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New Product: Keeping A Daily Pulse On Your Search Performance

BrightEdge SEO Blog
blog hero image

gregalbuto
gregalbuto
M Posted 5 years 2 months ago
t 9 min read

Daily Pulse is the newest BrightEdge innovation to help our customers gain real-time insights into keywords, performance and competition on a daily basis. 

As Michael Hurley, Director of Product Management at BrightEdge said when asked how Daily Pulse fit into the BrightEdge platform, “It became apparent that having a level of visibility on a daily cadence was important and necessary to our customers.”

Daily Pulse BrightEdge’s response to the questions: 

  • What do our customers need? 

  • How can we help them achieve their SEO goals? 

  • How can we assist in overcoming challenges and beating out competitors?

  • Daily Pulse was created for customers key scenarios

“There was a number of scenarios we heard from our customers which drove us to BrightEdge Daily Pulse,” says Hurley. Customers may need keyword ranking visibility on a daily basis for several reasons. For example, if a customer has a limited number of important keywords that drive a significant traffic volume and revenue to the business, it is important to know when those keywords shift, especially if it’s only for a day. 

If your page is ranking in position one for an important keyword with a high monthly search volume. If your page drops from position one to position two or three, it’ll have an impact on traffic for that day before the site has the opportunity to bounce back. “Given the impact, small moves would have made it necessary to track on a more frequent basis,” Hurley suggests. 

Seasonality is another use case for Daily Pulse. Many e-commerce and services sites have seasonal aspects to their businesses. For some of these sites, there is a need to track specific keywords and keyword clusters during certain times of the year at a granular level. Consider a major retailer in the flower industry, the days and weeks leading up to to Valentine’s Day are an opportune time to understand where you rank for specific keywords when it’s most important for your business. That level of granularity will likely drop-off quickly thereafter, at least until the next major floral-related holiday.

Next, new product launches were an additional reason for establishing Daily Pulse for customers. When brands come out with new products, they add them to their sites and stakeholders often wonder how those pages are doing. Visibility on a monthly basis isn’t enough during the hectic pace of a cross-channel product launch. 

Google’s algorithm updates obviously had a large impact on Daily Pulse making its debut as well. During the December core algo update, we saw winners and losers. “Our customers were able to dig in quickly to be able to ascertain what the impact was to their site,” says Hurley. “Having that visibility on a daily level enabled them to communicate changes internally and explain positive and negative traffic change.”

The functionality of Daily Pulse

  • Tracks keyword on a daily basis and provides visibility into keyword performance

  • Explore specific and macro levels to report information proactively

  • Breaks down page one rankings by groups (e.g. positions 1-3, 4-6, 7-10)

  • Visibility into where there is estimated traffic

  • Perform ad hoc analysis for keywords, keyword groups or sections of your site

  • Explore a full representation of the Google SERP including rankings and a visualization of the SERP screenshot for a particular day

  • Data collection multiple times per day to gain the best representation of the ranking details

  • Insights into when your page lost rank for the top priority position

There is volatility for some business’s rankings in the SERPs as the Google algorithm can constantly change how your pages are listed. These changes can sometimes occur throughout different SERP elements throughout the week. 

“You could rank for an image result, quick answer, web listing, people also ask and back to a web listing,” Hurley states as he paints a picture of search landscape volatility. “How you’re represented in the SERP changes. How your domain is represented in the SERP changes. Your rank for a keyword could be there every day of the week but it could be a different listing type which could translate to a different click through rate or it could have a different page being listed which could impact traffic.”

Daily Pulse offers actionable SEO insights and provides visibility into all the changes that can impact your traffic. Dive into Daily Pulse and all universal SERP categories and uncover opportunities to drive organic results.

BrightEdge Looker Studio Connector

Create Stories that Connect using your BrightEdge Data in Looker Studio

<p><strong>BrightEdge Looker Studio Connector&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>

<p>Create Stories that Connect using your BrightEdge Data in Looker Studio</p>

<p>Unleash the power of your data with interactive dashboards and engaging reports that inspire smarter business decisions. With BrightEdge’s Looker Studio Connector, easily present and deliver complex data in ways that are easy to understand for any audience, like colleagues or customers.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Empower your teams by arming them with the knowledge of your key metrics by sharing automated data dashboards that update regularly, so they can focus more on what matters.&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>Integration with BrightEdge&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>

<p>Blend over 800 datasets available in Looker Studio including Google Analytics, MySQL, BigQuery, and YouTube with connection points from BrightEdge’s Share of Voice and Keyword Reporting features.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>Share of Voice</strong> reveals the full set of competitors for key topics. Identify competitive URLs that outrank your pages and inspect their content to win back coveted SERP real estate.&nbsp;</li>
<li><strong>Keyword Reporting</strong> tracks ranking and performance for high-value keywords that drive organic search results.</li>
</ul>

<p><strong>Connecting Looker Studio to BrightEdge</strong></p>

<ul>
<li>In Looker Studio, click Blank Report.</li>
<li>On the Add Data to Report page, search “BrightEdge” and click Enter.</li>
<li>In the Partner Connectors section, click the BrightEdge API connector.</li>
<li>To connect, click the Authorize button.</li>
<li>Sign into your Google account and click Allow.</li>
<li>Next, log in using your BrightEdge credentials and click Submit.</li>
<li>Select your BE account from the list and the report type. Click Next to continue.</li>
<li>Set the parameters for your report and then click Add.</li>
</ul>

<p>Once complete, you can add BrightEdge data to Looker Studio reports.</p>

<p>For questions regarding BrightEdge's Looker Studio Connector, or to report issues, please contact our support team <a href="https://www.brightedge.com/asset/google-data-studio-connector-support-f…;

How to Create a Data-Driven Content Calendar with Keyword Research

BrightEdge SEO Blog
blog hero image

mreinhardson
mreinhardson
M Posted 5 years 2 months ago
t 9 min read

New year, new content calendar!

What is a content calendar?

A content calendar is a valuable content strategy to plan and organize your published content throughout the year.  It helps you identify the blog topics that attract your target audience and when you should publish those topics to drive your business growth.

To create a strategic and data-driven content calendar, keyword research is an essential first step to identifying your blog topics’ target keywords and using the monthly search volume of those target keywords to determine the peak traffic months of those keywords when those topics are most in demand. 

Identify your blog topics’ target keywords

The goal of a 12-month content calendar is to help you identify when your relevant blog topics/categories are most in demand throughout the year to best attract your target audience.

To determine when your select blog topics/categories are most in demand, first identify the target keywords that drive those relevant blog topics/categories. Historic monthly search volume trends of these target keywords will help you strategically assign a seasonality on the monthly level, as many blog topics/categories are too general to be narrowed down to a peak traffic month(s).

