Utilizing YouTube Effectively For Local SEO
Lately SEO for local search has been in a state of near constant change. Now that Google has rolled out recent interface changes and launched Hummingbird, the emphasis is being put on the breadth of your website instead of mainly being keyword focused like we’ve seen Google prefer in the past. In terms of what this means for local search – your company’s use of social channels should now be considered an asset whereas it used to serve as simply another outlet to push out content.
For too long now, SEO strategists have been preoccupied with the “…usual SEO suspects like link building, co-citation, anchor texts, on-site optimization, and so on.” In today’s world with so many interface changes and new SEO tools at our disposal, it is time to think outside the box. According to experts at HitTail, in order to properly utilize the impact YouTube can have on your local SEO, consider engaging in the following activities:
- Placing your website link in the description
- Make sure your NAP is included (Name, Address, Phone)
- Use Geotagging for your videos
- More Tagging Of Your Video
- Juice up your description field
- Associate your video with Google Places Listings & Google+ Local Page
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In terms of visitors and usage, YouTube is a giant and that kind of size matters. These statistics will surprise you:
▪ More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month
▪ Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year
Although it is massively important to keep abreast with listing management across various search engine sites, YouTube gets a few billion searches more than industry giants Yahoo and Bing. Oh yeah – don’t forget that Google owns YouTube as well. If you are serious about SEO and you want to increase your Google page rank by building trust, utilizing YouTube is a pretty good place to start. Convinced yet?
You might be wondering how to actually use YouTube for local SEO purposes. As I alluded to above, first understand that there are many, many ways to do this. To give you an example though, think about a big company like Starbucks. When Starbucks creates video content and posts it to YouTube, they properly tag the video(s) so that Google will identify proper keywords to help customers find what they are looking for. And as we’ve already iterated above, Google’s new search engine called “Hummingbird” will make the search process even better. But let’s get back to the task at hand. Once Starbucks has properly tagged their video(s), they can then sync them up with all their Google + pages. As a result, each individual location will be synced to the same video content, allowing customers to find the information they are looking for on a local level. For more information on how to utilize YouTube for local SEO,
As you discover the wonderful advantage you stand to inherit should you utilize YouTube for local SEO purposes, keep in mind that there are still a variety of very useful tools at your fingertips out there on the web. YouTube is a great place to gain traction for your business but by no means should it be the only tool you use.