Whether you are selling services or products (physical or digital) your goal is to convert visitors into paying customers. You’ve heard many times that content is king, and while that is true, great content isn’t enough. You can write valuable information but it matters a lot how you deliver it.
The design of a website is the first thing that the visitors see before starting to read a single word. If they don’t like how it looks then they won’t stick around to evaluate the content.
For this article, we wanted to find out more opinions so we reached out to 80 web designers and internet marketers and asked them the following question:
Keep reading to find out what they had to say.
Spotlight Your Unique Selling Point
Your site visitors must immediately understand what you’re all about, and what sets you apart from your competitors. If you communicate your unique selling point well, you’d be conveying the value of your company and showing customers that you’re aware of their pain points. Both of these are good for increasing conversions.
Save the Best Designs for the Crucial Pages
Whether it’s that extra spark of color, motion effects, animation or a mouse scrolling effect, make sure you save the best for the most important pages. Pages conveying your unique selling point or your services should be the most eye-catching.
Top-Notch Copywriting Matters
Not everyone will read every word of your site, it’s true. However, it’s important to think about the approximate 10% of prospects who comb through every inch of your site.
Invest in good copywriting for all areas of your site. Use catchy words, power words or buzzwords to capture and hold attention. Write with a sense of humor to help humanize your brand.
Include Testimonials
I insist on testimonials appearing before the sign-up form. Testimonials give your potential customers a vote of confidence, and speak to the authenticity of your skills and ability to deliver.
Improve Your Page Load Speed
Your good content and excellent designs will go to waste if your page load speed is not up to the viewers’ expectations. Slow sites will have high bounce rates, and that can negatively affect your conversions.
Make sure to optimize your images and keep the number of installed plugins to a minimum.
At LAD Solutions, we’ve designed and developed many websites across various industries, and all have the below design tips implemented in them to help with conversions.
1) Choose the right colors and make sure your color palette matches your logo colors. Also, make sure that the color you use for your CTA buttons is eye-catching and contrasts with your main colors.
Green is generally a good color for CTA buttons since it reminds people of either money or “go” signals. Similarly, we recommend avoiding “red” since that reminds people of “stop”.
2) Add CTAs like phone numbers or buttons on the top right section of your header. Studies have shown that the eyes start at the top left corner, and end on the top right corner after reading in a straight line so having those CTAs there will help increase the chance of someone calling you or filling out a form.
3) Make sure your website has a good user experience and is designed to be responsive on mobile phones or tablets. CTAs should be easily visible on phones so that the user can take immediate action if he or she desires.
4) If adding a banner image above the fold, make sure the image is high quality, engaging and has a CTA button on it. Avoid sliders if possible as many tests have shown that websites with static images convert better than ones that have sliders.
5) Make your menu navigation simple and easy. We recommend creating a user-friendly sitemap layout of your site first and then matching your menu to it. It is best to limit the number of menu items to between five to seven.
6) Improve your website loading speed and make sure things above the fold load first and fast. Studies have consistently shown that websites with fast page speeds have a much higher conversion rate than those that do not.
If you want to turn your website visitors into leads, make it easy for them to find what they need, understand what you want them to do, and then do it. The key areas to focus on are layout, navigation, and content.
The layout should be simple with minimal widgets, pop-ups, or unnecessary movement. Remove anything that distracts your visitor from finding what they need.
Minimize the number of calls to action. The more choices, the more likely your visitor won’t take any action.
Navigation should be intuitive and help guide your visitor towards what you want them to do. Menus should be easy to find. Make navigation sticky so visitors don’t need to keep scrolling to the top.
The content layout needs white space to make it easier to read. Add space around images and graphical elements. Shorten your paragraphs, use simpler words and take advantage of bulleted lists when possible.
Finally, test your website design and layout for mobile users. Make sure your website is responsive and the layout collapses properly on a mobile device. Include easy-to-click call-to-action buttons and simple forms.
Just like with any business, it is important to make it as easy as possible to convert. Meet them with content that best answers their questions or gets them over the hurdles they may have to come to visit.
Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Whether it is cost, payment process, or even the reason why they should come to you over a local competitor. That information should all be there for them and be easy to find. You should have content addressing each of these types of issues or questions.
Provide options for schedules that fit their different personalities. Some people are phone call people while others like to do to it all online.
Give them those choices and provide as little friction as possible to get them into your office. Some people know exactly what service they need while others just know what their problem is.
When it comes to designing websites with conversion optimization in mind, we stick to several key principles:
1. Calls to action above the fold
2. Show, don’t tell–especially above the fold
3. Make sure the site is stupid simple on mobile devices
Failing to adhere to these simple rules will most assuredly tank your on-page conversions.
Follow the habits of the users. I’m all for new ideas in web design, but visitors have common habits.
For example, they know contact links are often in the footer. They know a shopping cart is usually in the top right.
When you alter things to be uncommon, you will get people who have no patience for the change. A competitor who has a better, common usability is only a click away and ready to steal your business.
Ongoing CRO (conversion rate optimization) campaigns are not nearly as popular as they should be.
CRO helps your revenue, your brand stickiness, and even your SEO (so much so that we force it into all our SEO deals as a default function of the service).
Don’t design a website based on hunches. Design it with data from your users.
When we get a design project, we’re always looking at how to do things better. If we have the freedom, we’ll use WordPress; otherwise, it’s whatever platform the client wants to be on. We look at the right coloring; what colors give the user warm fuzzies, and which push them away? We want to know that.
