by Game Marketing Genie, on 12-May-2021 10:47:42
Videos are a great way to share your message with your audience and one of the best types of content marketing. Data from Smart Insights shows that 92 percent of marketers claim that videos are a vital component of their marketing strategy. A boon to businesses, videos help brands promote their products and services throughout the buyer’s journey.
From attracting new leads, nurturing prospects, and even recapturing existing customers, videos can help you meet your business goals when done right. With more than 2.6 billion users worldwide (source: Statista), YouTube is one of the largest video platforms in the world, and using this platform to your advantage is one of the most innovative ways to market your game.
How does YouTube rank their videos?
YouTube uses metrics such as flagging, shares, likes and dislikes, subscribers, favorites, views, and frequency to rank its videos. Here are a few that you need to watch to enhance your YouTube marketing strategy and make informed decisions.
Watch time
Watch time is the total amount of time all viewers spend watching videos on your channel. The higher the watch time, the better your videos rank on YouTube and are more often featured in the recommendations and suggested videos sections.
Audience retention
Audience retention is the percentage of viewers who watch your videos and then leave them at any point of the video duration. The more viewers watch your video content to the end, the higher your audience retention rate. YouTube highly ranks videos with higher audience retention, so you need to analyze the videos that experience more viewership and see where people tend to drop off.
Average view duration
Average view duration is the total watch time your video gained divided by the total watch time for all your videos, including replays. This KPI helps you to understand your video content’s capacity to engage your viewers. If your video lasts ten minutes and, on average, people only watch for five minutes, then five minutes is your average view duration.
Rewatches
As the name suggests, rewatches are the number of times your viewers watch your videos a second time. This helps show you the topics your audience is interested in that you can use for future game marketing strategies.
Impressions click through rate
Impressions click-through rate denotes your capacity to make an audience watch your videos when featured in the recommendations, suggested videos section, and other external sources like your website, landing pages, blogs, and social media platforms. A greater impression click-through rate implies that you have a strong video content marketing strategy and enticing videos.
Traffic sources
Traffic sources give you a clear picture of how and where your audience found your video. YouTube searched, the recommendations and suggested videos sections, and external referrals from websites and social media posts are all great ways to see where your audience finds your content.
Monitoring all of these metrics may be a challenge for your business. Reach out to an accomplished video game marketing agency that provides excellent video marketing services to help you get a clear picture of your video marketing strategy.
10 tips to help your YouTube videos rank higher
1. Create a good channel
Creating your Google brand account is the first step to building your YouTube channel. Multiple users can log in to your account with a brand account to manage, publish, and optimize your videos. A good YouTube channel is customized to its audience’s tastes and preferences. YouTube offers a range of layouts to brands to help personalize their channels to their needs.
Ensure that you incorporate good branding elements to elevate your overall brand aesthetics and use different visual features to create a channel your target audience will readily recognize from competitors. From color palettes and fonts to high-quality image and video resolutions, good branding helps you maintain consistency throughout your content and improves your brand recall.
2. Make sure your file name and video title match
Checking if your video title matches the file name is one thing you must ensure before you press the upload button. When these two elements match, it gives YouTube a gist of what your video is about.
For instance, if your video title is “10 YouTube Marketing Tips for High Ranking Videos”, and your file name is “10 marketing tips for good videos”, your video won’t be ranked as well by YouTube. Matching your file name with your video title ensures that you have at least one keyword included in both and means you’ll appear more often in the search results.
3. Use good keywords
Keywords are the terms that your audience uses to find content online. As one of the most significant video search engines, millions search for videos across different niches, including games, cosmetics, fashion, sports, and more on YouTube.
Chances are that your target audience is searching for one of the videos your channel has published using specific keywords. Optimizing your video around those keywords enables your audience to find you easily through YouTube search, helping you get more views, likes, comments, shares, and ultimately more audience engagement.
