Getting Your Videos Discovered on YouTube

If you are a business owner, there are some very good reasons why you should be making use of YouTube as a platform for marketing your products and services. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, and is owned by Google, which is the number one search engine used globally. Anyone who conducts searches on Google is therefore very likely to see a number of YouTube video posts which pop up right along with all the text-based articles and blogs.If you're not posting content on YouTube, you're probably missing out on a great marketing opportunity which can increase your visibility on the Internet, and which can reach a great many more users than you currently do. Here are some ways that you can get your YouTube videos seen more frequently, and thus help to spread the word about whatever it is you're trying to sell.

How video gets discovered on YouTube

There are several different ways in which videos can be discovered on YouTube, beginning with a simple search for content by any user of the platform. Many users find videos by browsing content and being referred to a suggested video which has similar content. Some users also watch playlists, and discover videos which are related to those on the current playlist, and decide to give those videos of you as well.It's also possible for users to discover entirely new channels when using video collaborations, or to view recommended videos which are displayed on the YouTube homepage. If you'd like to get in on some of these discovery methods, and have YouTube recommend your video, you'll need to help YouTube accomplish its own objectives.These include getting more people to watch YouTube, holding the attention of viewers for longer periods of time, and having users engage more fully with content they are viewing. The ultimate goal for YouTube is to have viewers engage with the maximum number of videos, to subscribe to the most number of channels possible, to view the most number of ads, and to relate their experiences to friends and relatives.

Create videos which bring people to YouTube

YouTube has a tendency to place videos on viewers' homepages which have general appeal, or which have specific appeal to that particular user. As an example, if you tend to watch videos about Major League Baseball, you will probably find a number of videos on your homepage related to Big League Baseball whenever you log on to the platform. User viewing habits are recorded by YouTube, and if possible, recommended videos are presented which are in line with those viewing habits, even going right down to the specific days when you watch specific videos.As owner of a particular YouTube channel, or even just as a savvy marketer, you can use these viewer habits to your advantage, by aligning your posting schedule with them. When you consistently produce videos which match up with users' viewing habits, it has the effect of bringing people to the platform regularly. Once YouTube realizes that your videos are responsible for bringing people online, you'll start to notice that your videos are recommended to a larger number of other viewers.

Create videos which encourage full viewership

One of the most important metrics for Google in determining the value of a video is how long a user watches that video. For instance, if the majority of viewers tend to abandon a video prior to reaching the 10-second Mark, it will probably be assigned a low value score by Google. On the other hand, videos which consistently encourage watching all the way to the end, will get a much higher score from Google, and will be considered to have greater value.Users who understand audience retention and how important it is to YouTube, will tend to produce videos which encourage viewership right through to the end. It is definitely possible, by analyzing statistics associated with viewer watch time, to determine what triggers users to abandon a video, and what causes them to watch all the way through. If you can master the production of videos which promote full viewership of particular videos, you will be creating content which is much more valuable to YouTube, and which it is much more likely to recommend to others.There are a few general rules you can apply to encourage longer watch time of your videos. One of these is to include relevant and valuable content right up until the end, and by carefully avoiding any words or phrases throughout the video which suggest that you have already supplied the information of value. Another good way of encouraging longer watch time is to get your video into a short playlist of content, so that users will watch as many as three or four consecutive videos, including yours.

Other ways of being discovered

The main things that video producers can control on the YouTube platform are the high quality of any content which is uploaded, and the information included in metadata. Metadata consists of the video's title, a description of the contents, and any relevant tags which are applied to the content. In years past, video creators would stuff metadata with keywords intended to attract searchers, and that was successful for a while. However, eventually Google and YouTube figured out that this amounted to no more than keyword stuffing, and it wasn't really what searchers were interested in. Nowadays, pretty much everyone understands that it is necessary to optimize your video for people rather than robots.

Things to keep in mind

One thing you should be very aware of is that no single video is going to be able to accomplish a dozen objectives for you – and it doesn't need to. You should have much more modest goals when creating a high-quality YouTube video, and you should have one specific goal with each video that you create. That might be discoverability, it might be to increase sales, or it might be to establish more community between your followers, but each video should be focused on a single objective.When users are effectively introduced to your brand by your first few videos, you can then use each subsequent video to encourage more viewership, and you can deliver more high-quality content to followers in the process. Consider each YouTube video that you produce a baby step toward your ultimate goal, and focus on a more immediate objective with each video you post.