It’s esti­mat­ed that more than 100 hours of footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute! So how do you make your own con­tent stand out when you have mil­lions of videos to con­tend with? How do you get peo­ple to view YOUR video?

This arti­cle marks the start of a series of posts which cov­er the sub­ject of Video SEO. Here you will find great insights from some the worlds best speak­ers, authors and prac­ti­tion­ers in online video.

They will share their advice, tips and tricks into how to uti­lize video in the best ways, whether it be host­ed on your own domain or video giant YouTube.

Our first expert does­n’t need an intro­duc­tion at all. Greg Jar­boe, from SEO-PR, shares with us his ‘Top 10 Tips for Video SEO’. I’ve had the priv­i­lege to view Greg give a pre­sen­ta­tion at SES Lon­don in the past on the sub­ject of ‘B2B Video Mar­ket­ing’. I learnt a tremen­dous amount from that pre­sen­ta­tion and have con­tin­ued to learn more from his top tips below. Greg has also writ­ten a pop­u­lar book on using video for dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing called YouTube and Video Mar­ket­ing: An Hour a Day.

‘Top 10 Tips for Video SEO’ by Greg Jarboe

I’ve been asked to share my top 10 tips for video SEO, but they come with an advi­so­ry: best if used before the next algo­rithm update. For exam­ple, YouTube offi­cial­ly replaced “view count” with “watch time” as a rank­ing fac­tor in Octo­ber 2012. On the oth­er hand, “rel­e­vance” has remained a rank­ing fac­tor since the ear­ly days: i.e. before Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 bil­lion in Octo­ber 2006. So, rec­og­niz­ing that some things will change, while oth­ers will remain the same, here are my top 10 tips for video SEO (fresh­ness date: June 25, 2014):

1. Con­duct key­word research. Use Google Trends, which has added YouTube search data going back to 2008, to con­duct key­word research to find key­words that work in YouTube, the world’s sec­ond-largest search engine,as well as Google. For exam­ple, web search inter­est in “Chevy” and “Chevro­let” are the same this month. But, if you com­pare the YouTube search inter­est for these two terms, you’ll see that “Chevy” is almost twice as pop­u­lar as “Chevro­let.”
2. Opti­mize your content’s meta­da­ta. YouTube uses meta­da­ta – your video’s title, descrip­tion, and tags – to index your video cor­rect­ly. To max­i­mize your pres­ence in search and sug­gest­ed videos, make sure your meta­da­ta is well-opti­mized. Your title can be up to 100 char­ac­ters long. Your descrip­tion can include up to 5,000 char­ac­ters. Your tags can be up to 120 char­ac­ters. Use every one of these lim­its for each of your videos. You canup­date the meta­da­ta on old­er videos if your title, tags or descrip­tions aren’t opti­mized. This can increase views even if the video’s been pub­lic for a long time.
3. Cre­ate cus­tom thumb­nails for your videos. If your account is ver­i­fied and in good stand­ing, you may have the abil­i­ty to upload cus­tom thumb­nails for your video uploads. Your cus­tom thumb­nail image should be as large as pos­si­ble, since the image will also be used as the pre­view image in the embed­ded play­er. Cus­tom thumb­nails should:

• Have a res­o­lu­tion of 1280x720 (with min­i­mum width of 640 pix­els).
• Are uploaded in image for­mats such as .JPG, .GIF, .BMP, or .PNG.
• Remain under the 2MB lim­it.
• Use a 16:9 aspect ratio since it’s the most used in YouTube play­ers and pre­views.

4. Use anno­ta­tions on your videos.Anno­ta­tions are click­able over­lays that you can add to your YouTube videos. Anno­ta­tions are a great way to encour­age your view­ers to engage with your video and take mean­ing­ful actions as a result. The key is cre­at­ing an anno­ta­tions expe­ri­ence that is con­ver­sa­tion­al and inter­ac­tive.
5. Use cap­tions on your videos. Pro­vid­ing cap­tions not only make your work acces­si­ble to a wider audi­ence, it also acts as addi­tion­al meta­da­ta which helps your video show up in more places on the site. If your video is cap­tioned for mul­ti­ple lan­guages, it will also be search­able in those lan­guages.
6. Cre­ate and opti­mize playlists. Playlists allow you to col­lect, orga­nize and pub­lish mul­ti­ple videos togeth­er. They increase watch time and cre­ate anoth­er asset that will appear in search results and in Sug­gest­ed Videos. You can cre­ate playlists using your own videos, oth­er videos, or a com­bi­na­tion of both.
7. Opti­mize your chan­nel name, icon and descrip­tion. Sev­er­al cus­tomiz­able chan­nel fea­tures help ensure that you’re mak­ing your brand more dis­cov­er­able across YouTube. Pick a short, mem­o­rable chan­nel name. This will appear wide­ly across YouTube, so make sure it’s the best rep­re­sen­ta­tion of your brand. Upload a square, high-res­o­lu­tion image to be your channel’s icon across YouTube. The image will appear along­side all your videos on the watch page. (In most cas­es, you can use your brand’s logo.) The first few words of your chan­nel descrip­tion appear most fre­quent­ly across the site, so high­light your most impor­tant brand­ing upfront.
8. Use YouTube’s watch time opti­miza­tion tips. Cre­ate a com­pelling open­ing to your videos and then use pro­gram­ming, brand­ing, and pack­ag­ing tech­niques to main­tain and build inter­est through­out the video. Build your sub­scriber base: sub­scribers are your most loy­al fans and will be noti­fied of new videos and playlists to watch. Involve your audi­ence in your videos, encour­age com­ments, and inter­act with your view­ers. Build long watch-time ses­sions for your con­tent by orga­niz­ing and fea­tur­ing con­tent on your chan­nel. Cre­ate a reg­u­lar release sched­ule for your videos when upload­ing to encour­age view­ers to watch sets of videos over sin­gle videos.
9. Use YouTube Ana­lyt­ics reg­u­lar­ly. The Traf­fic Sources Report shows you which search terms peo­ple are using to find your video. The Views Report iden­ti­fies which videos have the great­est view times and view-through rates. And the Audi­ence Reten­tion Report indi­cates which videos are suc­cess­ful at keep­ing view­ers watch­ing.
10. Explore YouTube alter­na­tives. A year ago, I declared, “The Video SEO War is Over … and YouTube Won!” But that was back when Search­metrics was report­ing that about 8 out of 10 video inte­gra­tions in Google Uni­ver­sal Search in the U.S. were from YouTube. Today, the video SEO war has heat­ed up again. So, it’s worth explor­ing oth­er video sites like Vimeo. It’s worth look­ing at online video plat­forms such as Bright­cove. It’s worth check­ing out mobile video apps like Vine. And out­side of the U.S., it may even be nec­es­sary to inves­ti­gate China’s biggest video site, Youku Tudou.

These are my top 10 tips for video SEO … at this point in time. But I expect about 3 of these tips will be out-of-date a year from now. That would be con­sis­tent with the nor­mal rate of change for the YouTube and video envi­ron­ment. As Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t like the weath­er in New Eng­land now, just wait a few min­utes.”