Your Guide to Improving Your Local Video SEO

1. Optimize Your Video’s Title

The first step to mastering local video SEO? You need to make sure that your video’s title is doing everything possible to connect you with a local audience. Your title should always be less than 66 characters in total length. This way, it will be completely displayed in the search engine results. When you choose the keyword phrase you’d like to include in your video’s title, you’ll need to consider two key aspects. First, the keyword phrase should reference your city, state, or neighborhood. This will help you to show up in local video search results, just as including a location-based keyword in your written content will. However, you also need to optimize the title for those who would prefer to watch a video over reading an article. Often, this means that they’re searching for terms and phrases like, “DIY, “How to…,” “Tips for…” and other phrases that indicate a tutorial. Make sure that you combine these two factors when creating the perfect video title, such as, “How to Get Your Silicon Valley startup Noticed” or, “Tips for Wearing High Heels on NYC Sidewalks.” Above all, remember that the more specific the topic you choose to cover in your video, the better off you’ll be. After all, more than 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube in a single minute. While countless tutorial videos exist on things like, “How to Dress for a Meeting,” there are far fewer for, “Six Different Ways to Tie a Tie.” Ultimately, those searching for your niche will share, comment on, and view your video — and you’ll become an authority on your particular subject.

2. Optimize Your YouTube Channel as a Whole

Unfortunately, some people get so caught up in the details of local video SEO optimization, that they completely forget to optimize their YouTube channel as a whole. This is incredibly important when it comes to increasing your brand awareness in your local market, connecting with your target consumers, and even ensuring that your YouTube channel encourages people to follow you on other platforms. Make sure that your contact information, your profile picture, and even the descriptions of your company are all the same across your social media channels. And when you’re writing that company description? Make sure that you use all the space available to you — it’s a great opportunity to sneak in more location-based keywords. Additionally, make sure that you’ve chosen interesting and clear images to serve as the thumbnail and still pictures on videos before they’re played. You want to encourage your customers to click and watch, after all! You should also properly tag and categorize your YouTube videos. Once again, be as specific as is possible here. For example, instead of just choosing the “food” category, try something like, “Pastries and Desserts” or “Gluten-Free Diet.” Finally, when it comes to your video descriptions, make sure that you use all the available space. Even if people don’t read your entire descriptions, they’ll still be crawled and indexed by Google. So, take advantage of the opportunity!

3. Turn on Geo-Tagging

Finally, make sure that you include your NAP (that’s short for your brand’s name, address, and phone number) in your video descriptions. This doesn’t just boost you in the local SEO results, it also helps customers who liked the video know where else they can find you online. You should also include this information in the actual content of your video, and ensure that you include closed-captioning to give yourself another SEO leg up. Never underestimate the importance of geo-tagging. This feature actually allows you to tag the coordinates of the location of your office. If you shoot your video on a cell phone, it only takes a few seconds to geo-tag your video. But you can also easily add in your geo-tags during the editing process. This will be a huge help when it comes to making fast connections with your local market. Just head to the “Advanced Settings” section on YouTube, and select “Video Location.” From there, you can move your pointer on the map to set it to your desired location.

Looking for Professional Assistance with Local Video SEO?

We hope that this post has helped you to understand the steps you need to take in order to optimize your local video SEO and boost your conversion rates in the process. Remember to focus on geotagging, properly categorizing and tagging your videos, and optimizing your video’s titles and descriptions. Of course, nothing is as important as the overall quality of your videos and the content they provide. Whether you need assistance with video production, editing, or even drone videos, we can help you to make it happen. Get in touch with us today to get your free quote, and start planning your SEO takeover as soon as possible.