YouTube Marketing
- ARTICLES |
One of the most powerful tools on the internet today is YouTube marketing. This site, with its billions of hours of video uploaded every month, provides massive opportunities or those that have the resources to take advantage of it.
Here's why this works so well.
It's exceptionally easy to get ranked using YouTube marketing, even in universal search for your video. Much easier than for a website.
And if you combine the two, you can dominate the top of the rankings for your keywords.
Imagine someone searching for "High Traffic Academy Review" and finding your website at number one, followed by your video at number two in the universal search slots.
This is what I aim to do with every site I launch and while it doesn't work every time, it does significantly improve the efficiency of my other efforts. Here is how I use this strategy.
Creating a Video
A good video is short, to the point and provides key information your viewers need. There are a few ways to interpret that.
Personally, I like to just do a screen capture review or even a live review with me talking to the camera.
There are a few ways to do this. How you approach it will really depend on your niche.
Not the review keyword. This was important for this niche, because the search volume for "how to" keywords is significantly higher and more evergreen than review keywords for specific guides. I can sell any guide to them now because they simply want the info I showed them.
I asked him to do three things:
The Link
You can link to your review site or directly to vendor site using a short-link redirect. I prefer to link to my site so I can further presell them, but in some cases, especially if you do a longer in-depth review, it can benefit you greatly to link directly to the vendor. Whatever you do though, make sure you provide the link early and often (with links on the video itself). You don't want them going to Google to search for it directly.
Tags
YouTube requires you to tag your videos before they are uploaded, but you should be more proactive in tagging. Choose relevant tags that provide a clear outline of what someone is about to watch. In this case, my tags are:
Annotations
YouTube allows you to add text to your videos anywhere you want. Do it! This is one of the most powerful tools on YouTube, and no one does it! This is key, because it gives you an immediate edge over the competition if done properly.
As you can see, I have a note early on describing my review and providing the link back to my website.
Normally I would then followup with more annotations throughout the video giving additional tips, calling out keywords and reminding people of my link. This takes more time, but is well worth it. S
Backlinks
Once your video is published, you need people to see it. This will increase its visibility in YouTube and Google Search. What I usually do is immediately publish the link to my review site, then follow it up by linking directly to the video with the normal trio of RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites and web 2.0 sites. Again, you don't need many links - 5-10 for each type is plenty to get it indexed and boost its position for such a non-competitive keyword. Another thing you can do is mass publish it through social media. Using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest you can get a lot more exposure for your videos. I like to maintain a single Twitter/Facebook account combo for all of my launch leverage sites. This allows me a simple place to publish them when I am ready to get traffic for them.
Five Day YouTube Ranking Strategy
So, how do you take all of this and convert it into a strategy that will get your content ranked in less than a week?
Remember that we are on a short deadline. Our content needs to be ranked in Google by the time that product launches, which gives us very little time to take action. So, it is important to have a clear plan of action in place before we do anything.
Here's the plan.
Day One - Create Your Video
While you can certainly pay someone to create videos for you, as I have done for High Traffic Academy, it is often easier to do it yourself, especially at first. I highly recommend that, for now at least, you do it this way. You will get a lot more out of the process by understanding how it works on your own and then building on the momentum you gain.
To create a video, all you need is a microphone, a screen capture software like Jing (which is free) or Camtasia (which costs $100), and some kind of software to edit your video. Both Macs and PCs come with software that will do this.
I recommend keeping your first video to around 3 minutes in length. By doing this, you can practice more and probably get the entire thing done in less than 20 minutes total. Plus, it is faster to upload.
In your video, review the product, introduce your review site and have people go to either your site or the vendor site (with your affiliate link). If you choose the latter, make sure you mention your bonus offer - a huge way to get people to click your link.
Finally, upload your video:
Fill in all of the information here as I have with your primary keywords, links and other important details. Don't skip any fields. If you don't want to use your personal YouTube account to promote your review sites, you should create a new google account here.
You can create as many as you like and just link them to a new pen name instead of using your own name which is not at all required in this setting.
Day Two - Annotate and Distribute
Now that your video is up and ready to be viewed by the world, it is time to annotate it and add captions.
This is the annotation screen. Simple click on the point in the video you want to add text to and type in your message. When annotating, make sure to include keywords and LSI (related keywords). This will provide textual information for Google to rank your video in the right SERPs.
Make sure to add a caption to your video as well and provide a link to either your review site or the product vendor site.