For example, a pet company brand we worked with has a blog with categories such as “Health & Wellness”, “Grooming”, “Pet Safety”, “Pet Ownership”, etc. While these categories are well targeted and relevant to the site’s target audience, they are too broad to be narrowed down to just one peak traffic period in the year (it’s impossible to determine one specific seasonality for all of “health and wellness”).

As such, these general blog categories need to be broken down to the keyword cluster level. Think of your keyword clusters as the legs of a stool that hold up a broader blog category like pillars supporting a larger foundation. Your keyword clusters are the sub-categories that make up a broader category.

A guide to the best content calendar - BrightEdge

To determine your keyword clusters, brainstorm as many sub-categories that make up that larger category. For example, sub-categories such as “dog insurance”, “pet health”, “dog health”, “cat health”, and “canine insurance” (and many, many more) are all sub-categories that are included in “Health & Wellness”.

Create a content calendar for the entire year - BrightEdge

Once you have listed as many sub-topics/ keyword clusters as possible, you can further break down these keyword clusters to identify the long-tailed keywords that drive those keyword clusters.

Use a keyword research tool such as BrightEdge Instant for keyword ideas and pull as many of those long-tailed keywords (downloaded from BrightEdge Instant as an Excel) and their monthly search volume from over at least the last 12 months .

Once you have downloaded your relevant keywords and their MSV, organize these keywords into their keyword cluster categories (i.e., categorize “dog health advice”, “dog health and wellness”, etc. under your “Dog Health” keyword cluster).

A guide to creating a content calendar - BrightEdge

The monthly search volume of these target keywords (that make up your keyword clusters) will help you identify when those keyword cluster are most in demand and to assign a seasonality (peak traffic months) to those keyword cluster topics.

Assign seasonality to your keyword clusters

Now you should have an Excel sheet with your long-tailed keywords, and their month search volumes over at least the past 12 months, organized into their keyword clusters. Convert this data into a PivotTable to view the monthly search volume of your keyword clusters over 12 months and filter the MSV from largest to smallest.

Choose keywords that focus on seasonality - BrightEdge

Next, assign seasonality to your keyword clusters. Identify which month(s) have the most search volume within each keyword cluster to find the peak month. Some keyword cluster topics may have the multiple peak traffic months, or the same peak traffic month(s) as other keyword cluster topics – this is perfectly fine as you can use multiple months to illustrate a peak traffic period for and list the keyword cluster topics that share the same peak traffic months together.

Perform data-driven keyword research - BrightEdge

Identify target keywords that are important to your brand - BrightEdge

Once you have determined the peak traffic months for all your keyword clusters, you can start to fill out your 12-month content calendar with the keyword cluster topics by their peak traffic months. You will end up with a list of blog topic ideas per month for your new year!

Separate target keywords into keyword clusters - BrightEdge

Pairing your content planning with keyword research to create a data-driven content calendar is a worthwhile SEO strategy to meet the needs of your target audience. Highlighting and responding to key periods for your brand and audience, such as holiday, events, and promotions, will instantly make your content more engaging and responsive for your target audience.

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<p>Customer’s access to and use of the BrightEdge Content,&nbsp;BrightEdge Foundations and/or BrightEdge Link Equity Manager products (the “Product”) is subject to the Master Subscription Agreement (“MSA”) between Customer and BrightEdge Technologies, Inc. (“BrightEdge”) and these additional Infrastructure Product Terms&nbsp;(the “Product Terms”) (together with the MSA, the “Agreement”).&nbsp; Any capitalized terms used but not defined below shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the MSA<strong>.</strong>&nbsp; In the event that there is any conflict or inconsistency between these Product Terms and the MSA, these Product Terms shall control and govern the rights and obligations regarding Customer’s use of the Product.</p>

<p>These Product Terms set forth the general terms and conditions of Customer’s use of the Product and any and all BrightEdge services performed to provide the Product to Customer and is in addition to (not in lieu of) any specific terms and conditions that apply to any and all other BrightEdge services provided to Customer.&nbsp;Customer agrees to abide by the most recent version of the Product Terms each time the Customer accesses or uses the Product. These Product Terms do not have to be signed to be binding.</p>

<p>YOUR USE OF THE PRODUCT MEANS THAT YOU AGREE TO THESE PRODUCT TERMS AND CONSTITUTES A BINDING AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND BRIGHTEDGE.&nbsp; DO NOT USE THE PRODUCT IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THE PRODUCT TERMS IN THEIR ENTIRETY.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Customer is receiving the Product complimentary from BrightEdge, and as such, Customer acknowledges that there may be unforeseen risks associated with the use of the Product, and BrightEdge disclaims all liability related to such unforeseen risk.&nbsp; BrightEdge shall not guarantee or be responsible for any custom code.&nbsp; Use of the Product is for evaluation purposes only and may not be supported.&nbsp; The evaluation is for a limited time, and BrightEdge may discontinue the Product at any time.&nbsp; Customer acknowledges that it may lose all its data inputted during its access to the Product during the limited release period.</p>

<p>NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of the promises set forth herein, the parties hereto agree as follows:</p>

<p><strong>1. LICENSE</strong>.&nbsp; Upon payment of all the applicable fees and subject to the terms and conditions herein and those of the associated Order Form, Customer acknowledges that it shall have only a limited, nonexclusive, nontransferable license to use the Product solely in connection with the Customer’s use of the Services, for a period not to extend beyond Customer’s current Subscription End Date set forth in a mutually agreed-upon Order Form by and between Customer and BrightEdge (the “Term”).&nbsp; Subject to the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement, BrightEdge hereby grants to Customer a nonexclusive, nontransferable, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to use and maintain BrightEdge Product Content generated for and/or published on Customer’s website.</p>

<p><strong>2. REPRESENTATIONS</strong>.&nbsp; Customer represents and warrants: (i) it owns all rights in and to any content uploaded or created by Customer&nbsp; ("<strong>Customer Content</strong>") relating to its use of the Product, including any designs, images, animations, videos, audio files, fonts, logos, illustrations, compositions, artworks, interfaces, text, literary works and any other materials, or otherwise has (and will continue to have) the full power, title, licenses, consents and authority, in and to the Customer Content, as necessary to legally use, publish, transfer or license any and all rights and interests in and to such Customer Content; (ii) the Customer Content is (and will continue to be) true, current, accurate, non-infringing upon any third party rights, and in no way unlawful for Customer to possess, post, transmit or display in the country in which Customer or the Product’s visitors and users&nbsp;("<strong>End Users</strong>")&nbsp;reside, or for BrightEdge and/or Customer’s End Users to use or possess in connection with the Product; and (iii) Customer has obtained all consents and permissions required under all applicable laws, regarding the posting, transmission and publication of any personal information and/or image or likeness of any person, entity or property which is part of the Customer Content, and Customer will adhere to all laws applicable thereto.</p>

