There is an important message at the bottom of today's Nugget, so make sure to take a look.
We didn't mean to drag on this explanation of YouTube over so many days, but giving simple directions about YouTube SEO seemed incomplete without going through the other hidden marketing techniques built into the system.
The next feature we need to tell you about is called "Ratings." Although this feature has been around a very long time, you could think of it as the "Like" feature from Facebook, including a cute "thumbs up" image on the Like button. Although, unlike Facebook, there is also "Dislike" button which also includes a thumbs down image.
The thumbs up and thumbs down ratings will help your video gain popularity in the general search. Now, let's be a little honest. This ratings feature probably will not bear much influence in the popularity of your video unless you also have thousands of viewers.
We'd love to see you with thousands of viewers for a single video, maybe even hundreds of thousands. But the reality is unless your video goes viral, and unless you spend time on the video SEO, you will be lucky to have a few thousand viewers.
Videos with a higher rating will appear higher in the YouTube search results page. There's no business reason to turn this feature off, so just leave it on and forget about it.
Embedding:
This next feature is one of the most powerful on YouTube. By default, this feature is turned on and it allows someone to copy the HTML code needed to make the video appear on another website.
Perhaps you have a 15 minute video of visiting a diamond mine in South Africa. That video would be good on YouTube and also on your website. By turning the embedding feature on, you are allowing yourself, as well as anyone else, to copy the HTML code needed for your website.
It's this specific feature that will allow someone to watch that aforementioned South African diamond mine video right on your website instead of clicking to open YouTube.com.
Syndication:
This feature has very little prominence right now, but we think it will be very important in the near future. Syndication will allow your video to appear on the YouTube App available on the iPhone and Android phones, as well as the Android tablets, iPads, and iPods.
Have you searched YouTube on your cell phone yet? Certainly your target audience has. Imagine creating an educational video about the 4C's of diamonds and including it in the syndication list. Someone searching for engagement ring information in your local area could easily find your video from their cell phone.
Date and Map:
Of course, any mention of your local area is not complete without a conversation about geo-location settings. The Map setting allows you to enter a specific country, county, city, or street address where your video was recorded or where you would like to target it.
Simply type in your town name into the Map Location field and click the search button. Adjust your interactive map accordingly.
The date setting allows you to select when the video was recorded. If you don't select the actual recording date, you should at least select today's date. The current date will help Google figure out how fresh the video is and therefore give it higher ranking simply because its date says it's newer on YouTube.
TODAY'S SPECIAL MESSAGE: If you have specific questions about your website and would like to have your question broadcast on YouTube with our answer, please reply to this post. Throughout June we will be taking your questions and answering them specifically on our own YouTube channel.
