The Video Marketing Blog

You’re Making a Big Mistake if Your Business Videos Aren’t on YouTube

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We met with a prospect recently – they already have one video and are interested in making more. We asked if they had their video on YouTube. No, they said, we only use it for sales meetings so there’s no reason for it to be on YouTube. So we explained to them that they were making a big mistake.

Yes, YouTube is home to millions of poor-quality videos of babies laughing and dogs chasing their tails. But it is ALSO home to millions of business-related videos. It’s the second-largest search engine on the planet, and businesspeople regularly search YouTube for videos related to their work. Putting your video on YouTube gives you another opportunity to connect with people who are searching for what you do.

But – there’s another important reason to put your videos on YouTube

 Google owns YouTube, and Google preferences YouTube videos. By a lot. A study by Forrester showed that YouTube videos receive 53x more weight than text web pages. Wow. Google is really serious about finding YouTube videos to put on the first page of Google searches.

Here’s an example. Late last year we created six vision therapy videos for our client, Dr John Abbondanza – and put them up on YouTube. Vision therapy is a very broad topic, with practitioners around the world. If Dr Abbondanza had created a new series of web pages about vision therapy, they'd probably show up on page 2,3,4 or beyond in a Google search. But - to the right is a screenshot from page 1 of a Google search for “How Does Vision Therapy Work?” And there’s one of Dr Abbondanza’s videos, very close to the top. And - because all the videos are properly optimized, people can jump right from the videos over to his website.

Properly tagging and optimizing your YouTube videos

Unfortunately, Google cannot watch your video to see what it’s about. So, Google depends on the title, description and tags you add to your video to figure out what searches it belongs in. To optimize your chances of having your video show up in the right searches, follow these guidelines:

• Don’t just use your video’s production title (for example, VT4_03_2011). Make the title reflective of what the video is about – and make sure to include a keyword phrase.
• Start your description with the url of your website, so it’s easy for people to find you on the web.
• Use the description to tell what your video is about, and make sure you include keywords.
• Tag your videos carefully with key words that will help you get found.

If you’ve got business-related videos and they aren't on YouTube, your Internet marketing strategy has a big hole in it. So get them up on YouTube, where they can start doing even more for your business.