<p><strong>3. RESTRICTIONS</strong>.&nbsp; Customer recognizes that the licenses herein are granted solely for the purpose of Customer’s internal business use of the Product, and Customer will not (and will not allow any third party to): (i) decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reverse engineer the Product or attempt to reconstruct or discover any source code, underlying ideas, algorithms, file formats or programming interfaces of the Product by any means whatsoever; or (ii) use or copy the Product, in whole or in part, except as expressly allowed herein. Customer further acknowledges and agrees that: (a) Customer’s use of the Product, including any content Customer submits and/or approves for inclusion on Customer’s website, will comply with this Agreement and all applicable local, state, national and international laws, rules and regulations; (b) Customer will not use the Product in a manner (as determined by BrightEdge in its sole and absolute discretion) that: (1) is illegal, or promotes or encourages illegal activity; (2) infringes on the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity; (3) violates the privacy or publicity rights of any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that Customer owes to any other person or entity; (4) interferes with the operation of the Product; and (5) contains or installs any viruses, worms, bugs, Trojan horses or other code, files or programs designed to, or capable of, disrupting, damaging or limiting the functionality of any BrightEdge software or hardware; (c) Customer will not copy or distribute in any medium any part of the Product, except where expressly authorized by BrightEdge; and (d) Customer will not modify or alter any part of the Product or any of its related technologies. Customer agrees to back-up all of Customer’s Customer Content so that Customer can access and use it when needed. BrightEdge does not warrant that it backs-up any Customer Content, and Customer agrees to accept as a risk the loss of any and all of Customer’s Customer Content.</p>

<p><strong>4.</strong>&nbsp;<strong>CONTENT OWNERSHIP</strong>.&nbsp; As between BrightEdge and Customer, Customer shall own all intellectual property rights pertaining to Customer Content. BrightEdge will exclusively own all intellectual property rights, title and interest in and to designs, images, animations, videos, audio files, fonts, logos, illustrations, compositions, artworks, interfaces, text, literary works utilities, processes, inventions, devices, methodologies, specifications, documentation, techniques and any other materials provided or created by BrightEdge and/or the Product (“BrightEdge Product Content”). Customer will have no rights in any BrightEdge Product Content except as expressly set forth in this Agreement.&nbsp; For the purposes of BrightEdge’s hosting of Customer Content, Customer hereby grants BrightEdge a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable and sublicensable right and license to use Customer Content (in whole or in part) worldwide in order to provide Customer with the Product as set forth in this Agreement. Under no circumstances may BrightEdge (i) be considered as a "publisher" of any Customer Content; (ii) in any way endorse any Customer Content; and (iii) assume,&nbsp; liability for any Customer Content uploaded, posted, published and/or made available by Customer or any other party on and/or through the Product, for any use by any party, or for any loss, deletion or damage thereto or thereof or any loss, damage, cost or expense that Customer or others may suffer or incur as a result of or in connection with publishing, accessing and/or relying on any Customer Content. Furthermore, BrightEdge shall not be liable for any mistakes, defamation, libel, falsehoods, obscenity, incitement and/or any other unlawful and/or infringing Customer Content Customer or any other party may encounter.</p>

<p><strong>5. PRODUCT OWNERSHIP</strong>.&nbsp; All rights, title and interest in and to the Product, including any and all copyrightable materials or any other content thereof which is or may be subject to any intellectual property rights under any applicable law (including any artwork, graphics, images, website templates and widgets, literary work, source and object code, computer code (including html), applications, audio, music, video and other media, designs, animations, interfaces, the "look and feel" of the Product, methods, products, algorithms, data, interactive features and objects, advertising and acquisition tools and methods, inventions, trade secrets, logos, domains, customized URLs, trademarks, service marks, trade names and other proprietary identifiers, whether or not registered and/or capable of being registered (collectively, "<strong>Intellectual Property</strong>"), and any derivations thereof, are owned by and/or licensed to BrightEdge. This Agreement does not convey any right or interest in or to BrightEdge’s Intellectual Property (or any part thereof), except only for the limited license expressly granted herein. Nothing in this Agreement constitutes an assignment or waiver of BrightEdge’s Intellectual Property rights under any law. Any rights not expressly granted herein are reserved to BrightEdge.</p>

<p><strong>6. FEEDBACK</strong>.&nbsp; Customer hereby grants BrightEdge a royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, transferable (only to a successor by way of merger, reorganization or sale of all or substantially all assets or equity), sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, or distribute, including by incorporating into the Product, any suggestions, enhancement requests, recommendations or other feedback provided by Customer relating to the functionality of the Product.</p>

<p><strong>7. MARKETING</strong>.&nbsp; In consideration of Customer’s access to the Product during limited release as set forth herein, Customer agrees to work with the BrightEdge Product Marketing team, to the reasonable satisfaction of BrightEdge, to create materials that can be shared publicly, to market the Product as provided and agreed to by Customer in the applicable Order Form.</p>

<p><strong>8. BRIGHTEDGE WARRANTIES</strong>.&nbsp; BrightEdge represents and warrants that it has the requisite right and legal authority to grant the license and provide the Product. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement and BrightEdge’s other policies and procedures, BrightEdge shall use commercially reasonable efforts to attempt to make the Product available on a twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week basis. Customer acknowledges and agrees that the Product may be inaccessible or inoperable for any reason including, but not limited to, equipment malfunctions; periodic maintenance, repairs or replacements that BrightEdge undertakes from time to time; or causes beyond BrightEdge’s reasonable control or that are not reasonably foreseeable including, but not limited to, interruption or failure of telecommunication or digital transmission links, hostile network attacks, network congestion or other failures. Customer acknowledges and agrees that BrightEdge has no control over the availability of the Product on a continuous or uninterrupted basis, and that BrightEdge assumes no liability to Customer or any other party with regard thereto. THE PRODUCT IS PROVIDED "AS IS." BRIGHTEDGE MAKES NO OTHER WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT, ANY CUSTOM CODE OR ANY OTHER CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION AND ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE HERBY DISCLAIMED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PROVIDED HEREIN, BRIGHTEDGE MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT THE PRODUCT WILL MEET CUSTOMER’S REQUIREMENTS OR NEEDS OR THAT THE PRODUCT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, OR BE FREE FROM SOFTWARE ERRORS OR BUGS, NOR DOES BRIGHTEDGE MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE PRODUCT OR THE ACCURACY OF ANY OTHER INFORMATION OBTAINED THROUGH THE PRODUCT OR THAT THE PRODUCT WILL HAVE DEFECTS, OR THAT SUCH DEFECTS IN THE PRODUCT WILL BE CORRECTED.</p>

