Videos have to be optimized before they are uploaded to YouTube. The largest video hosting and sharing platform in the world has a ranking system, much like its big brother search engine Google. There are some similarities between Google SEO and YouTube SEO. It is the set of dissimilarities that should draw your attention, which is obvious since videos do require a different kind of optimization than primarily textual contents. Here are a few significant elements of YouTube SEO that influence video ranking.

AdWords can teach us a lot about better SEO. These Google Ads clue and direct us to better identify the high click-through rates and what paid ads performs optimally. Let’s face it, often, paid ads are your quicker ways to accomplish your goals as opposed to waiting on Google to bring up your well-thought tags or backlinks and finally point users to your product or service site.

Search engine optimization strategies are still largely dependent on keywords. Outbound and inbound links, optimized website design and relevant, unique and informative content continue to be important. However, an SEO strategy should also factor in the intent of users. Every internet user initiating a search on Google has a specific intention. The intent could be informational or navigation. It may be transactional. Most people who start searching for something are not at a stage wherein they will make a decision to purchase a product or sign up for a service. Only such a stage requires transactional content. Other stages require either informational or navigational contents.

The first step to create an SEO strategy based on user intent is to understand the three kinds of contents that Google find relevant depending on the search initiated. Google is constantly trying to rank relevant pages for all kinds of search criteria. The search engine giant is hence not only considering but actually recognizing the intent of users. It is ranking pages or displaying search engine results according to that intent. Let us factor in a few real examples.

High authority sites have a head start that smaller websites will perhaps never attain. Websites that are considered to be authoritative in a niche will always be ranked higher by search engines. They will almost always feature on the first page when relevant keywords are searched. Smaller websites in the same niche often target the same keywords and they can at best try to get ranked right after the high authority sites. However, smaller websites do not have to fight the same war. There are ways to outrank high authority sites.

If there is anything that search engines give as much importance to as authority, then it is relevance. Search engines are constantly trying to find the most relevant results for every keyword and hence smaller websites need to score well on relevance. Search engines are continuously improving their algorithms to find more relevant content. The websites with such content will not make the high authority sites insignificant but they will attain a much better rank. There are two ways to improve the relevance of a website. The first method is focusing on a niche wherein the contents target a small set of keywords. The second method is silo site structure.

Amazon is the largest global marketplace. The ecommerce giant is also one of the most important search engines in the world. Google is inarguably the largest search engine right now. Companies selling their products on Amazon also have a search engine optimization strategy for Google. However, the strategy may not be specifically for a particular product. The optimization is of the website as a whole. This is fine as one does need to rank their website higher to get more traffic. More traffic to the website will also naturally generate more traction for the products listed on Amazon. The website can have links to the product pages on Amazon. In addition to such measures, a company should try to get the Amazon product listing on Google.