No matter if your videos are hosted on YouTube or your own website, sharing them on various social media platforms is an effective way to increase views and overall engagement metrics.

There are lots of things you can do to increase viewership. For instance, when creating your video, include keywords in its title and description that help YouTube’s algorithm determine its relevance to search queries. This will increase its chances of being discovered during searches, but that’s not all you can do.

1. Optimize Your Video for Search

Successful YouTube marketing relies on many components, including search engine optimization (SEO). When implemented effectively, SEO can drive more viewers to your videos and increase audience growth.

To optimize your content for search, begin by choosing a keyword and including it in its title, description and file name of your video. Next, sprinkle that keyword throughout its copy – from the first 25 words through tags and description – as well as hashtags to increase reach and discoverability.

Once your video is uploaded to YouTube, you can also choose a category to help the platform understand what it’s about and increase your reach by having similar playlists include your video.

Finally, your video can include cards and end screens that encourage viewers to engage with it further by offering various forms of interaction: link cards that lead to external websites or merchandise selling platforms, poll cards asking viewers questions about content presented during the video’s final seconds, cards that appear during its closing seconds etc.

2. Optimize Your Title and Description

Video SEO relies on quality content; make sure your videos are engaging enough for viewers to remain watching for an optimal SEO strategy. YouTube pays special attention to “watch time,” so the goal should be creating material that keeps viewers watching your videos.

One way of doing so is by including your target keyword in the title of your video. Learn more here – https://www.raffiti.com as the company takes care of the entire process. When it comes to increasing your hits, you don’t want to skimp on the details; something a professional wouldn’t do.

The description provides another opportunity to include keywords and LSI phrases related to them, while encouraging viewers to subscribe as this is one factor used by YouTube to rank videos. Also, if your video contains cards like fan funding, merchandise selling, or poll cards, includes them in its description to help viewers quickly locate what they’re searching for and extend its watch time.

3. Optimize Your Captions

Video content can be an effective way to build brand recognition, generate leads and expand website traffic and revenue. It gives your target audience what they need in an engaging format that’s easier for them to digest than text-only documents. But optimizing YouTube videos for search will ensure they appear relevantly when searched for online.

Start by optimizing your title and description with keywords you are targeting, making sure the keyword(s) appear both in its title as well as naturally throughout its textual description. Industry tags may help YouTube understand more easily what topic it covers while increasing discovery – just don’t overdo it, as their algorithm tracks tags for spammy use which could flag it from being uploaded!

Closed captions should also be added to videos that are long or difficult to comprehend, especially those featuring long speeches or abstract material. Closed captions are read by YouTube Search Engine and give your piece more ranking power; don’t rely on auto-captions which may not always provide accurate subtitles and can even negatively affect SEO rankings.

4. Optimize Your Call-To-Actions

As any video marketer on YouTube knows, dwell time is an invaluable factor in rankings that you can learn more about here. That’s why it’s essential that viewers take action following your videos – whether that means subscribing, learning more, visiting a website, or making purchases – whether by verbally asking them directly or using YouTube’s built-in features such as CTA overlay ads and end screens.

YouTube also counts comments and social shares as positive signals that your videos meet viewers’ expectations, so responding to any inquiries made in the comment section could have an immediate effect on video ranking. A study conducted by Backlinko found that answering such queries significantly boosts video rankings.

There are numerous tools available to you for optimizing YouTube videos. By using these tools you can do things like analyze any high-performing content and figure out why it worked so well; such as its keywords tagged, average watch time or any other metrics; you can then make decisions based on this knowledge about what worked for others and use this as a benchmark when planning future content creation efforts.

5. Optimize Your Video Thumbnails

If you aren’t using a custom thumbnail for each video, you should. Doing so can have a tremendous effect on the click-through rate (https://calculator.academy/click-through-rate-calculator/) used by YouTube to determine whether or not they recommend them.

CTR stands for click through rate, and when that figure increases it means more people are clicking your videos, which increases your rankings on YouTube’s homepage and suggested videos list. Therefore, optimizing thumbnails as much as possible to ensure they’re clear and engaging to viewers is vital in reaching this goal.

Use bold, contrasting colors in your thumbnails so that the text stands out against its background, and ensures it ties in with your brand aesthetic.

When possible, include links or calls-to-action like this in both your video description and thumbnail image to boost search engine optimization and encourage viewers to visit your website or social media channels. However, be wary of including too many calls-to-action as this may become a source of distraction that decreases the overall user experience.

6. Optimize Your Social Media Posts

No matter if your video content is being created for YouTube or social media, it is vitally important that it focuses on what its viewers want. Keywords can help viewers locate relevant video and increase its ranking within search results – tools like Google Keyword Planner can assist in this regard easily.

Use of relevant keywords in titles and descriptions can also increase search rankings, while adding hashtags relating to your videos on social media can draw viewers directly to them. If you interview an influential guest, adding their name as part of a hashtag increases their chance of being exposed to your post and views will come faster.