<p><strong>9. INDEMNIFICATION</strong>.&nbsp; Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless BrightEdge, its officers, directors, shareholders, employees, affiliates and agents, from and against any and all claims, damages, obligations, losses, liabilities, costs, debt and expenses (including attorneys' fees) arising from: (a) Customer’s violation of any third party right, including any copyright, property, or privacy right, resulting from Customer Content and/or Customer’s use of the Product; and/or (b) any other type of claim that&nbsp; Customer Content caused damage to a third party.</p>

<p><strong>10. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY</strong>.&nbsp; IN NO EVENT WILL BRIGHTEDGE BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES OR LOST PROFITS ARISING FROM, CONNECTED WITH, OR RELATED TO THIS AGREEMENT, WHETHER SUCH LIABILITY IS FORESEEABLE, EVEN IF BRIGHTEDGE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES, OR ARISES FROM ANY CLAIM BASED UPON CONTRACT, WARRANTY, TORT OR OTHERWISE. THE LIMITATIONS SPECIFIED HEREIN WILL SURVIVE AND APPLY EVEN IF ANY LIMITED REMEDY SPECIFIED IN THIS AGREEMENT IS FOUND TO HAVE FAILED OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE.</p>

<p><strong>11. COOKIES</strong>.&nbsp; Customer acknowledges and agrees, when Customer or Customer’s End Users access or use the Product, BrightEdge may collect information about Customer’s and End User’s use of the Product and/or any and all pages on Customer’s website in order to provide and improve the Product and affiliated services. &nbsp;For example, BrightEdge may collect Customer’s browser type and IP address through log files. In addition, BrightEdge or its third party partners may collect and store certain information from Customer’s browser using "cookies." Customer agrees to disclose such uses in its privacy policy, which complies with applicable laws.&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>12. SDK INTEGRATION</strong>.&nbsp; In conjunction with Customer’s access to and use of the Product, BrightEdge will strive to maintain server-side SDKs that function properly in the supported versions of Java, .NET, and PHP, provided that, however, due to the complexity of web server environments, BrightEdge cannot guarantee compatibility with environmental factors such as installed software and libraries. It is Customer’s sole responsibility to perform any and all quality assurance testing prior to such integration going live.&nbsp; Customer may need to customize the BrightEdge SDKs to fit its specific environment(s).&nbsp; If Customer, in its sole discretion, integrates this service into web server applications, other than those provided above, it may need to develop a custom version of BrightEdge’s SDK. For the avoidance of doubt, the SDKs provided by BrightEdge are meant to be used as sample code to guide such development only, and BrightEdge hereby disclaims any responsibility for any code provided.</p>

<p><strong>13. MODIFICATIONS.</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;BrightEdge reserves the right to modify the Product Terms at any time.&nbsp; To be notified in advance of any changes, Customer may sign up for email notifications by providing an email address in the following form.</p>

Product Terms Email Update Sign-Up Form

YouTube SEO Optimization Tips: Rank For Video Content In 2023

YouTube SEO is a process of optimizing your YouTube videos and channel to increase its rankings via YouTube. Search engines, like YouTube, have an intricate algorithm that determines how your videos will appear in YouTube rankings. Optimizing for YouTube can help increase important metrics like follower count, brand awareness, website visits and revenue.

In 2025, YouTube SEO has evolved significantly with AI playing a crucial role in video discovery and ranking. YouTube's algorithm now uses advanced AI to understand video content beyond just metadata, analyzing audio transcripts, visual elements, and viewer engagement patterns. For marketers and content creators, this means optimization strategies must adapt to these AI-powered ranking factors while still maintaining traditional SEO best practices.

YouTube SEO is the practice of optimizing your channel’s page, playlists, metadata, description and videos. You can optimize your videos for YouTube’s search engine as well as other search engines. Users can come across your videos via Google, Bing, etc.

YouTube optimization focuses on the number of viewers that your video has reached and how well the video is ranked in a specific category. When brands optimize for YouTube search trends, data shows they have seen a 50% growth in viewing time year-over-year in the past three years.

How to Optimize YouTube for SEO

AI-Powered YouTube SEO Techniques for 2025

As YouTube's algorithm becomes increasingly sophisticated, these advanced techniques will help your videos perform better:

  • Use precise timestamps in descriptions to help AI identify key moments

  • Create custom thumbnails that accurately represent content (AI can now detect clickbait)

  • Optimize for "watch time clusters" by creating content that keeps viewers engaged during critical first 30 seconds

  • Implement proper VideoObject schema markup on embedded videos to help search engines understand your content

  • Analyze competing videos with BrightEdge to identify content gaps and keyword opportunities

A key component to YouTube SEO is to harness the power of your video’s text in the form of transcripts, closed captions and subtitles. Here, it is important to focus on using relevant keywords across your pages which will help you increase both SERP ranks and your audience.

YouTube SEO Tips:

  • Optimize video descriptions and meta descriptionsA Guide to YouTube SEO Search Trends - BrightEdge
  • Add closed captions to videos with an SRT File
  • Add Cards to promote other relevant videos
  • Utilize well-researched target keywords in a natural way
  • Choose the most relevant category for your video

Include keywords in the following areas to increase your opportunity at ranking for them:

  1. Title
  2. Thumbnails
  3. Description
  4. Transcripts
  5. Translations
  6. Tags
  7. Links
  8. Call to action
  9. Chapter markers/timestamps
  10. Auto-generated captions (review for accuracy)

Leverage Google Trends for YouTube SEO Success

In order to increase your opportunity of appearing in search trends, consider the following:

  • How much time did the user spend watching your video?
  • Do your users click on your CTA to watch after seeing it?
  • Where are users watching your videos from geographically?
  • Does your video description and meta description match the user’s query?

YouTube search trends rank videos based on how appealing your video is to the audience. The metrics used to calculate ranks on YouTube include total and current views, rate of growth in views, where the views are coming from and the age of the video. YouTube will select videos that are most relevant to viewers and most reflective of the broad audiences on the platform.

Measure YouTube SEO Success with BrightEdge

BrightEdge’s Data Cube X can help you understand:

  • How your videos rank for target keywords on Google search

  • Which video topics drive the most engagement and conversion

  • Where your competitors are gaining video visibility with their videos

  • How changes to your optimization strategy impact performance over time

The most important element of optimizing video content is keyword research, analysis and implementation. Start increasing your video rankings on YouTube with all these tips. For more SEO Tips, visit our blog! 

