Digital Cowboys Episode #8 | Optimising Videos for Youtube

Posted by Cameron Francis on 20 Jun , 2017 in

Learn how to increase your website traffic through video content! Master the art of optimising videos for YouTube with Cameron Francis and Sam Roshan as they discuss how to use tags wisely, create strong call to actions and develop video concepts based on customer value, including pro-tips for small to medium business owners. Tune in to learn more in this episode of The Digital Cowboys.

Show Notes:

Keyword Research – 00:02:03:27
Keyword Tool.io – 00:03:38:19
YouTube Video Maker – 00:04:50:11
Create an Optimised Title – 00:06:05:14
Use Tags Wisely – 00:08:11:12
Create a Full Description – 00:08:54:10
Create a Strong Call to Action – 00:10:51:08
Develop Video Concepts Based on Customer Values – 00:12:44:06
Repurposing Video Content – 00:13:40:25

Transcript

Sam Roshan:	Let’s talk about, when you’re creating videos, what are the things that you
	want to consider. One of them is actually doing some keyword research.
Sam Roshan:	It’s actually create the topic and the video that you want to put together.
	You really want to be able to see what people are actually searching for, so
	create the videos around search-based queries.
Cameron Francis:	Take the time to write it out to explain what the video is about. At the very
	top of the description, I would generally write, “For more information, go
	to URL,” and that URL would be our website, or in a page, it’ll be our
	contact details plus the people.
Voice Over:	Digital Cowboys Episode 8.
	We discuss everything digital marketing and growth hacking for small
	businesses, startups and entrepreneurs. If you want that competitive edge,
	then saddle up because Cameron Francis and Sam Roshan are about to
	drop some value bombs.
Cameron Francis:	Hey, everybody, this is Cameron Francis …
Sam Roshan:	And you’re with Sam Roshan.
Cameron Francis:	… and this is the Digital Cowboys.
Sam Roshan:	Cowboys.
Cameron Francis:	Right on. How are you today, Sam?
Sam Roshan:	There are so many things that I would want to replace ‘Cowboys’ with, and
	I find just really funny.
Cameron Francis:	What’s one?
Sam Roshan:	There’s thing I want to mention. We’ll just stick to Cowboys.
Cameron Francis:	What do you want to talk about today?
Sam Roshan:	I think today we have a pretty good and interesting topic, which is
	optimizing videos for YouTube.
Cameron Francis:	Love it. We all know who YouTube is. It is the … Is it the number one search
	engine, or is it number two? It’s one or two.
Sam Roshan:	Yeah, it’s top two and they’re both owned by the same people.
Cameron Francis:	Owned by the same people. YouTube’s massive, so many people are using
	it, watching it, all walks of life. You can use it as a really effective marketing
	tool and also you can siphon from free traffic for people that are looking for
	how-tos about your business, etc, etc.

Sam Roshan:	And it is the world’s second largest search engine.
Cameron Francis:	Kaboom.
Sam Roshan:	Just Google it.
Cameron Francis:	Let’s just start with all the value. Number one, what would you want to do?
Sam Roshan:	Let’s talk about when you’re creating videos, what are things that you want
	to consider. One of them is actually doing some keyword research. It’s
	actually create the topic and the video that you want to put together. You
	really want to able to see what people are actually searching for, so create
	the videos around search-based queries.
Cameron Francis:	How would you do that?
Sam Roshan:	One of the easiest ways to do this is just to go to google.com.au and just
	look at how-to, what and basically look at keywords around your industry
	and the how-to and the whats and the why. Google will start preempting
	the queries that people have been asking about. Also if you wanted to like,
	for example, talk about dental fillings, because I just one done today …
Cameron Francis:	Very good.
Sam Roshan:	… so Google
Cameron Francis:	So if people are wondering why he’s talking a little bit funny, and he’s
	actually salivating from his mouth, it’s because he went to the dentist.
Sam Roshan:	I am not. That’s all bollocks, but that’s cool. When you’re looking at dental
	fillings, if you just scroll down on the search results on Google search
	results, so you’ll be able to see all the related search terms.
	The easiest way, and there’s multiple ways of doing this, so you can also
	use Google Keyword Planner Tool. But I think to just make it really easy,
	Google just really is trying to, and has been always wanting to provide the
	most relevant search results for the end-user, and they do that, so it makes
	it really easy for you to do your keyword research. Just Google it.
	The other one is you’ve got plug-ins like the KeywordsTool.io. Cameron,
	maybe if you want to just share a little bit about KeywordTool.io.
Cameron Francis:	All right. KeywordsTool.io. It’s a tool that we use for our SEO clients to find
	money keywords, good keywords, keyword research, keyword volume,
	competitiveness. It’s really good. There’s a few tabs in there you can use to
	get Bing, obviously, Google, and there’s a tab for YouTube. A lot of them
	are going to be question-based queries. So, your ‘what, where, how, when.’
	I liked your idea of going to Google. I like the fact that you can interpret the
	information then it gives you on the SERPs. Let’s just say we do SEO, all
	right. So what? SEO. What is SEO? Easy. Where? Where SEO. Where should
	you do SEO? Why? Easy. Why should you do SEO?
Sam Roshan:	Where you should do SEO.

