Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube provide inexpensive, effective marketing for products and services. One of the primary reasons businesses market through these channels is to gain higher page rankings for their websites. A higher ranking means the business site will appear higher in search engine results — increasing awareness of their products and services.
Are Google and YouTube Related?
Yes, indeed. Google owns YouTube, so YouTube videos rank highly in Google search results. Google’s secret algorithm to determine the ranking of YouTube videos is similar to that used for webpage rankings – based on determining the authority of a video channel or webpage. The higher your YouTube video is ranked, the higher its authority, and the higher it will appear in a keyword search.
Will My Popular Video Help My Website Rankings?
Only indirectly. Outgoing backlinks on YouTube contain “nofollow” code, so YouTube channels are useless for building backlinks that directly affect external page rankings. A popular video channel on YouTube may not directly affect your website rankings, but there will be an increase in traffic to your site.
This may result in more clicks, link-backs, and comments, which can then increase the ranking of the site in keyword searches. Because of this increased traffic, your popular YouTube video can indirectly have a very positive effect on your website rankings.
How Do I Increase My Video’s Popularity?
No matter how much you promote your video, viewers must find value and meaning in its content, or it won’t be popular enough to make a difference.
- The first step is to perform some keyword research to determine how people search for the content in your video.
- Then, search on YouTube using these keywords.
- Look at the highest ranking videos that come up and note the keywords used and other content on their channel page.
- Leave meaningful comments on these channels. This will create YouTube backlinks to your YouTube video channel, thus increasing your video’s exposure and popularity.
- YouTube searchers are usually brand agnostic. They are content searchers so make your video content something that can live off your website and still be applicable. If it's good content, then the brand recognition will come.
- YouTube, in the last year, has become even more favored when it comes to showing up in organic searches.
Using social networking platforms effectively to promote your business requires constant updating and promotional activities. It can create many hours of work outside of core business operations, but when done properly, the value added in the form of brand awareness and authority is worth the effort.