YouTube SEO: Frequently Asked Questions

What is YouTube SEO in 2025?
YouTube SEO in 2025 combines traditional optimization techniques with adaptation to AI-powered algorithms. It involves optimizing video content, metadata, and channel authority to increase visibility in both YouTube search results and Google video features.

How often should I update my YouTube SEO strategy?
Review and adjust your YouTube SEO approach quarterly, but monitor performance metrics weekly to catch any significant algorithm changes.

Do YouTube Shorts require different SEO strategies?
Yes. Shorts need faster-paced content with strong hooks in the first 3 seconds, vertical formatting, and trend-focused keywords in titles and descriptions to maximize discovery.

How does AI affect YouTube rankings in 2025?
How AI impacts YouTube’s algorithm is still unspecificed but due to Generative AI’s multi-modal capabilities, YouTube content can be applied to help generate text answers and be cited as part of the answer in Google’s AI Overviews. As a result, its important to watch not just how your YouTube content ranks in regular results, but also how they are cited in AI Overviews. BrightEdge’s DataCube X can help track this month over month for your top videos.

YouTube SEO is a process of optimizing your YouTube videos and channel to increase its rankings via YouTube. Search engines, like YouTube, have an intricate algorithm that determines how your videos will appear in YouTube rankings. Optimizing for YouTube can help increase important metrics like follower count, brand awareness, website visits and revenue.

In 2025, YouTube SEO has evolved significantly with AI playing a crucial role in video discovery and ranking. YouTube's algorithm now uses advanced AI to understand video content beyond just metadata, analyzing audio transcripts, visual elements, and viewer engagement patterns. For marketers and content creators, this means optimization strategies must adapt to these AI-powered ranking factors while still maintaining traditional SEO best practices.

YouTube SEO is the practice of optimizing your channel’s page, playlists, metadata, description and videos. You can optimize your videos for YouTube’s search engine as well as other search engines. Users can come across your videos via Google, Bing, etc.

YouTube optimization focuses on the number of viewers that your video has reached and how well the video is ranked in a specific category. When brands optimize for YouTube search trends, data shows they have seen a 50% growth in viewing time year-over-year in the past three years.

How to Optimize YouTube for SEO

AI-Powered YouTube SEO Techniques for 2025

As YouTube's algorithm becomes increasingly sophisticated, these advanced techniques will help your videos perform better:

  • Use precise timestamps in descriptions to help AI identify key moments

  • Create custom thumbnails that accurately represent content (AI can now detect clickbait)

  • Optimize for "watch time clusters" by creating content that keeps viewers engaged during critical first 30 seconds

  • Implement proper VideoObject schema markup on embedded videos to help search engines understand your content

  • Analyze competing videos with BrightEdge to identify content gaps and keyword opportunities

A key component to YouTube SEO is to harness the power of your video’s text in the form of transcripts, closed captions and subtitles. Here, it is important to focus on using relevant keywords across your pages which will help you increase both SERP ranks and your audience.

YouTube SEO Tips:

  • Optimize video descriptions and meta descriptionsA Guide to YouTube SEO Search Trends - BrightEdge
  • Add closed captions to videos with an SRT File
  • Add Cards to promote other relevant videos
  • Utilize well-researched target keywords in a natural way
  • Choose the most relevant category for your video

Include keywords in the following areas to increase your opportunity at ranking for them:

  1. Title
  2. Thumbnails
  3. Description
  4. Transcripts
  5. Translations
  6. Tags
  7. Links
  8. Call to action
  9. Chapter markers/timestamps
  10. Auto-generated captions (review for accuracy)

Leverage Google Trends for YouTube SEO Success

In order to increase your opportunity of appearing in search trends, consider the following:

  • How much time did the user spend watching your video?
  • Do your users click on your CTA to watch after seeing it?
  • Where are users watching your videos from geographically?
  • Does your video description and meta description match the user’s query?

YouTube search trends rank videos based on how appealing your video is to the audience. The metrics used to calculate ranks on YouTube include total and current views, rate of growth in views, where the views are coming from and the age of the video. YouTube will select videos that are most relevant to viewers and most reflective of the broad audiences on the platform.

Measure YouTube SEO Success with BrightEdge

BrightEdge’s Data Cube X can help you understand:

  • How your videos rank for target keywords on Google search

  • Which video topics drive the most engagement and conversion

  • Where your competitors are gaining video visibility with their videos

  • How changes to your optimization strategy impact performance over time

The most important element of optimizing video content is keyword research, analysis and implementation. Start increasing your video rankings on YouTube with all these tips. For more SEO Tips, visit our blog! 

YouTube SEO: Frequently Asked Questions

What is YouTube SEO in 2025?
YouTube SEO in 2025 combines traditional optimization techniques with adaptation to AI-powered algorithms. It involves optimizing video content, metadata, and channel authority to increase visibility in both YouTube search results and Google video features.

How often should I update my YouTube SEO strategy?
Review and adjust your YouTube SEO approach quarterly, but monitor performance metrics weekly to catch any significant algorithm changes.

Do YouTube Shorts require different SEO strategies?
Yes. Shorts need faster-paced content with strong hooks in the first 3 seconds, vertical formatting, and trend-focused keywords in titles and descriptions to maximize discovery.

How does AI affect YouTube rankings in 2025?
How AI impacts YouTube’s algorithm is still unspecificed but due to Generative AI’s multi-modal capabilities, YouTube content can be applied to help generate text answers and be cited as part of the answer in Google’s AI Overviews. As a result, its important to watch not just how your YouTube content ranks in regular results, but also how they are cited in AI Overviews. BrightEdge’s DataCube X can help track this month over month for your top videos.

Business Intelligence that Moves at the Speed of the Market

Actionable Market Insights from the Most Agile and Honest Focus Group in the World

Business leaders like you can now unlock the insight you need on how the market is shifting and where new opportunities are emerging in real-time to deliver personalized experiences based on real data. Market Insights leverages search data, the most comprehensive view of preferences to pinpoint how consumers are making decisions, what motivates their purchases and how their preferences are changing over time to help you achieve better ROI.

 

 

Always On, Always ready

No more lengthy research projects. Reduce time to compile and analyze research with fresh, accurate data to make informed strategy decisions and stay up to date with the latest trends in your market

Scaled out of the Box

Take advantage of pre-built industry taxonomies for a turnkey solution that delivers insights and value faster by leveraging billions of intent data points in a single platform built to scale globally.

Actionable Insights

Identify buyer trends and true competitor behaviour with a simplified view of your market. Uncover where and how to take meaningful action like what products to offer, what inventory to have, and what messaging will resonate.