If you do this strategy, I recommend creating a new channel for each niche you review. Different people will watch your reviews for different types of products - IM, dating, forex, weight loss, etc.
Finally, once your channel and video are ready, start distributing it. Put it on your website to start, creating a new page for it in WordPress and matching the title of the page to the title of the video like this:
Next post the video to major social bookmarking sites through OnlyWire or SocialAdr. Keep it down to just 5-10 sites to minimize the surge of distribution.
I also like to put mine through High Traffic Academy.
You have an unlimited number of articles to use from your spins, so use them to put out as many links as possible to the major content you plan on linking to your site with.
If you have a dedicated Facebook Page or Twitter feed, post your video on these as well. Google tends to give more cred to Twitter and Google+ posts than to Facebook Posts, but Facebook has a viral impact, so it is still worth using.
Day Three - Solicit Views and Comments
You need people to see your content and interact with it for maximum effect. Like all of Google's algorithms, we don't know for sure how videos are ranked, but we DO know that Google likes to see interactivity on those content pages. If people are actively engaging with your content, it's a good sign.
So, we can cheat a little to make that happen.
You can certainly pay someone to go to your YouTube channel and leave a comment, but you can also streamline this a little. Here are the sources I use.
Press Releases
The press release strategy used earlier in this section can be replicated for your videos as well. Just write a release about the product and link to your video instead of your review site.
This is pricey, so I don't recommend it for anything but a very large, very competitive launch - from one of the primary gurus out there - but it it can be very effective if you need to rank quickly for a tough keyword.
Social Media
Again, I highly recommend building and promoting a large social media presence for your review sites.
This is a larger time commitment than most of these leveraged launch sites demand on their own, but over time, if you continue with this strategy (which you should!) this can turn into a massively successful strategy.
It's fast, it's easy and it's highly effective.
See the backlinking module for more information about this.
Day Four - Rinse and Repeat
Do a second video, or a third if you have the time. The more videos you do that follow this strategy, the better chance you will rank for the topic. Another thing to consider is that a large number of people will "borrow" your video for their own review sites.
Personally, I have no problem with this if they don't alter the links in the video (hence the captions and annotations). It only increases the chances that someone uses my links on their review sites.
Day Five - Check Your Traffic
By day five, any press releases you submitted should be active, your video should be ranked in Google search and your video should have at least 100-200 views. This is almost all you ever need to ensure your video does everything it is supposed to do to rank well.
Use Google Analytics and the tracking tools in YouTube to see how you perform for your various promotions and see whether you are ranking with your videos. You will be surprised at how fast a long tail related term will rank in universal search on YouTube.
The Wrap Up
It might get them in trouble someday, but right now it is a well-known fact that Google likes their own content. As marketers, we'd be foolish not to take advantage of that fact.
So, make sure you use YouTube to its fullest benefit and generate traffic to your review site (or directly to the vendor site with an affiliate link). This will generate massive traffic to your site and ensure general dominance of the search rankings.
Leveraging Existing YouTube Content
Does all of this sound like entirely too much work?
No worries. I have a shortcut that, in a number of niches, will work like gold to give you an endless supply of free content. Here is how it works.
YouTube is filled with millions of videos, most of them made by people for the hell of it. Not trying to make a profit or build a massive hub of content - just recording their thoughts on a new product. You can partner with these people to get free content and all it will cost you is a percentage of theoretical profits that wouldn't exist without that content.
Even if you're hesitant to do this on a long term basis, it can work very well to get you started.
So, basically you'll use the exact same video marketing strategy outlined above (possibly combined with High Traffic Academy) but with someone else's videos.
Find a video on YouTube that matches the kind of content you need for your site and then approach that video owner with a proposition. You will add your affiliate links to their video, or a link to your website (or both) in exchange for a percentage of profits generated by that video. Now, just create a custom hoplink in Clickbank or Amazon and track those clicks from the video. If you make money, you split it with the video creator. If you don't, no harm, but now you have more content on your website.
This is a powerful strategy that allows you to take any video on YouTube and attach your own affiliate links to it. You can get as sophisticated with this as you want (and it can work with written content to some degree too), but the idea is simple - join High Traffic Academy.
Here's why this works so well.
It's exceptionally easy to get ranked using YouTube marketing, even in universal search for your video. Much easier than for a website.
And if you combine the two, you can dominate the top of the rankings for your keywords.
