Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'The Marketing Value of YouTube'
Posted by PhilNottingham
One of the earliest questions considered by any business, large or small,
investing in video marketing will certainly be, Should I have a YouTube
channel?"
The answer: probably.
.....but it depends on the type of business you are, the kind of content youre
creating and the goals you have for your videos.
In this post, Im going to expand on that answer and outline the core values
most businesses can hope to gain from YouTube as a marketing channel - detailing
how those values can best be achieved, and by inference, when YouTube is an
appropriate platform to host your videos.
What can YouTube do for me?
YouTube is an interesting beast to varying degrees: a search engine, a hosting
service, an advertising platform, a social network, and a community site.
Yet, its identity from a user perspective is that its much less convoluted.The
main reason people go to YouTube:to find and watch videos on the internet.
YouTube is like "Inbound TV."
No matter how users get to YouTube - through Google universal search, via
social media or by navigating directly to youtube.com in their browser - the
intent is the same:watch a video.
By and large, people dont go to YouTube to find products or services to buy;
they dont go there to get news, restaurant recommendations, or travel
directions. They go there for one reason - to watch a video, with the goal of
finding something informative or entertaining.
Search Term
Global Monthly Search Volume - Google
Global Monthly Search Volume - YouTube
Insurance
55,600,000
9,000
Funny Cats
368,000
349,400
In order to get benefit from having a presence YouTube as a marketer, your
strategy needs to harness the nature of user intent, rather than work against
it.
This means you either need to serve user intent by creating content that will
inform, instruct, or entertain; or support user intent by creating ads which can
be served as preroll content to users watching videos relevant to your business.
The primary value your business can gain from investing in such content:
With the right content, those watching informational/entertaining videos can
get to know your brand better and in a positive light; while ads, in precisely
the TV advertising vein, can improve brand recall, perceived legitimacy, and
overall reputation.
There are also some secondary, smaller benefits a presence on YouTube can
provide.
Social network integration
Google+, Facebook, and Twitter all integrate YouTube embeds into their platform
framework, allowing users to watch videos directly from their feeds without
having to leave the social networks themselves.
Video remarketing opportunities
If youre running a PPC campaign, having a YouTube channel allows you to
remarket to individuals who have watched your YouTube videos with ads on YouTube
and across the Google Display Network (GDN).
More effective PR campaigns
Video news releases (VNR's) can be a great way of getting coverage and links
from high authority news sites, as the added media element helps to ensure that
your press release makes it to the top of a journalists pile. YouTube is the
ideal platform with which to provide video news releases, since the majority of
journalists and editors are familiar with how YouTube works, know how to embed
YouTube videos, and are typically happy including YouTube videos on their site.
What kind of content should I be creatingfor YouTube?
As YouTube is as much a community site as a search engine, successful video
content needs to be created for the platform, not just simply uploaded there by
default.
If your company are creating videos and the default position is that all your
videos (irrespective of content type or target audience) automatically get
uploaded to YouTube,then youre doing it wrong and potentially cannibalizing the
benefit you should be getting from your videos.
As Greg Jarboe aptly indicated in this post about the channel-ization of
YouTube,"In order to be successful on YouTube in 2013, you need a coherent
channel strategy."
Really great YouTube campaigns are generally not comprised of one-hit wonders
and a lot of supporting content that hasnt done as well. Great channels (e.g.The
Slow Mo GuysandOld Spice)have successful release after successful release,
building upon quality video after quality video. Your channel strategy should
essentially mirror a blogging strategy. Successful blogs like SEOmoz are not
built off the back of a single quality post and then filled with mediocre
content the rest of the way; the readership compounds over time with continued
quality over time.
