YouTube SEO Training Masterclass Course Outline

Learn how to promote your YouTube channel – YouTube SEO

No prior experience necessary.

CHELTENHAM GROUP AND YOUTUBE

• My SEO tutorials YouTube channel
• My Microsoft Office training videos

ABOUT YOUTUBE

• What is YouTube?
• Second most widely used search engine after Google
• Owned by Google
• YouTube fact and figures
• Getting more information about YouTube

COMPETITOR & KEYWORD RESEARCH

• Researching your competitors
• Using YouTube ‘auto complete’ search
• Single and plural versions of words
• Related words and phrases
• YouTube may display a list of related searches
• Vidiq
• Keyword research tools – keyword io
• Keyword research tools – keyword tool
• Keyword research tools – serpstat
• Keyword research tools – Google keyword planner
• Tubebuddy
• Tubularlabs

ADVANCED YOUTUBE SEARCHING

• Search YouTube to find competitors and checkout their SEO
• Advanced YouTube search options
• Find a YouTube channel about a specific topic
• Searching for live video streams on YouTube
• Searching for 4k or hd videos on YouTube
• Searching for video playlists on YouTube
• Searching for just long videos
• Searching using an ‘exact-match’ video title
• Using ‘–‘ in your search request
• Using ‘+’ in your search request

YOUTUBE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

• Useful YouTube keyboard shortcuts

SEO PRINCIPLES & YOUTUBE

• What does YouTube want?
• Watch time
• Understanding the difference between Google and YouTube – even different search phrases!
• Where to use keyword phrases within YouTube
• Upload frequency
• Script your video for SEO phrases
• Use related keywords and phrases
• Consider pay per click YouTube advertising to help velocity
• Consider multiple specialist channels
• Recommended video length
• YouTube videos can show up in a normal Google search
• Try and entice your YouTube visitors to sign up for your mailing list
• Regular interval posting – use scheduling
• YouTube view velocity
• Make a series of videos – not single videos
• Regular video posting helps YouTube SEO
• Ask for likes, comments and subscriptions within the video
• Video file name

CHECKING YOUTUBE CHANNEL NAME AVAILABILITY

• Channel name & SEO
• How to check brand name availability across multiple social media platforms
• Channel name suggestion tool
• Maximum length for a channel name

INTERNATIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

• Different languages
• Measurement considerations
• Cooking sites
• Different currencies
• Different types of dollars
• Tax issues and duties
• Different date formats
• Different religions have different weekend-breaks based on religious traditions
• Different religions have different religious based annual holidays
• What about American vs. British spelling of words?
• What about countries that use different words?
• Is it a summer offer or a winter offer?

CREATING A YOUTUBE CHANNEL

• Creating a Google account
• Creating a YouTube channel
• Your default YouTube channel appearance
• Important items on your my channel screen
• A fully customized YouTube channel

SETTING UPLOAD DEFAULTS

• Setting default upload settings
• Setting the default upload status to private
• Setting a default category for your videos
• Do not set a default title and description
• Setting default comments and ratings options
• Setting the default video language
• Setting a default video location
• Enabling the display of video statistics

JOINING THE GOOGLE PARTNER PROGRAM AND ASSOCIATING A WEBSITE

• Conditions for linking to your website via YouTube cards
• How to join the YouTube partner program
• How to associate your website with your YouTube channel?

CHANNEL ART

• What is channel art?
• Adding channel art
• Uploading customised channel art
• Channel art settings
• Channel art graphics file name
• Channel art generators

‘ABOUT’ PAGE CUSTOMIZATION

• The YouTube about page
• Entering your channel description.
• What can you do with the channel description?
• The channel description and SEO
• Adding your email link
• Specifying your country
• Adding custom links

CHANNEL ICON

• How to change the YouTube channel icon
• Channel icon specifications

TRAILER VIDEO

• Channel trailer video
• How to set a trailer video
• Explainer videos

CHANNEL LINKING

• Linking to your other channels
• Linking to other people’s channels

TYPES OF FILMS YOU CAN PRODUCE

• Simple slideshow videos vs. Expensive corporate videos
• Creating animated videos
• Free video maker for YouTube
• Animoto: a sophisticated online video production tool
• Creating a video from PowerPoint slides
• ‘talking head’ videos
• Use local film school colleges for film production

HOME RECORDING STUDIO

• Quiet room away from the road
• Sound proofing
• Carpets
• Acoustic panels
• Bass traps
• Lights & green screen
• Consider filming at night and editing during the day
• Experiment with recording in different areas of the room
• Tell everyone in the house when you are filming
• Noise sources to be avoided
• Air conditioning in your studio
• Make lots of test recordings using different video and audio settings

RECORDING VIDEOS

• Video aspect ratio
• Video resolution
• 4k filming
• Video file formats
• Condense the video content to a series of bullet points – short script
• Mistakes or unexpected background noises while filming
• Practice your content before your record
• Consider recording multiple versions and use the best bits from each version
• Limited editing capability once uploaded
• You cannot replace a video without losing view count and authority
• Professional voice-overs
• Make YouTube videos time independent

