Make a list: “5 Ways to Get Through Your COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL”
People love lists. They're easy to skim, viewers know what to expect, and the content is easy to digest.
Offer insider knowledge: “The Single Most Important Thing You Need to Know About COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL”
Creating fear of missing out (FOMO) around your content can make people more likely to click. Phrases like “the single most important thing,” “your key to success,” or “at last, the secret to” are great starting points.
Ask a question: “Where Is the Best Place to Get a COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL?”
It's in our nature to be curious. Because most people will find you based on asking questions on Google or YouTube, why not ask a question in your video title? Make sure to include a strong descriptive word like “best” or “worst” to spark emotion.
Make it a how-to: “How to Get a COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL in 24 Hours or Less for Free”
How-tos are the epitome of problem-solving, which is how many people use YouTube.
Shock and awe: “The Ugly Truth About the COVID TEST FOR TRAVEL”
Shocking your audience can entice them to click because of their natural curiosity.
#3: Craft a Call to Action Viewers Respond to
As a business owner, your number-one priority is to convert business for your marketing efforts and YouTube is no different.
Before the pandemic, Debra Krol had an in-person Mommy and Me music studio in her local mall where she taught parents and children the fun of music and singing. When she was forced to shut down her studio because she could no longer afford her space, Debra turned to YouTube as a way to share her knowledge with parents beyond her town.
She started composing children's music and created her own curriculum that she sells through her site. Her call to action (CTA) is to get viewers to buy her books so they can continue the fun after the story is over.
Your CTA should be an extension of the problem-solving content you're creating. For example, if your business sells car insurance, create a free downloadable PDF with a checklist that will help viewers with their insurance-buying needs. Offer this to viewers in exchange for their email address.
Here's a formula you can follow to add a CTA to your YouTube videos:
1. Start by addressing the problem and then reinforcing it with examples.
2. Describe how your target audience feels.
“One of the problems in trying to buy a house is knowing how to find the right home. It seems like everyone around you is buying a home but you don't even know where to start! It's so frustrating and even embarrassing.”
3. Tell viewers how your video will help them.
“In this video, I'll tell you step by step what you need to know before you start house-hunting.”
4. Identify yourself and explain how you help people. Be brief and specific.
“Hi! My name is Desiree and I help first-time homebuyers find their first family home in Paradise Valley, Arizona.”
5. Give a CTA to your opt-in.
“Before we dive into what you need to know to start house-hunting, make sure to grab my Paradise Valley Relocation Guide in the description below to help you learn about all that PV has to offer and get resources for your move.”
#4: Tips to Amplify and Repurpose Your YouTube Video
Once you've put the time and effort into creating YouTube videos that will attract your target audience, consider repurposing that content for other platforms to reach even more customers and prospects.
For example, you could write a blog post based on the video and embed the video in it. This offers two key benefits. One, you can reach people who prefer reading to watching a video. Two, a blog that has an embedded video will always outrank a blog that doesn't.
Start by getting a transcription of your video. A tool like Rev.com uses humans (instead of machine learning) to do transcriptions and you'll pay $1.25 per minute. You can then edit the transcription into a readable blog post to publish to your blog with the YouTube video embedded.
Here are some other ways you could repurpose your video:
- Post it natively to Facebook, IGTV, and LinkedIn.
- Turn the video into micro-content for social sharing.
- Create quote or statement graphics from the video.
- Share the video with your email list.
Conclusion
YouTube is a great way to get leads organically for your business and the likelihood that your direct competitor is also using YouTube to get leads is pretty slim. Creating the right videos can open up many doors and opportunities. You just need to show up, be yourself, and solve your customers' problems—and don't forget that CTA.
When you create your videos, here are some tips to keep potential customers engaged and establish yourself as a trusted expert:
Don't ramble. Respect the viewer's time by quickly getting to the point. Don't include unnecessary details, repeat yourself, and “um” your way through the information. My best advice is to remember that you know what you're talking about—you're the expert. Your video is there to make viewers' lives easier so don't waste their time.
Plan before you record. Newscasters spend hours preparing scripts before going live on air. Actors spend weeks and months memorizing lines and practicing their delivery. Do yourself a favor and outline what you're going to say before hitting record. Put together a list of bullet points for the topics you'll cover so you stay on message.
Use the gear you already have. Getting stuck in the trap of “I don't have fancy equipment” is just an excuse not to create. You have a perfectly good camera in your pocket and a bunch of Amazon boxes in your trash. Set your camera to Video, prop it up on some boxes, sit down, and solve some problems. There are countless successful YouTubers who create with their smartphones and you can, too.
Schedule time for creating videos. Being consistent is just as important as using the right keywords and having a catchy title. Your business's growth depends on you giving your YouTube efforts the best chance for success. Schedule time in your calendar to plan your titles, outline what you're going to say, and film. Treat yourself like a customer and schedule time to work on your business.
Get More Advice on YouTube Marketing
- Use YouTube Analytics data to inform your future YouTube videos.
- Create YouTube video ads that convert.
- Get more views on YouTube.
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