Now the next big question is how do you find keywords that will help your videos to land up in your audience’s search results? Here are a few ways to accomplish this:
- Use YouTube autocomplete
- Check your competitors’ highly watched videos
- Use third party tools
- YouTube analytics
4. Title should include keywords and contain approximately 50 characters
A good YouTube video title must contain targeted keywords to grab your audience’s attention. Instead of short-form video titles, using a descriptive title will help your target market find you and separate you from the competition.
If you’ve already posted, don’t stress! Video optimization doesn’t end when you publish your video, as you can further optimize them by adding relevant keywords after publishing.
Though YouTube allows up to 70 characters per video title, we recommend that you stick to 50 characters. Doing this ensures that your video titles are less likely to be cut off when it appears in your audience’s suggested videos and mobile search results.
5. A rich description
Your video description should give viewers and the YouTube algorithm a summary of what your video is about. Once you’ve shortlisted specific keywords, weave your content coherently to make it sound natural rather than stuffing all your keywords in a few sentences.
YouTube displays only a fraction of your video description before it is opened. Therefore, give your best shot at creating compelling video descriptions with value contained in the first few lines.
Add links to other social profiles, videos, or game promotion landing pages. You can also include specific hashtags that help you rank better in search results. All in all, ensure that you use your 5,000-character video description limit so that your video yields the results you’re looking for. But don’t go overboard! Chances are your audience won’t read the whole thing, so we recommend using around 300 words.
6. Customize your video thumbnails
YouTube offers thumbnail suggestions when you upload your videos and are ready to publish them. Customizing your thumbnails is essential as it creates an excellent first impression on your audience - and can either attract or repel your target audience.
To get more viewers to click on your video, you need to convey your video’s concept through compelling content in your thumbnail. A YouTube marketing company can help you create excellent, action-provoking thumbnails that will grab your viewers’ attention effectively.
We’ve covered the elements that you need to work on to make your video thumbnails intriguing in our blog, 9 Things You’ll Need for Your Video Thumbnails to Get Clicks.
7. Identify your videos with tags and categories
While uploading videos on YouTube, you can categorize your videos into entertainment, gaming, comedy, music, vlogs, and more. Categorizing your videos helps the platform to organize your content and showcase it to your potential audience.
If you want your video to appear in search results quicker and faster, using tags is another excellent way to start. Tags are descriptive keywords and phrases that help your videos appear to your audience. They give YouTube an idea about your video’s context and content. Tagging and categorizing all your videos makes it easy for YouTube to present them to viewers who are likely to watch.
8. CTAs and video annotations at the right moments
You’ve probably noticed CTAs in videos such as “like this video,” “watch the next video,” “subscribe to this channel,” or annotations on the video itself that link to other content. These elements help content creators boost their views, pique their viewers' interest, and drive traffic to other places. Businesses can use these particular options to encourage audiences to take the desired action, such as watching more content or liking their page.
9. Share your videos on social media
One of the best ways to promote your YouTube videos is to share them on other social platforms. Crossposting your videos helps you get more visibility from other viewers, helping you expand your reach, increase audience engagement, and showcase your brand values.
One smart way to share your videos is by creating exciting GIFs that capture a fun moment or message. There are plenty of great ways to share your content, so don’t be afraid to get creative! Before crossposting your videos, ensure that they are optimized and have the same look and feel to maintain consistency on all platforms.
10. Feature your videos on your website
Embedding your videos on your website captures your audience’s attention, and if you have great content, there is no better place to showcase it. This helps your visitors digest your content quickly and increases traffic to your website. You can also employ this strategy for your blogs and landing pages. And even better, it doesn’t cost businesses a cent to embed videos on their sites! So, what are you waiting for?
Getting your video marketing strategies right
Video is a crucial component not just of your content marketing strategy, but also of the overall health of your business. However, it is not something you can just jump into without a strategy. Luckily, we’ve got all the best tips for you here: Your One Stop Video Marketing Handbook.
Videos are an important part of your business investment, so you need to give them your best shot. If you lack time, resources and talent, why not consider teaming up with an established video marketing agency? Game Marketing Genie has seasoned professionals specializing in all things game marketing to help you with your video marketing efforts from start to finish.
Get in touch with our team today to learn more about how we can help you.