Google is also trending towards ranking more "channel results" in the YouTube
and Google universal search (e.g. this SERPfor downhill mountain biking), as
well as ranking individual video pages. This channel-focused ranking means that
If you have videos that arent performing, then they will be dragging down the
perceived algorithmic value of the rest of your channel and preventing it (and
the videos held within) from ranking as well as they should. Your YouTube
channel should, therefore, be lean and mean, containing only content relevant
and interesting for users who don't necessarily have prior knowledge of your
brand. If you integrate this principle into a wider video marketing strategy, it
should look something like:
Content that you want your site to rank for (conversion focused) is self
hosted/hosted with a paid online video platform.
Content that you want to share with those who arent yet part of the conversion
funnel (branding focused) is be placed on YouTube.
Your YouTube channel needs to have series of content that people will actively
seek out and want to watch. This could take any of the following forms:
1. Thought leadership
Display your company as thought leaders in a specific industry by offering free
information that demonstrates your skills/intelligence and provides genuine
value for users. This can be done either by presenting strategic, academic
thought leadership content (such as speeches/seminars), or by offering tips
about a given field of knowledge, as demonstrated in this example from
Sophosoffering quick 1 minute IT security tips.
Has someone in your company recently delivered a presentation at a conference?
Try running a Google+ hangout on air to run through your presentation again,
specifically for wider remote audience. All it takes is a laptop and a webcam.
2. Tutorials and how-to's
YouTube is a fantastic place to find how-to's and many people prefer to get
instruction from a video, rather than a text-heavy blog post. As with the
thought leadership example, if you have specific and uncommon knowledge within
your organization that others would likely benefit from learning about, simple
tutorials can be a fantastic asset.
This channelfrom PartSelect is a fantastic low-budget example. PartSelect sell
parts for appliances, and theyve given away tons of in-depth tutorials about how
to install said parts for consumer appliances, alongside some wider advice for
maintenance. While the content is closely related to what they sell, the videos
are relevant for anyone trying fix a consumer appliance, not only their
customers. This makes it appropriate and valuable for an audience on YouTube.
3. Ads
Paying for video views through YouTube advertising is a completely legitimate
way to generate traction on YouTube. Paid views will increase your overall view
count, and while this wont help your content to rank better, it can help to make
your channel appear more authoritative and well-trafficked than it would have
been without the ad spend. Bear in mind that, dependent on the type of ad
placement, users will be able to skip pre-roll ads at 5, 15, or 30 seconds, so
ensure your video captures the imagination and attention of your audience. If
you have a video that takes a couple of minutes to get going before the core
message is reached, then its not going to be suitable for this sort of
advertising placement.
4. Creative stories attached to your brand
This definition relates to what is perhaps more commonly referred to as viral
content within marketing circles, but i dislike this phrase because content that
goes viral but provides no positive reinforcement of a message around your
brand, and ultimately won't convert to sales or revenue.
As a business, you should not be trying to replicate the success of Rebecca
Blacks "Friday"or I want to hug every single cat since there would be no
commercial benefit from you doing so. Going viral is only beneficial if you can
attach your brand to the messaging, but to actually make the content sharable,
there will need to be a story integrated, too. Check out this example from Air
New Zealand:
So, how do I know if my business should have a YouTube channel?
If your customers, or the influencers of your customers are watching videos on
YouTube related to your industry, then you should have a YouTube channel.
Every company has something to be gained from building their brand, notoriety,
and reputation. YouTube can be a fantastic channel to help achieve that goal,
but only if you have a great idea for content that a specific brand-agnostic
user group will genuinely value.
If youre doing paid search, YouTube can be valuable addition to an integrated
campaign; if youre doing PR, YouTube can help you get to the top of the pile on
a journalists desk; and if youre engaging with users through social media,
YouTube can help to boost the engagements with your posts and campaigns.
When is YouTube not the appropriate platform for my videos?
When the content is heavily product focused and the videos only really make
sense in the context of users who are, at least, initially familiar with your
business and are therefore part of the way through a conversion funnel, it might
not make the best video content.