Imagine someone searching for "High Traffic Academy Review" and finding your website at number one, followed by your video at number two in the universal search slots.
This is what I aim to do with every site I launch and while it doesn't work every time, it does significantly improve the efficiency of my other efforts. Here is how I use this strategy.
Creating a Video
A good video is short, to the point and provides key information your viewers need. There are a few ways to interpret that.
Personally, I like to just do a screen capture review or even a live review with me talking to the camera.
There are a few ways to do this. How you approach it will really depend on your niche.
Not the review keyword. This was important for this niche, because the search volume for "how to" keywords is significantly higher and more evergreen than review keywords for specific guides. I can sell any guide to them now because they simply want the info I showed them.
I asked him to do three things:
- Show the Website - I wanted him to show off the website for High Traffic Academy, without showing the actual domain name (we want them to go to our site, through our link), and then I wanted him to show off our review site so people could get more in-depth details.
- Personalize It - While I didn't want him to make up stories about the High Traffic Academy, I had him read the guide and provide examples from his life. Not results, as this is a gray area with the FTC and you should be careful to avoid any potential legal issues it represents.
- Be Quick - While a good review article should be as long as possible with tools in place to help readers skim the content, a good review video should be short, at least at first (you can always do an in-depth review video later). Not everyone wants to watch a 15 minute video and because it is harder to skip ahead, you'll just lose their interest.
The Link
You can link to your review site or directly to vendor site using a short-link redirect. I prefer to link to my site so I can further presell them, but in some cases, especially if you do a longer in-depth review, it can benefit you greatly to link directly to the vendor. Whatever you do though, make sure you provide the link early and often (with links on the video itself). You don't want them going to Google to search for it directly.
Tags
YouTube requires you to tag your videos before they are uploaded, but you should be more proactive in tagging. Choose relevant tags that provide a clear outline of what someone is about to watch. In this case, my tags are:
Annotations
YouTube allows you to add text to your videos anywhere you want. Do it! This is one of the most powerful tools on YouTube, and no one does it! This is key, because it gives you an immediate edge over the competition if done properly.
As you can see, I have a note early on describing my review and providing the link back to my website.
Normally I would then followup with more annotations throughout the video giving additional tips, calling out keywords and reminding people of my link. This takes more time, but is well worth it. S
Backlinks
Once your video is published, you need people to see it. This will increase its visibility in YouTube and Google Search. What I usually do is immediately publish the link to my review site, then follow it up by linking directly to the video with the normal trio of RSS feeds, social bookmarking sites and web 2.0 sites. Again, you don't need many links - 5-10 for each type is plenty to get it indexed and boost its position for such a non-competitive keyword. Another thing you can do is mass publish it through social media. Using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest you can get a lot more exposure for your videos. I like to maintain a single Twitter/Facebook account combo for all of my launch leverage sites. This allows me a simple place to publish them when I am ready to get traffic for them.
Five Day YouTube Ranking Strategy
So, how do you take all of this and convert it into a strategy that will get your content ranked in less than a week?
Remember that we are on a short deadline. Our content needs to be ranked in Google by the time that product launches, which gives us very little time to take action. So, it is important to have a clear plan of action in place before we do anything.
Here's the plan.
Day One - Create Your Video
While you can certainly pay someone to create videos for you, as I have done for High Traffic Academy, it is often easier to do it yourself, especially at first. I highly recommend that, for now at least, you do it this way. You will get a lot more out of the process by understanding how it works on your own and then building on the momentum you gain.
To create a video, all you need is a microphone, a screen capture software like Jing (which is free) or Camtasia (which costs $100), and some kind of software to edit your video. Both Macs and PCs come with software that will do this.
I recommend keeping your first video to around 3 minutes in length. By doing this, you can practice more and probably get the entire thing done in less than 20 minutes total. Plus, it is faster to upload.
In your video, review the product, introduce your review site and have people go to either your site or the vendor site (with your affiliate link). If you choose the latter, make sure you mention your bonus offer - a huge way to get people to click your link.
Finally, upload your video:
Fill in all of the information here as I have with your primary keywords, links and other important details. Don't skip any fields. If you don't want to use your personal YouTube account to promote your review sites, you should create a new google account here.
You can create as many as you like and just link them to a new pen name instead of using your own name which is not at all required in this setting.
Day Two - Annotate and Distribute
Now that your video is up and ready to be viewed by the world, it is time to annotate it and add captions.