Identify Market Demand and See Dynamic Changes as they Happen

Uncover market trends and explore your market’s long-term trend opportunities as well as seasonal trends for specific content topics​. See demand shifts across your market and quickly pinpoint changing interests to pivot marketing strategies and avoid wasting resources in declining SERP categories.

Understand Your Total Addressable Market and See New Opportunities

Access unlimited customer intent data and benchmark your marketing performance for specific categories or identify opportunities to compete where the competition is weak​ to convert new customers.

Confidently Plan and Optimize Marketing Budgets in Near Real Time

Analyze fluctuations with channel visibility and quickly pivot. Justify investment shifts across lines of business and uncover opportunities to win in SERP categories before competition with real time insight-led action.

Prioritize Action Items with Engagement Gap Analysis​

Utilize business intelligence to inform your content architecture and optimization journey. Improve content engagement by dynamically auditing existing content to identify missing and underperforming content that drives increased traffic and conversions.

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Marketing & SEO Strategies For 2021

BrightEdge SEO Blog
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gregalbuto
gregalbuto
M Posted 5 years 3 months ago
t 9 min read
An SEO strategy helps brands position themselves within the digital ecosystem. A strong SEO strategy will use data, technical SEO, and user intent to create content that answers the user’s needs and is easily found by prospective visitors.
 
Your SEO strategy should make up the cornerstone of this online presence. With 53.3% of the traffic arriving on your website coming from organic clicks, and about 60% of clicks going to sites in the top three spaces, the position and visibility of your site on the SERPs will have a dramatic impact on your ability to draw in new customers. 
 
Over the past decade, SEO and digital marketing have become increasingly competitive. The amount of data in the digital ecosystem is projected to increase from 130 exabytes in 2015 to 463 exabytes in 2025 daily, a ten fold increase. Content created by brands, and consumers themselves, has driven much of this data growth. The content creation process and output intensifies each passing year. Due to the pandemic and how it has affected the world, 94% of content marketers change the way that they drive and market their brands. This exponentially increasing content competition means that brands need a clear SEO strategy to guide their campaigns and accurately measure the results. The right strategy will be tailored to the unique needs of the business, maximizing resources and driving success.

Upcoming trends for B2B content marketing in 2021:

  1. Video content. Video is versatile and you can reach audiences in many ways by leveraging it. It’s important for your brand to discover both how to create video content and how to make it successful. More and more consumers are seeking video content rather than written.
  2. Webinars. Webinars are informative and are a great way to build trusting relationships with consumers. If you don’t know much about a topic, you shouldn’t create a webinar on it. Therefore, creating webinars will help your brand look like an industry expert – especially if the information follows E-A-T guidelines.
  3. Podcast. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular – especially while so many professionals are on the go. They’re easy to access in the car, on a train, walking, etc. Being able to listen in on industry experts anywhere, at any time is convenient and worth looking into.
  4. Featured snippets. If you’re page is ranking well anywhere in the first SERPs page, it’s a good day for your post! Google is adding more featured snippets than seen before and scoring one of them will get you more clicks and more traffic. Optimize for them! You can track your featured snippet success within Data Cube.
  5. User-generated content. User-generated content, like reviews and testimonials, are important for boosting both your page ranks and the trust consumers have for you. Spend time getting to know your users and ask them for reviews. It’ll go a long way.
  6. Search intent. Understand the buyer’s journey. Search intent is important because searchers will start with a simple search and end up on your page from that. In order to be there for them, you have to understand what they’re looking for – hence search intent.
  7. Partner operations. Building partnerships with brands that can assist you in promotion can also assist your SEO. Gaining backlinks to credible sites will increase exposure to your site.

The modern SEO strategy

 

As the digital ecosystem becomes more crowded, and therefore more competitive, the world of SEO has become increasingly complex and sophisticated. High rankings and strong positions can no longer be driven by guesswork and instincts. Instead, marketers generate these results through careful measurement and intentional actions. The modern SEO strategy must be data-driven and carefully planned and executed. In a successful SEO strategy, organizations must have an intimate understanding of precisely who the campaign targets. They must know the pain points of their audience. Through keyword research, they can also uncover the topics and interests of their audience, enhancing their ability to create content that people want to read.
 
Digital ecosystems puts you in a position to focus on driving business value eliminating frustrations with outdated, legacy B2B solutions. It’s important to maintain a great relationship with your customers and to always be better today than they were yesterday. A digital ecosystem adds true value to those relationships and consistently helps you meet customer SLAs, quickly surface exceptions, and provide fast remediation to ensure your business stays on track.
 
The marketers working for these companies must also accurately target the user intent of their prospective visitors when they make particular queries, allowing them to create content that is highly relevant for the target audience. What types of content should marketers be focused on optimizing? Below are some options:
  1. Perform keyword research. Going in blind while creating content is not a good strategy. Performing keyword research to understand which keywords are worth optimizing for, which have larger search volumes, which one’s competitors are ranking for, etc. is a good strategy. Begin your SEO efforts by doing keyword research. 
  2. Title tag optimization. While the content on your page is the most important ranking factor, your title tag does matter. Be sure to include a well-thought-out keyword in your title and use it to introduce readers to the rest of your copy.
  3. Meta description optimization. Meta descriptions are not ranking factors. However, you should still optimize them accordingly to attract users to click on your link.
  4. H1 optimization. Your H1 is your most important headline and you should only have one H1 on page that indicates what your page is about.
  5. Internal linking and anchor text optimization. Internal linking is a great way to boost several pages at once. If one page is doing well, it has a better chance of helping the other pages linked to it, too. Be sure to choose the right keywords as anchor text. Don’t force it – but try to use keywords that indicate what you’re linking to.
  6. Image optimization. A file name and image alt text are both image SEO efforts you should focus on. Make sure you’re descriptive enough that if your image is found, your content is easily understood.
  7. Content optimization. Finally, the most important part of boosting your rankings and bettering your SEO is having great content that’s informative and unique. Include keywords throughout your copy but be sure to avoid keyword stuffing.

Understanding user intent for SEO strategy

 

User intent has taken center stage for successful SEO strategies. The goal is to optimize the content for users so that there is an increase in retaining your market along with converting them into customers and clients as well.
 
To push towards the improved understanding of user intent and creating a better user experience, brands must also consider the changes in how users interact with the internet. We have already seen the rise, and now dominance, of mobile usage, online chat boxes, and voice search. 
 
Voice search is expected to see five billion searches this year in 2021 and 6.4 billion in 2022. About 20% of mobile and Android searches are expected to be voice commands.
 
