Strategically using YouTube to boost your website traffic and sales

Strategically using YouTube to boost your website traffic and sales

We all know what YouTube is and what its purpose is, but are you strategically using your published videos to generate as much traffic and sales as possible?  You probably aren't, because 90% of "YouTubers" aren't doing the obvious or the not so obvious ways of generating traffic to their websites.  It's kind of shocking when I see a channel with 100,000+ subscribers and they aren't optimizing their videos as much as they could.  They're not actually losing any money when they publish a video, but they are leaving plenty of profits on the table due to being unaware of how to do it right the first time, so don't be like them and follow everything I talk about below!

In this discussion, I'll be going over the obvious things you need to do with your YouTube videos in order to boost your traffic as well as the not so obvious ones that many people aren't thinking about all of the time.

The Obvious
Optimize Your Titles
If you're already getting traffic to your videos, you've probably optimized your titles, which is the very first thing people think of when publishing a video "What are people searching and how will they find my video?".

If you can optimize your titles just right, you can get found by a massive amount of people, but it also depends on your stats and how high you rank within the internal search results.

Add A Paragraph Long Description
Many people are adding just a snippet of information about the article and letting the video do all of the talking.  You can't do this if you want to be as successful as possible because you're essentially leaving content blocks blank, which is never a good thing for SEO

Think about it, if you add a paragraph of information, you can get plenty of content in there and slap a couple keywords in there as well   You'll likely rank slightly higher within the internal search results, bringing in more traffic than if you left just a snippet of info in the description section.

Get A Couple Call To Actions (links) In Your Descriptions
Almost every marketer will slap a link in their YouTube videos descriptions because that's the main way to generate traffic and make some additional profits.  Because of that, I'm not going to go over this very much, but I will tell you that if you don't have a link in there then you won't even know how much money you're leaving on the table.


The Not So Obvious

Get Your Call To Actions Above The Fold
Just like a website, the description box on your YouTube video has a fold, which is the content people will see before they have to scroll or click "Show More" near your description box.  If you can get a link in those first 3 lines of text, you will automatically increase your CTR because people won't have to find the text that blends into the page in order to expand your description box and find the rest of your description.

Answer Questions Within Your Videos
If you're not a professional gamer who streams videos and posts highlights for people to watch, you likely have to answer questions within your videos to keep people interested.  People always need something answered, even if they don't know they have a question, so be sure to keep the info flowing and the viewers will hopefully subscribe and come back for your later videos.

Clickbait With Purpose
People do this all of the time on YouTube, and it's usually taken in a negative way, but what you'll be doing is click-baiting with purpose.  Use a suggestive image, something that doesn't give the viewer a spike in interest in hopes to see a certain thing in your video and then you don't provide it. 

Many times I've been on YouTube watching a highlight reel from a popular gamer and see something in the sidebar that looks interesting.  It's always paired up with an enticing title which gets people to click, but when they get the video they quickly realize it's 15 seconds of talking about the title that is followed up with 10 minutes of garbage video that no one would have watched in the first place.  Don't be a real click baiter, offer them a little golden nugget in your thumbnail as well as your title, and actually talk about what you referred to.

Link To Other Social Media Profiles
Cross advertising is a huge thing when it comes to social media, so get active on every platform possible to figure out which ones are best for you.  You likely won't have time to create videos, optimize them, then share them everywhere possible so you should focus on the top platforms like YouTube and DailyMotion for your video publication as well as share to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. 

TELL PEOPLE TO SUBSCRIBE!
So many people forget to tell their viewers to actually subscribe to their channel and it's sad because they have great content and could have 2x or 3x the subscribers if they simply said: "Please subscribe at the bottom of this video to get more great content from me and my team!".  It doesn't take much to add in that little snippet of audio to boost your subscribers, and people all over are forgetting to do it, which is really sad



In conclusion
Building up your YouTube following isn't the easiest thing to do, because it's not an overnight success type of business model, but you can do it if you're dedicated and patient at the same time.  Make some great videos that answer questions, optimize them as much as possible, place a call to action above the fold to increase sales and traffic, and always cross advertise to funnel traffic to your website


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Thanks!

Tommy Carey