When you wish to get video rich snippets for any commercially focused page on
your site. YouTube videos will often outrank your site in universal search,
which cannibalises your potential traffic and splitting potential link equity
between YouTube and your site.
When your main goal is to build links or social shares directly back to pages
on your own site through video embeds. Embedded YouTube videos only link back to
YouTube.
In all such instances, youre better off hosting your videos yourself or with a
paid online video platform that will allow you to restrict where your videos can
be embedded, and thereby drive all traffic and links back to your own site.
How do I measure the success of my YouTube marketing campaigns?
The single, most important indicator of success for a YouTube campaign
is:branded search volume.
This is true whether you are running an ad campaign through YouTube
Advertising, whether youre seeding the content socially to generate traction
amongst your community, or whether youre doing YouTube SEO to try and optimize
the rankings of your video in YouTube and Google organic search results.
If individuals are getting to know your business and are specifically searching
for you in Google and Bing more frequently than before, youll know your videos
have had a positive effect. Unfortunately, (not provided) will skew your ability
to accurately measure the amount of traffic your site gets from branded
keywords. However, by tracking percentages increases in branded traffic,
movements on Google trends, and looking at search queries in Google webmaster
tools, you should be able to get a flavour for any positive trends.
Alternatively, if youre doing PPC for your brand name (which you probably should
be), then ensure youre buying unlimited exact match impressions for your brand
name and look for an increase in impressions over time.
Brand mentions should also be tracked. This can be done elegantly with the new
Fresh Web Explorer. Enterprise-level companies can even run brand recognition
surveys and aim to see an increase in unprompted recall.
There are some secondary indicators of success, which should predate any
notable increase in branded traffic or branded search volume. These include:
Referring traffic from YouTube
Any referring traffic you do get from YouTube will almost certainly be a very
small number compared with the individuals who have watched your videos.
Nonetheless, it can be a small indicator of the traction and interest your
videos are providing, since users who actively leave YouTube to explore a
different site have clearly been intrigued by the offering in your video
content.
Theres three ways you can include links back to your site from YouTube videos:
Include a link in the description, just as a naked URL with no anchor text.
Set up the content for advertisingand get an Ad overlay link.
Get approved YouTube partner status (by allowing preroll ads form other
companies on your videos) and then include links back to your site within your
annotation.
Engagement on YouTube
YouTube Analytics has aRelative audience retention report, which gives you a
snap shot into how good Google thinks your video is, based on how many people
have started watching your video and then continued all the way to the end.
This graph is one of the major ranking factors which Google/YouTube use to
determine the placement of a video in the search engine results, and you should
continually be improving and optimising your content to try and minimise the
drops and thereby retain as many viewers as possible to the end of your video.
Your goal here is to see the "average view duration" percentage remaining high
across all your uploads.
If you have some videos which have dramatically lower average view duration
than others, it's a pretty clear indicator this content is not up to scratch,
and you should, therefore, think about removing that content to boost the
overall relative performance of your channel.
Don't measure views. No, really, don't measure views.
YouTube view counters are essentially the equivalent of hits on a website and
are triggered when someone loads up a video, whether or not they actually watch
the content through.
In judging the performance of our own sites, weve moved away from measuring
website hits to look at more meaningful metrics of success, such as unique
non-bouncing visits, time on site, and conversion rate. For some reason, the
majority of us seem to subconsciously assume that YouTube videos should be
judged based on the number of views in the counter. Raw views have not been a
significant ranking factor on YouTube for years and they dont indicate anything
other than a page load. As such, they are a vanity metric that we use to replace
audience numbers from the traditional TV model.
The YouTube estimated minutes watchedreport and "average view duration" figures
are aa much more useful indicator of overall success that counts for bouncing
visits.
FAQ about YouTube and video marketing
"Cant YouTube also drive a lot of traffic to my site, as well as help to build
my brand?"