This is the annotation screen. Simple click on the point in the video you want to add text to and type in your message. When annotating, make sure to include keywords and LSI (related keywords). This will provide textual information for Google to rank your video in the right SERPs.
Make sure to add a caption to your video as well and provide a link to either your review site or the product vendor site.
If you do this strategy, I recommend creating a new channel for each niche you review. Different people will watch your reviews for different types of products - IM, dating, forex, weight loss, etc.
Finally, once your channel and video are ready, start distributing it. Put it on your website to start, creating a new page for it in WordPress and matching the title of the page to the title of the video like this:
Next post the video to major social bookmarking sites through OnlyWire or SocialAdr. Keep it down to just 5-10 sites to minimize the surge of distribution.
I also like to put mine through High Traffic Academy.
You have an unlimited number of articles to use from your spins, so use them to put out as many links as possible to the major content you plan on linking to your site with.
If you have a dedicated Facebook Page or Twitter feed, post your video on these as well. Google tends to give more cred to Twitter and Google+ posts than to Facebook Posts, but Facebook has a viral impact, so it is still worth using.
Day Three - Solicit Views and Comments
You need people to see your content and interact with it for maximum effect. Like all of Google's algorithms, we don't know for sure how videos are ranked, but we DO know that Google likes to see interactivity on those content pages. If people are actively engaging with your content, it's a good sign.
So, we can cheat a little to make that happen.
You can certainly pay someone to go to your YouTube channel and leave a comment, but you can also streamline this a little. Here are the sources I use.
Press Releases
The press release strategy used earlier in this section can be replicated for your videos as well. Just write a release about the product and link to your video instead of your review site.
This is pricey, so I don't recommend it for anything but a very large, very competitive launch - from one of the primary gurus out there - but it it can be very effective if you need to rank quickly for a tough keyword.
Social Media
Again, I highly recommend building and promoting a large social media presence for your review sites.
This is a larger time commitment than most of these leveraged launch sites demand on their own, but over time, if you continue with this strategy (which you should!) this can turn into a massively successful strategy.
It's fast, it's easy and it's highly effective.
See the backlinking module for more information about this.
Day Four - Rinse and Repeat
Do a second video, or a third if you have the time. The more videos you do that follow this strategy, the better chance you will rank for the topic. Another thing to consider is that a large number of people will "borrow" your video for their own review sites.
Personally, I have no problem with this if they don't alter the links in the video (hence the captions and annotations). It only increases the chances that someone uses my links on their review sites.
Day Five - Check Your Traffic
By day five, any press releases you submitted should be active, your video should be ranked in Google search and your video should have at least 100-200 views. This is almost all you ever need to ensure your video does everything it is supposed to do to rank well.
Use Google Analytics and the tracking tools in YouTube to see how you perform for your various promotions and see whether you are ranking with your videos. You will be surprised at how fast a long tail related term will rank in universal search on YouTube.
The Wrap Up
It might get them in trouble someday, but right now it is a well-known fact that Google likes their own content. As marketers, we'd be foolish not to take advantage of that fact.
So, make sure you use YouTube to its fullest benefit and generate traffic to your review site (or directly to the vendor site with an affiliate link). This will generate massive traffic to your site and ensure general dominance of the search rankings.
Leveraging Existing YouTube Content
Does all of this sound like entirely too much work?
No worries. I have a shortcut that, in a number of niches, will work like gold to give you an endless supply of free content. Here is how it works.
YouTube is filled with millions of videos, most of them made by people for the hell of it. Not trying to make a profit or build a massive hub of content - just recording their thoughts on a new product. You can partner with these people to get free content and all it will cost you is a percentage of theoretical profits that wouldn't exist without that content.
Even if you're hesitant to do this on a long term basis, it can work very well to get you started.
So, basically you'll use the exact same video marketing strategy outlined above (possibly combined with High Traffic Academy) but with someone else's videos.
Find a video on YouTube that matches the kind of content you need for your site and then approach that video owner with a proposition. You will add your affiliate links to their video, or a link to your website (or both) in exchange for a percentage of profits generated by that video. Now, just create a custom hoplink in Clickbank or Amazon and track those clicks from the video. If you make money, you split it with the video creator. If you don't, no harm, but now you have more content on your website.
This is a powerful strategy that allows you to take any video on YouTube and attach your own affiliate links to it. You can get as sophisticated with this as you want (and it can work with written content to some degree too), but the idea is simple - join High Traffic Academy.