The newest marketing trends that many will have to keep in mind for 2021 are:
  1. Retention marketing. Market to existing customers and continue to bring them back, year after year.
  2. Content marketing. Create a content calendar to assist in continuously creating content that consumers want to read and interact with.
  3. Interactive content. Retain users by creating interactive content. Users only have an attention span of eight seconds – therefore quiz questions, games, videos, etc. could assist in keeping them on your site.
  4. Chat boxes. Since it’s less common a consumer can reach a business by phone, adding a chat box to your site will allow consumers to reach out and get answers ASAP.
  5. Nostalgia marketing. Reintroduce past products to the market with nostalgia marketing by leveraging new and old trends combined.
  6. Voice search marketing. More consumers are looking to use voice search. It’s predicted to be the future of online marketing.
An SEO strategy must take these changes in usage into account to help the brand better understand how to optimize their content, where to focus their efforts, and the types of content that will hold the user’s interest. As brands better understand user intent, they will be able to use a variety of different types of content in their SEO strategy, including images, videos, infographics, and standard text content. The information can then be promoted to the right customers at the right moment. How do I create a better workflow and maximize SEO ROI? Find out here.

Bringing in the technical side of an SEO strategy

 

In addition to properly aligning content with the targeted audience, brands can also not neglect the technical aspects of a SEO strategy. The goal of SEO is to help the right audience discover the content. In order to accomplish this, marketers must also consider their site construction, navigation, and markup. Interlink site pages with other relevant content so that visitors who display interest in particular topics can then move on to other material that will also engage them. This will encourage visitors to move down the sales funnel. It is also important to create a site taxonomy that allows visitors to reach their destination in as few clicks as possible. A shallow site taxonomy that organizes pages by topic, but keeps content no more than three clicks from the home page, is the ideal setup. Learn more about how to use topic clusters for better SEO.
  
When it comes to the technical aspects of SEO strategy, companies want to make sure that they are utilizing all their strategies in order to speak to their audience. Three factors to consider when dealing with the technical aspect of SEO strategy is:
  • Know what you want to communicate. Your vision, value, topics, and issues. Things that your business stands for and passionate about.
  • Know what people are searching for. Use keyword research as an opportunity to study and target large audiences, the market demand, and interest online.
  • Understand what Google favors. Review the first page to better understand what Google deems to be the most relevant answer and try to replicate something competitive.
Once sites have completed the optimization process with the rest of their site, they should also consider the role of schema markup in their site optimization. Schema provides search engines with additional information about the website, ensuring that the content is properly understood and listed where applicable. It can also help brands obtain rich answers on the Google SERP, such as placements in the Google Events feature or earning Quick Answers.
 
Your SEO strategy will help drive your organization and your content forward by making your material discoverable by the search engines and the visitors themselves. Developing an SEO strategy, however, requires careful forethought and planning. You must understand the pain points and interests of your target audience while creating content that both aligns with user intent and incorporates the latest best practices in technical SEO. Brands that master this balance find themselves rewarded with a strong, profitable marketing strategy.

XML Sitemaps

BrightEdge SEO Blog
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dniska
dniska
M Posted 5 years 3 months ago
t 9 min read

Arguably one of the more straightforward technical elements of SEO, XML sitemaps are often typically misunderstood. To get a better understanding of XML sitemaps and how to use them efficiently, it helps to know what they are and what they are not.

What are XML sitemaps?

In its simplest form, a sitemap serves as a road map for search engines to discover your website’s most important content and get further context on your website’s overall structure. In addition to providing search engines with a list of URLs, sitemaps can help search engines find newer content, or content located deep within the website’s architecture, which helps websites with a poor internal linking structure.

Common myths about XML sitemaps:

  1. A sitemap is not a list of the pages on your site. There’s no need to include every page in the sitemap. Most websites have sensitive content, like investor information, or content that does not provide a great user experience through search, like login or account pages, and content located behind paywalls or pages returning non-200 response codes. These are examples of pages that should not be made available to search engines and can be left out of a sitemap.
  2. Sitemaps aren’t needed if my site is well laid out. While a good infrastructure is always important, an XML sitemap is meant to serve as an indicator of the most important content that that you want to be crawled and considered for indexation. If you have an enterprise-level site, relying on your infrastructure alone probably isn’t the safest bet to ensure crawling and indexation. Setting up your sitemap to feature your most important pages will assist a search engines’ ability to understand what you consider your most important content to be. Since the search engines operate on crawl budgets, this can be an advantageous approach for larger sites. If your website has more than 50,000 URLs of important content, creating a sitemap index that contains multiple sitemaps may be the way to go.
  3. Sitemaps tell Google what to index. An XML sitemap does not guarantee that a page will be indexed, just that it will be considered for indexation.

Now that we know the myths and what sitemaps aren’t, how can we use them to improve our site organically?A guide to creating XML Sitemaps - BrightEdge

Using XML sitemaps to your advantage

Ignore ‘priority’ and ‘change frequency’ tags:

Two popular pieces of markup found in XML sitemaps are the ‘priority’ and ‘change frequency’ tags. Many webmasters will utilize this markup to improve crawl efficiency and highlight a website’s priority content. John Mueller of Google has stated that Google ignores these two signals. However, he has indicated the utilizing the lastmod markup is used when Google analyzing a sitemap. Focusing on this tag and making sure that you are including the right URLs will go a long way to ensure that your site map is crawled efficiently and has the greatest impact.

Improve your chances at content being indexed

Make your sitemap available to the search engines:

A big first step in making sure that your most important content is discovered is to learn how to create a sitemap and place it in the root directory of your server.

https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

Next, be sure to provide a link to your XML sitemap in your robots.txt file. This file is one of the first places a search engine bot will visit when it hits a website. There it will find directives on what content to crawl and what content to avoid. By including a link to your sitemap, you help ensure that search engines are discovering and crawling your content.

A final step is to physically submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. According to Google’s webmaster's forum, they don’t check your sitemap every time it is updated, only the first time they notice it. After that, they will check your sitemap only when they are notified it has changed. This can be done using Google Search Console’s sitemap tool, and using the “ping” functionality to Ask Google to crawl your site map by sending an HTTP GET request:

http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=<complete_url_of_sitemap>

For example:

http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Only include valid URLs:

It’s imperative that your sitemap references URLs that are indexable and returning a 200 OK response code. Webmasters, SEOs or dev teams should routinely audit their website’s sitemap to remove pages returning 404 errors, 300-response codes and 500-level server errors. This can be done manually by crawling the sitemap or utilizing Google Search Console’s XML Sitemap report to identify invalid URLs. Remember, search engines operate on a crawl budget, so every non-indexable URL increases the chance a valid one won’t get crawled.

Use consistent, qualified URLs:

Consistency is important to a properly formatted XML sitemap. Make sure to use consistent protocols. If your website is a secure site (uses HTTPS) then make sure that the sitemap and all URLs are using the secure protocol. Otherwise, your sitemap will contain redirects which can affect your crawl efficiency and indexation.