An anonymous Distilled client, who had set up advertising annotations, put
links in the video descriptions and included annotations on the video linking
back to their site - all with the goal of driving traffic from YouTube. They
recently got 415,000 views across all their videos for the month of December
2012. From these views, they received a grand total of 19 referrals from
YouTube.com, which comes in at a click through rate of 0.005%. This is,
admittedly, a relatively extreme example, but I am yet to see an example of a
channel that gets greater than 1% click through rate.
So, yes, YouTube can drive some traffic, but its almost always going to be a
secondary value to the branding and reputation built through video views.
Hosting video on YouTube with the specific goal of driving traffic is,
therefore, likely a poor strategy and one where where securely hosting your
content with a paid provider and submitting a video sitemap to get your videos
indexed with rich snippets on your own site is likely a better option.
"Google owns YouTube. Therefore, is embedding YouTube videos on my site, rather
than self-hosting my videos better for SEO? Will having YouTube videos embedded
on my site help me to rank better?"
No, I dont think so, as there is no barrier to entry to embed YouTube videos.
If one person can embed a video, then anyone can embed said video - and the
methods currently in placeto determine ownership of YouTube videos with regards
to a specific site are fairly rudimentary.
YouTube videos are, by and large, embedded in iframes since this is a
lightweight, reliable, and mobile-friendly solution. When reading iframes,Google
attribute the content to the original sourceif this page is indexable (i.e. not
blocked via robots.txt).
Therefore, when You embed a YouTube video, you should essentially think of it
as like a vote, or a link to that video on YouTube.com. There are many reasons
why this is a good thing. Since embeds and links are definitely a ranking factor
on YouTube, meaning embedding your YouTube videos will help them to rank better
in YouTube and in Google universal search....but for the youtube.com URL, and
not your own site.
I dont see this trend changing any time soon. Google want marketers to use
YouTube to host all their videos, but so they can drive more traffic to (and
thereby serve more ads from) their own properties, rather than your website.
Conversely, when you use a secure third party video hosting provider (e.g.
Wistia)or choose to self host your videos, embedding restrictions will allow you
to ensure the video is only visible on your site and thereby show off unique
content to Googlebot, especially when a crawlable encapsulated version of your
video file is referenced in the content_loc tag of a video sitemap. Through such
a process, you can defacto "canonicalise" your own page with regards to a
specific video embed, which you are unable to do using free social video
platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Thats not to say that either self hosting or hosting with YouTube is better for
SEO," but rather that Google has much more to gain from ranking their own
platform in the SERPs, rather than ranking a user's own website. However, that
doesn't mean YouTube is inherently "preferred" in the search results and
self-hosted videos can rank just as well as YouTube videos, provident that
they're embedded on a fairly strong page and a video sitemap is submitted. If
you want to drive traffic back to your site through rich snippets in the search
results, then self hosting or securely hosting is undoubtedly the way to go.
"YouTube is the worlds second biggest search engine. If I decide YouTube is not
a good platform for me, am I not cutting off a huge potential customer base?"
There is a common misconception rooted in the fact that YouTube has 1 billion
unique visitors per month.The myth is that if you dont have any content on
YouTube, youre missing out on marketing to a demographic three times the size of
the population of the entire United States.
The argument above is a complete misnomer. The YouTube community is not a
discrete bunch of individuals who only spend time on YouTube, but rather a wider
spread group of general web users watching videos on the website.
While lacking a YouTube presence may be prevent you from marketing through this
specific channel, it does not prevent you from marketing to a specific
demographic. Especially since the Google account integration with YouTube last
year, the overwhelming majority of YouTube users are also Google users, and
visa-versa. In laymans terms, not being on YouTube doesnt prevent you from
marketing to a certain group of people, but it does prevent you from marketing
to them in this specific way.
I hope you found this post useful. If you have any other questions I havent
covered about YouTube or the wider field of video SEO and video marketing,
please do feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to help you out.
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