A Simple Process to Send Highly Converting Traffic to Your Website with YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video sharing community on the web. Not only, is it the third most visited website in the world but it is also considered the second largest search engine after Google. YouTube receives over 3 billion views every single day (including over 100 million views per day for Google mobile) and is localised in 26 different countries across 43 languages, with more than 70% of its traffic coming from outside the US.

In Australia, YouTube scored 10 million unique visitors, second only to Facebook (10,528,220 users) in Australia during the month of August.

These kinds of numbers cannot be ignored and they clearly show a big opportunity for marketers and business owners alike.

In this post, we will teach you how to effectively leverage YouTube to get highly targeted traffic to your website.

Let’s start with the basics.

Why people go to YouTube

The reasons are many.

The main driver of the YouTube phenomenon is that it has enabled “casual” users to:

• Easily upload videos about their interest
• Participate actively in the community by commenting and rating other videos
• Share their favourite videos with their network of contacts

And finally,

• Find answers to their problems and be able to visualise them
• That’s right. It’s not true that people that visit YouTube are only looking for Charlie bit my finger-kind-of-content or for the new Justin Bieber video. As much as there are teenagers looking for their favourite music video, there are also other demographics that use YouTube to find specific solutions to their needs. And this is where the big opportunity lies. If you can manage to help the people that are searching for solutions related to your products/service offers, YouTube can become one of the most profitable traffic sources to your site, and can bring you highly targeted and qualified prospects.

I already have a website with great content and wonderful images… why should I bother with videos now?

Well, here are a few reasons:

• Video is cheap: no subscription is  required to post videos on YouTube and technologies such as Flip cameras and iPhones make creating and publishing videos easy and fun
• Video content is highly digestible and entertaining
• Videos are a great tool for communicating your leadership and expert know-how and for this reason, they help you build your brand

And finally:

• It’s content that Google loves (= highly indexed and ranked)!

Now, what you should do to start building traffic to your site?]

There are 3 essential phases that every video marketer should follow in order to get successful results:

• Video optimisation
• Video production
• Video engagement

Let’s go through them in more detail:

Video Optimisation

• The first thing you should focus on is some market research (aka keyword research). You need to understand what your potential customers are searching for and, more importantly, how they are searching for it.
• Google AdWords keyword tool can help you identify what the key terms used by your customers are. Each of these keywords will be the object of a video, so make sure to build a consistent list of terms. For instance, if your business sells Diet programs you would be interested in terms such as “how do I lose weight fast?” or “best food to lose weight”. Remember, these keywords are an expression of a need that has to be fulfilled. And you have the opportunity to be the answer.
• Prepare a spreadsheet including:
  • the title of the video: make sure it includes your main keyword, but also give it a creative twist and make it look natural (people tend to have a bad perception of hyper-optimised titles)
  • the description of the video: make sure that it clearly describes the content of the video and that it includes your main keyword in it. Also, place a link to your website at the end
  • the tags of the video: These are the key terms that you can use to describe your video, so make sure to chose them wisely. People also tend to browse YouTube by clicking on tags, so for instance they can find out about your video after clicking on another video’s  tag
  • the video URL: Also here, make sure that it incorporates the keyword you are targeting
  • the landing page of your website associated to that particular video

Once this initial phase is complete, you can start getting into the fun part – video production

Video Production

The secret to sticky videos is simple: they don’t need to be viral, but they need to be engaging.

They must provide useful information that solves a person’s problem and provides explanations.

These are some tips that you should consider for producing highly engaging videos:

• People don’t mind simplicity, but it’s important that you still offer a level of quality that supports your business brand. Consider lighting and audio while in production
• When you are about to chose the thumbnail of the video, make sure that you chose an image that will lead the viewers to click on the video. It should catch the attention and should attempt to clarify what the video is about
• Keep them short (2-3 min). Longer videos tend to lose engagement
• Briefly introduce what your video is about. Make sure to state what your viewers will get by watching it. Promise them that by the end of the video they will get their question/problem addressed.
• Editing more is better: figure out a way to be more than the “talking heads” video
• Music can be a great support: make sure you keep copyright in mind
• Provide something to look at (e.g. a board, or anything that keeps the user focused and interested)
• Speak clearly: you are teaching and educating people
• Include a final call to action, which in this specific case would be inviting who’s viewing to visit your website for more information. You can even consider to include a banner ad with a direct link to your home page/landing page

If you’re not a friend of the camera…

Don’t worry, you can still produce great videos:

• Use Power Point/Keynote
• Use screen capture tutorials – especially useful if your business operates in a highly technical market
• Leverage one of the YouTube’s partners: http://www.youtube.com/create
• Transform audios/podcasts into videos
• Consider Skype interviews
• Consider Public domain content
• Consider repurposing. If you have a great piece of content (e.g. a blog post that was highly shared on Twitter/Facebook) get a dynamic person in your company to present it in video format.

Once you have all (or at least some) of your videos ready, you can create a free channel on YouTube, customise it according to your brand, and start uploading the videos and implement your optimisaton strategies.

Video Engagement

Videos are by nature, highly interactive.

If you want views and traffic to spike, spend time interacting on the video pages!

• Stimulate comments. For instance, you could invite viewers to post a comment after watching the video. Alternatively, post an update on Facebook or Twitter that says something like “There’s a great conversation on […] happening on our YouTube channel, why don’t you join us?” . Finally, monitor the comments and invest time in answering them
• Encourage video responses on your videos
• Genuinely comment on related videos and build relationships with other community members that are relevant to your business
• Add back-links to other videos and channels

Last but not least: keep monitoring how people search. The terms that people use and they problem they might face change all the time, therefore it’s very important to go back to the keyword research at least every 3 or 4 months.

We hope this helps you getting started with your YouTube supremacy.

Have you had any successful experience with YouTube? Feel free to share in the comments.

Sara Borghi is a Search Marketing Analyst at Bruce Clay Australia, where she’s been helping clients and developed her SEO skills for the past 2 years. She has a strong passion for travel and she loves to go back to Italy – her home country – to enjoy the amazing food and culture whenever she can. She enjoys sports, reading, live music and – of course – Sydney, Australia. To connect, find her on Google+.

See Sara's author page for links to connect on social media.