EMBEDDING META DATA INTO VIDEOS

• Video meta data (Dublin Core) & SEO
• Inserting meta data into a video using Adobe Premier Pro

CAMERAS

• Types of camera
• 4K cameras
• Digital SLR cameras
• Camera microphones
• Think about recording video and audio separately
• Using phones for video
• Quality tripod

LIGHTING YOUR VIDEOS

• Lighting
• Types of lighting
• Led lighting
• Fluorescent lighting
• Halogen lighting
• Soft boxes

GREEN SCREENS

• Green screen filming
• Paint vs fabric backdrops
• Lighting a green screen
• Green screen editing programs

AUDIO TECHNIQUES

• Importance of good, clear audio
• Microphones
• Microphone cradles
• Studio condenser microphones
• Pop screens
• Shotgun microphones
• Livelier microphones
• Use high quality audio cables
• Outdoor filming
• Issues using a mono microphone
• Audio digital recorders
• Clapper board
• Audio editing
• Recommended audio bitrates for YouTube video uploads

VIDEO LENGTH & STRUCTURE

• Long or short videos?
• The importance of a good, short introduction
• Try and hook the viewer with the first 7 seconds
• Call to action
• Plan your videos with end cards in mind

VIDEO INTROS AND OUTROS

• What are video intros?
• What are video outros?
• Intro and outro tools

POST UPLOAD VIDEO EDITING

• Using the YouTube video editor
• Stabilising video

PLAYLISTS – MORE VIEWS AND BETTER SEO

• What are playlists?
• Playlists & SEO
• Playlists – invite viewers to watch a series of videos
• Playlists can be displayed in a YouTube search
• Creating playlists
• Customising your playlist settings
• Automatically adding videos to a playlist
• To manually add a video to a playlist
• Do not add a video to multiple playlists
• Remember: playlists can show in the YouTube results

STATUS, FEATURES AND VERIFICATION

• Unverified YouTube accounts have limitations
• Channel features available for verified YouTube accounts
• To check you current YouTube status and available features
• How to verify your account

YOUTUBE BRANDING WATERMARK & SUBSCRIBERS

• Creating a YouTube branding watermark
• Watermark file specifications

SECTIONS

• What are YouTube sections?
• Enabling sections
• Adding a section
• How many sections should you create?

CARDS

• What are YouTube cards?
• How many cards can you insert per video?
• Adding a ‘video or playlist’ card to a video
• Adding a channel card to a video
• Adding a link card to a video
• Remember to preview your card
• Monitoring YouTube cards performance
• Insert cards at periods when audience retention starts to drop

END SCREEN ELEMENTS

• What are YouTube end screens?
• How many end screen elements can you use?
• Adding an end screen element
• Creating a subscribe end screen element
• Creating a video or playlist end screen element
• Guidelines for creating end screens

SUBSCRIBERS

• YouTube subscribers and SEO
• How to get more subscribers
• Ask people to subscribe within the videos
• Use lower third subscribe messages
• Use cards
• Use end card elements
• Add a subscribe link in the video description
• Sending a message to subscribers when you publish new videos
• Giving an incentive to subscribe

VIEWS

• Views and YouTube SEO
• Do not buy views

LIKES AND DISLIKES

• YouTube ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’.
• Likes, dislikes and YouTube SEO

COMMENTS

• Comments
• Use comments to create interaction
• Encourage comments within your videos
• Responding to comments
• Comment spam
• Racist or sexist spam
• Use constructive feedback to improve your videos
• Can YouTube understand the comments?
• Remember to try and reply to comments on your videos embedded within social media sites, such as Facebook
• Monitoring and managing comments
• Bulk deleting all spam comments
• Reporting comment spam or abuse
• Hiding users who post repeated spammy comments

COMMUNITY SETTINGS

• To view your community settings
• Blocking comments that contain certain words
• Blocking comments containing links (which are mostly spam)
• Hidden users
• Allowing comments on your videos

UPLOADING VIDEOS

• Remember to set the upload default to private
• How to upload your videos to YouTube
• Adding meta data

SCHEDULING PUBLISHING

• What is scheduled publishing?
• Why use scheduled publishing?
• Scheduling video releases can boost your YouTube SEO
• How to use scheduled publishing?
• Re-editing the scheduled publishing date

VIDEO TITLES

• Video titles – Getting it right
• Promote your product or service – Not the company name!
• Titles and YouTube SEO
• ‘how to’ or ‘what is’ type videos can show up better to regular Google searches
• Title – what is the maximum length?
• Accurately describe the video content
• The keyword order within the title
• Using related keywords within the title
• Use aberrations and the long version
• Using place names within the title
• Using the year within the title
• Titles should closely match the file name of your video
• Make the title a question
• Click bait titles

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

• Video description – what is the maximum length?
• Description – don’t put the web link first
• Make the description keyword rich
• Keyword placement within your description
• Links to related videos
• Links to important parts of your video
• Link back to your social media sites
• Offer more info or extras on your website
• Multilingual video description
• Descriptions & transcripts
• Adding unique tags to the tags and description to link videos
• Include the date in the description
• The importance of a clickable link in the YouTube description