Cameron Francis:	Where should you do SEO? Country-based. Should you do SEO overseas?
	The intent’s the same even if the question is a little bit different, but you
	just got to be smart enough to be able to tailor that yourself, so, yeah,
	keyword research, absolute must if you’re wanting to get as much traffic as
	possible. What else have we got?
Sam Roshan:	YouTube Video Marker. It’s quite self-explanatory. There is multiple tools
	out there that actually you can go online and search for this. There’s a lot of
	types of softwares that you can actually create your videos from or edit
	them. It makes it a lot easier and it is quite cost-efficient, and it’s a fantastic
	way for you to be able to get the ball rolling.
	One of the things that a lot of businesses always struggle with and I know
	that all the gurus mention that today it’s execution. You might have all
	these ideas and you want to do things. It becomes overwhelming and
	there’s so many tasks to do throughout the day. We get it. It happens to all
	businesses, especially when you’re small to medium size because you’ve
	got so many hats on.
	At the end of the day it’s just something that you have to do because the
	world is becoming a competitive space. There’s so much content being
	pushed out there and if you’re not producing any valuable content as part
	of the value proposition that every business ideally should have, and
	YouTube Video Maker, it makes it easier. You want to do this as
	cost-efficiently as possible. It’s a way to be able to do your videos and
	there’s a lot of good, easy tools that you can use.
Cameron Francis:	Very good.
Sam Roshan:	What’s next?
Cameron Francis:	The title. It’s obviously the first thing that gets seen. On the actual video
	itself, I would optimize the title to make sure, first of all, it’s catchy and it
	explains what the video is, but it doesn’t hurt to actually make it
	keyword-rich, right? If you’re targeting, “What is SEO?” that’s going to be
	the title of the actual video itself, “What is SEO?” You put your own brand
	name in there as well, so you want to put a straight line, and then, put the
	business name so that you’re able to target both of them. Utilizing your
	keyword research, you find the most searched phrase, and that’s generally
	going to be the title of the YouTube video.
Sam Roshan:	Very cool. What I just did is I just typed in “How to lose weight fast,” for no
	apparent reason, just to find out-
Cameron Francis:	Because you’re vain.
Sam Roshan:	… What was that?
Cameron Francis:	Because you’re vain?
Sam Roshan:	Because I am vain, probably. Just to find out, I guess, looking at some of the
	titles that are being created. What I did is actually just jumped on to page
	10 and the second listing there, the title states “Quick Sweats Cardio

	Workout to Lose Weight and Burn Belly Fat Fast.” Looking at the first
	listing, the first listing is giving us … what is the title? “How to Lose Weight
	Fast, 10 Kilos in 10 Days,” so just doing a comparison between the two.
	Although their intent is the same, one is straight to the point, but also,
	obviously, it’s ranking quite well. It’s got all the …
Cameron Francis:	For example, I’ll give you some examples that we’ve done. If you actually
	search for Anzac Day, kablammy, our video appears number one, 80,000
	viewers. “What is Anzac Day?” question, targeting that keyword by
	ETRAFFIC and there’s a few more. Like if you type in “web design
	Melbourne,” we’ve got videos there. The idea, make sure that you’ve got
	the question inside the extra title and you want to reference your business
	name and what you just mentioned as well.
Sam Roshan:	Great.
Cameron Francis:	What else you got?
Sam Roshan:	Tags.
Cameron Francis:	Tags are very important.
Sam Roshan:	Very important. You got to use them wisely, really consider who you’re
	trying to target, what they are going to be searching and so on. Just make
	sure that the tags are really relevant, and just don’t go nuts. You have to
	really be concise with what your tags are, and just keep it uniform
	throughout all your videos that you produce.
Cameron Francis:	Hashtag pro tip: What I like to do is use competitor channel names and
	competitor names as tags so that when people are searching for them, our
	video appears. It does work. Give it a crack.
Sam Roshan:	Very good. Very good.
Cameron Francis:	All right. Next, the actual description itself. There’s a couple of things I like
	to do here. With the description, take the time to write it out, to explain
	what the video is about. At the very top of the description I would generally
	write, “For more information, go to URL,” and that URL will be our website,
	or in a page, it’ll be our contact details plus some people. If they want to
	call or contact or make an inquiry, they’ll be able to go through there as
	well. But the description underneath that is all going to be the value that
	the video gives.
	I’ll also have some links embedded so links within the actual description
	itself …
Sam Roshan:	Always.
Cameron Francis:	… so that people can go through to those particular pages. Yeah, I think
	that’s about … and a call to action at the end, so it’s a typical description.
	Like you just go through some videos …
Sam Roshan:	…closed captions. Even if you only upload is transcripts …