Utilize consistent sub domains. Since the XML sitemap provides insight into website architecture and organization, each subdomain should have its own sitemap. This will also help keep your sitemaps as condensed as possible.

Include unique URLs:

Be sure to only include canonical versions of URLs. URLs that include parameters or session IDs can be considered duplicative and should be excluded. Otherwise, crawl efficiency and overall indexation could suffer. When conducting regular sitemap audits, be sure to look for any-non-canonical URLs and remove them. Again, utilizing Google Search console’s sitemap report can help you easily identify non-canonical URLs and checking this report regularly is a good best practice. In addition to utilizing Google’s tools through Search Console, leveraging BrightEdge's ContentIQ site audit tools can help SEOs and webmasters identify non-canonical URLs and pages returning non-200 response codes to help further audit your XML sitemaps.

Do not include non-alphanumeric characters:

A sitemap needs to be UTF-8 encoded. URLs must use entity escape codes for characters like ampersands (&), single quotes (‘), double quotes (“), less than (<), and greater than (>). Also, URLs should only contain ASCII characters.

Limit the size of the sitemap:

The size of an XML sitemaps can quickly get out of hand, especially for larger websites like e-commerce sites. When a sitemap gets too big, it can negatively impact the number URLs that are crawled and indexed, and it can contribute to your web server getting bogged down if it needs to serve large files. To combat this, XML sitemaps should be limited to containing 50,000 URLs and/or being no larger than 50 MB. This means that larger sites may need to use multiple site maps in a sitemap index file.

For larger sitemaps, breaking out sections of content into their own sitemaps can help keep content organized and help avoid sitemap bloat. Creating separate sitemaps for videos, images, and blogs may be a good idea.

Use XML sitemap creation tools:

There are many tools that can assist in XML sitemap creation. Many CMS’ have dynamic sitemap creation options that you can use to help manage what content is published in your sitemap file. A CMS like WordPress has several plugins to help manage sitemaps.

Now that you know how to create a sitemap, format, setup and edit one, it’s time to prepare the list of your most important content to include and get it submitted to the search engines. Get started today!

YouTube Marketing: Creating Your Brand

BrightEdge SEO Blog
blog hero image

gregalbuto
gregalbuto
M Posted 5 years 3 months ago
t 9 min read

As the digital marketing world continues to evolve, so are businesses and companies who are changing their marketing styles. Many companies use YouTube marketing as a way to promote their businesses and products for audiences who prefer video as a way to interact with brands.

YouTube is the second most visited search engine on the internet second to Google. Understanding how YouTube marketing works and utilizing the platform to your advantage will help to increase exposure for your business.

Why YouTube marketing?

YouTube marketing has allowed many businesses to establish their brand. YouTube alone reaches more than 18 - 49 year olds than a broadcast or cable network on mobile and 59% of executives prefer to watch a video than reading text. This shows that a large number of people are more interested in watching and viewing a video than reading an article.

Videos have a bigger influential drive, meaning it is more likely that people will act or take action after watching a video. A few reasons why so many businesses are focusing on YouTube marketing:

  1. 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video the type of content with the best ROI
  2. People search for more video results than any other content
  3. B2B and B2C marketers worldwide name video to be one of the top three social media marketing tactics
  4. Videos get shared more often than other marketing content
  5. Videos boost customer interaction

All of which are great reasons YouTube marketing may be the next marketing channel that many businesses and companies adopt.

Valuable content to focus on

It can be challenging to brainstorm what content you want to publish to draw in your audience. It’s important to generate great content that keeps your audience in touch and connected at all times and you will want to also create videos that allow your audience to build a connection and relationship with your brand.

YouTube search trends will show the most recent popular searches in the country. Knowing what to create and categorizing them in the right category will boost the exposure of your video.

Below are some content ideas that many users are currently looking out for.

  • Customer testimonials
  • Product demonstrations videos
  • Tutorial videos
  • Interviews with inspirational leaders
  • Project review/case studies
  • YouTube live
  • Video blogs
  • Highlight event videos

Knowing what you want to create and what you want to share with your audience will give you a greater chance of having your videos rated highly in importance or effectiveness. Creating videos that the audience can connect to and engage with, you will drive a lot more attention towards your video.

YouTube marketing drives success

YouTube marketing has increased drastically over the past decade. Many companies and brands are using YouTube as a way to promote themselves. Here are some useful YouTube marketing tips that many YouTube marketers use to effectively reach their audience.

  1. Build your YouTube brand. Create channel icons, descriptions, and logos to represent your brand.
  2. Consistently create compelling videos. Create content for your audience that will consistently keep them engaged
  3. Leverage YouTube’s tools and features. Use YouTube tools and features such as end screens and cards to allow your audience to continue to explore your previous content
  4. Cross-promote YouTube videos. Post and share your videos through other social media to drive more views and traffic to your YouTube channel.
  5. Partner with influencers. Partner up with another successful YouTuber and feature them on your channel to drive more views and clicks. You will have access to a larger audience and diversification on your channel.
  6. Invest in YouTube Ads. Paid content will allow your videos to appear before your audience to increase exposure to your channel.
  7. Post at the right times. Posting during the time that most people are active on YouTube so your video can be seen.
  8. Focus on quality. Don’t post to just post a video. Make sure you’re producing good content for your audience so they will want to keep watching and are looking forward to future videos.

Creating content and knowing what you want to publish will determine how well you know your audience. To accomplish a successful YouTube marketing strategy, you will have to narrow down your audience, focus on key metrics, build interest quickly, create content that makes people stay on your site longer, and ask people to share, like and comment on all your videos.

Cultivating YouTube SEO results

Not only do you have to know what type of content to publish but how to attract and have your content be seen by others. By utilizing and optimizing YouTube video content, this will help boost your views and clicks on your video.

Useful YouTube SEO tips:

  1. Create a good thumbnail
  2. Have a compelling title
  3. Have a video description using keywords
  4. Create tags – highlight keywords
  5. Categorize and sort your dideo
  6. Create annotations to generate interaction
  7. Implement subtitles and closed captions
  8. Create keyword search titles – example: ‘what is YouTube marketing?’

New wave of YouTube marketing

Digital marketers will continue to see a rise in YouTube marketing over the next decade. YouTube marketing will be the new way of reaching a new audience. YouTube is a social network that has over a billion users and many of them are spending more time on YouTube. When marketing on YouTube your content never dies out and based on research, videos that contain a personal touch will allow more people to build their trust with your brand. This is built through relating to your audience on an emotional level. When trust is built, your videos will help increase your list of leads and sales.

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