CATEGORIES

• Category consistency
• Setting a default category for all new video uploads

TAGS AND KEYWORD PHRASES

• Tags and SEO
• Tags on new videos are very important
• Tags and keyword phrases
• Spying on other people’s keyword tags
• Tags – Do not spam
• Changing keyword tags over time
• Using unique tags in related videos to help promote related videos
• Using single words and related phrases as tags
• Using single and plural versions of tags
• Using related phrases in tags

THUMBNAILS

• Thumbnail image size and resolution
• Thumbnails – what makes a good thumbnail?
• Thumbnails – ‘how to do’ or ask a question
• Include a face with the thumbnails
• Three default thumbnails
• Thumbnails and click through rate
• Thumbnail edges
• Thumbnails and SEO
• Thumbnail dimensions
• Easy to read thumbnails
• Thumbnail branding
• Easy thumbnail creation
• Check thumbnails displayed ok in different situations
• Thumbnails and playlists

TRANSCRIPTS

• Automated captions
• Reviewing and editing an automatically generated transcript
• Transcripts and descriptions

MUSIC AND YOUTUBE

• Don’t infringe another person’s copyright
• YouTube and music – nightmare territory
• Content id system
• Copyright infringement notification
• Free YouTube music library
• Appealing a content id claim
• Royalty free music
• More music sources
• Auto generated music – SmartSound

EMBEDDING YOUR VIDEOS

• Allow others to embed your videos
• Encourage viewers to embed your videos
• The more people that embed your videos the better
• How to embed a YouTube video into a web page
• Do not embed too many videos on a single page
• Do not display competitor videos!
• Make sure that videos are responsive to device screen size
• WordPress YouTube plugins
• On website pages use both video embedding and linking
• Make sure linked videos open in a new tab or window

UP NEXT – SUGGESTED VIDEOS

• What are ‘up next’ or suggested videos?
• Suggested videos and Autoplay
• Meta information such as tags and titles and suggested videos

MONETARISING VIDEOS BY DISPLAYING GOOGLE ADS

• How do you start displaying ads on your YouTube channel?
• Are you in good standing with YouTube?
• Displaying adverts
• Minimum 10,000 lifetime views to enable monetarisation
• Types of ad format – Display ads
• Types of ad format – Overlay ads
• Types of ad format – Skippable video ads
• Types of ad format – Non-skippable video ads and long, non-skippable video ads
• Types of ad format – Midroll ads
• Types of ad format – Bumper ads
• Types of ad format – Native mobile ads
• Linking to and selling from your website rather than ads

MAKING MONEY ON YOUTUBE USING AFFILIATES

• Amazon affiliation
• Using multiple affiliate links for different countries
• Mention your affiant deals within the video
• Magic links
• Brand sponsorship / product placement
• Be upfront about sponsorships or product placement

CORPORATE STYLE BRANDING

• Colours and fonts
• Your YouTube trailer video
• Thumbnails
• Intros on each video
• Cards

YOUTUBE ANALYTICS

• To view the YouTube analytics
• YouTube analytics and YouTube SEO
• YouTube analytics – Overview
• YouTube analytics – Realtime
• YouTube analytics – Revenue reports
• YouTube analytics – Ad rates
• YouTube analytics – Watch time reports
• YouTube analytics – Watch time
• YouTube analytics – Audience retention
• YouTube analytics – Demographics
• YouTube analytics – Playback locations
• YouTube analytics – Traffic sources
• YouTube analytics – Devices
• YouTube analytics – Translations
• YouTube analytics – Subscribers
• YouTube analytics – Likes and dislikes
• YouTube analytics – Videos in playlists
• YouTube analytics – Comments
• YouTube analytics – Sharing
• YouTube analytics – Annotations
• YouTube analytics – Cards
• YouTube analytics – End screens
• Respond to data displayed within the YouTube analytics

ALTERNATIVE VIDEO HOSTING SERVICES

• Beware of duplicate video content
• Vimeo
• Dailymotion.com – another video sharing site

Metacafe

YOUTUBE COPYRIGHT STRIKES

• Content id claims are not the same as strikes
• What is a copyright strike?
• Multiple copyright strikes
• How to find information about a strike
• What to do if you have a copyright strike
• YouTube community guidelines & strikes

SYNDICATING YOUR VIDEOS ACROSS SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

• Automatically sharing new videos on Google+, Facebook and Twitter
• Third party syndication services

MORE YOUTUBE TOOLS & RESOURCES

• Pic monkey
• Bufferapp
• Stock footage – Videohive
• Stock footage – Videoblocks
• Video loops
• YouTube creators blog
• Official Creator Insider YouTube channel
• Creator Academy
• YouTube test tube – Heads-up for new YouTube features

GOOGLE’s OWN ADVICE ON MANAGING & PROMOTING YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

• See what YouTube says about promoting your videos