Cameron Francis:	Yup, yup. Well, with the transcript, that’s a must. Because what people can
	do is they can get your video, they can see if the content is in written form
	on Google, and they can actually get the transcript of your video, and then,
	claim as their own content, right? So if you’re not uploading the transcript
	or the actual content on your website itself, then you don’t get the actual
	written value that Google can bring.
	What we do is we got a website called Rev.com. Some of our videos are
	pretty long, right, so they’ll actually transcribe this audio for us. I’ll upload
	the audio and for an hour audio, it will cost us 15 bucks, but can you
	imagine sitting through listening and writing it out how much that would
	cost from a time perspective? So I use that, and then, based on that, we
	will upload it into YouTube and make sure that it’s on our website as well.
	Website gets the benefits from an SEO perspective.
Sam Roshan:	Also, an example is something that Cam mentioned earlier with regards to
	call to actions, like, share, comment, subscribe to our channel. Just real
	simple things, but very effective.
Cameron Francis:	On that actual video itself, I would make sure that I am at the very end. I’ll
	have the still frame of the video, and you can use that as an outro, so a still
	frame and on that still frame it’s going to have links embedded to all the
	social channels. It’ll have an arrow pointing to “Subscribe to our page.”
	It will have “Watch the next episode,” and then embed the video that you
	want them to watch after the current video right on that screen. That’s all
	on maybe 10, 15 seconds on the still frame, but utilizing that time because
	people are on your page, they’re ready to go through more content. This
	will make sure that you get more engagement.
Sam Roshan:	Cool.
Cameron Francis:	The other thing that I would add would be making sure that you have a
	really strong call to action. At the end of the video, you’ve got to think …
	Sorry, let’s go back. You’ve created this video for a purpose. You’re
	satisfying someone’s need. They have a question, they have a problem,
	you’re providing that solution. Once you’ve provided that solution, what do
	you think they want next? What should they do? Should they contact you?
	Should they go to another video? Should they subscribe? Whatever it is,
	make sure that you’re putting that into the video at the very end, and
	that’ll improve the actual conversion rates just by asking.
Sam Roshan:	Excellent. Something that you just mentioned before is think about what it
	is that they should do next, so really we’re talking about tailoring every
	single video and the whole process of uploading it and so on, towards the
	need of the audience.
	Taking it a couple of steps back and actually creating the video itself, it has
	to be concept-based. What that would look like is it really should be
	revolved around how it’s going to provide value to your audience and to
	your potential customers. So really think about, and if you’ve been

	operating for a while, I’m sure there is a whole lot of questions that people
	come and ask you all the time.
	You can again use Google to find out what people are searching for and
	create the content around that. Create the video and ensure that there is
	enough value in it for them to want to provide that like, or want to share
	this video, or want to watch the next video. Because there is just so much
	content out there everyone is so busy doing something, nothing, whatever
	it may be, but people are quite busy and we’re asking for their time. How
	do we ensure that there is enough value for them to want to continue and
	take the next step?
Cameron Francis:	Love it. Last one, repurposing, and I’ll let people in as to how we’re going to
	or how we are repurposing all of this content now. We’re recording a
	podcast that people are listening to. We are also video-recording the
	podcast using this audio so that we can upload that into YouTube. We will
	get the transcript of this and create a long-form article on the same topic.
	We will then use the key points of this and create an infographic of this
	very talk on how to optimize a YouTube video. We will Facebook Live, sorry,
	you can Facebook Live it. You can Instagram Live it.
	Oh, there’s one more also with Instagram. Now that you’ve got the ability
	to have 10 slides, you can actually cut up the video that we are recording
	now into 10 one-minute slides. You edit it based on titles, and then, people
	can watch the actual video. You’re going to have 10 videos in one, so
	10-minute video broken up into slides, and you can repurpose that
	information that way. Saves you a lot of time, and you are able to get more
	reach out of there, whether people like to listen, whether people like to
	watch, or people like to read.
Sam Roshan:	What you just mentioned before, everything sounds great. To some of the
	audience, oh, anyone that’s actually listening to this, it might be a bit
	overwhelming looking at there is just so much that you can do with just
	one, this particular type of content. You don’t have to do all of them. We’re
	providing ideas for yourself, for people to consider. Even if you pick one or
	two of them, there’s just multiple ways of doing this and just see what your
	audience prefers best and test it. You don’t have to do all of it. These are
	just there for everyone. I guess new ideas.
Cameron Francis:	Yup, yup.
Sam Roshan:	Really
Cameron Francis:	I really like this, but you know what I really like, Sam? I like Halal snack
	pack, my friend.
Sam Roshan:	I know. It’s getting cold and I’m very hungry, too.
Cameron Francis:	I’m done.
Sam Roshan:	All right. Cool.
Cameron Francis:	Thanks for tuning in, guys.

Sam Roshan:	See you.
Voice Over:	Thanks for listening to the Digital Cowboys with Cameron Francis and Sam
	Roshan. Now, if you enjoyed today’s episode, head on over to iTunes and
	give us a five-star rating and, please, write a review. Also, head on over to
	digitalcowboys.com.au where we post the latest episodes and content
	pieces for all of our listeners, so saddle up and join us next time for another
	edition of the Digital Cowboys.