Does the F pattern work in the white space? From the top of the page down, is it easy for the user’s eye to track down the page? Is the important information showing in the top 1/3 of the page?
Is the navigation understandable and does it make sense? Navigation is a huge plus; it has to make sense to the visitor or it’s not much use.
Last, but certainly not least, how do those golden CTAs look? What about placement? Are they hidden? Do they draw the eye? Is the expected action clear?
I’m sure I’ve forgotten several things here – designing sites isn’t for the faint of heart – but for me, those are the top areas to look at.
When people are presented with too many options, they can become overwhelmed and not be able to make a choice.
A good conversion strategy is to limit the number of available options to two or three. That way the user can easily compare each offer to each other without getting confused.
When designing for this type of conversion strategy, it’s best to use a table format with columns for each choice and rows that display the various benefits included in each option for making easier comparisons.
The color of your call-to-action (CTA) buttons are also important for conversions. You want them to stand out on the page and not blend in.
My recommendation is to always use a contrasting color for the CTA buttons to the user cannot miss them. For example, if your website design includes a lot of blue on the page, then an orange CTA button would be a good contrasting color choice that stands out to the user.
Stock photos with people always look fake. And anyone can buy and use them on a site.
Consumers are smart and tend to ignore stock imagery because they know those pictures are not authentic to the website.
You can increase conversions by using real photos with real people that don’t look staged or altered with Photoshop. The more real the image looks, the more your visitors will trust its authenticity.
It’s kind of like on social media. You know when a post with an image is an ad because it looks too perfect to be real and you scroll past it.
But if the post includes an image that looks like it was taken on a phone, then you immediately become more interested and willing to stop your scrolling to look at it.
The more fields you have on a submission form, the fewer people will fill it out.
To boost your form conversions, only include what’s absolutely necessary to start the lead genre process. Ask yourself, “Can we get by with just a first name and email address and ask for other details on the phone?” If so, limit your form to those two fields to get more submissions.
Pop-up forms that take up the entire web page are intrusive and don’t give the user the ability to opt-in at a later time. If the person clicks out of the pop-up, they can’t revisit the form.
Therefore, it’s better to use a slide-in form that only takes up a small portion of the viewable screen. Slide-in forms make their presence known while also letting the visitor read the contrasting on the page.
And if that person does want to opt into your offer during their session, they can easily still do that through the slide-in form that’s still available.
One of the things I focus on to increase conversions on websites I develop is what I like to call “reducing friction.” And by reducing friction I mean, make it easier for your audience to perform your desired action.
Therefore on sites I develop, I will be sure that there is always a click to call button shown on mobile phones as a call lead is so valuable to businesses.
And on desktops, I will always ensure that visitors do not have to take multiple steps to fill out a form to get in touch. They click a button to “get started” and a pop up is instantaneously available with a form to fill out.
By making it easier for your website visitors to contact you, then they are more likely to do so.
Stop new visitors leaving your website without connecting with your business by adding a relevant and clear call to action to each web page, whether it’s inviting people to sign up for a free newsletter, book a demo or buy something.
The design and placement of call to action buttons directly impact conversions. Use a contrasting colour so the button stands out and think about how design elements such as arrows or empty space around the call to action can help to draw attention.
Let people know what they stand to gain when they click on a call to action button. For example, instead of “Order information”, try “Get information”. The first is something they have to do, the second is something they’ll receive.
Test different versions to see which attract the best conversion rates. Change one element at a time – e.g. colour, position, size, wording – to pinpoint what works.
My top tip to increase website conversions— get rid of the paragraphs of text and testimonials. Replace them with stories of patients on vertical video.
Nothing convinces patients more than seeing and hearing other patients just like them. Instead of a testimonial, which is clearly a one-sided self-promotional view of the company, flip the angle to feature THEM.
Talk about more than their teeth, gum health, your equipment, and your staff. Instead, talk a little their dreams, favorite coffee shop in town, their interests, and their family.
There are a ton of dentists within a 10 minute drive. Same for real estate agents, mortgage brokers, lawyers, and other service providers.
Repurpose this content to your social media channels and turn the stories into blog posts.
This is how you stand out.
The things I keep in mind related to website design in order to increase conversions are the following:
1) Use the best colors for the industry. Most of my work is in the senior care industry. Therefore, I always suggest to my clients to use colors like blue and orange. This avoids brilliant colors that can be too vibrant.
2) Optimize the website for mobile. I like to work with websites that have good speed. Also, that they are responsive with simple forms, and call-to-action buttons that are visible and easy to understand.
3)Use enough white space: A website clutter is confusing and won’t convert. It will have even more issues in mobile. Therefore, white space is key in the design.
4) Place Your Website’s Elements following the F Pattern. Users look at a website in an F pattern. The top left corner of a web page is where users start to look.
Therefore, I make sure the design offers relevant information at the beginning of the top left corner and continue to the middle part that forms the letter F pattern.
5) Finally, a tip that always works is to keep simple navigation. This will keep things easy to find. It also allows you to make them do what you want with very little effort. Remove the confusion from your website if you want to increase conversions.
When people land on your website, it should be immediately clear what you do and who you serve. As a dentist, you may think this is fairly obvious. You provide dental services. But that’s too general. And it’s a sign you don’t have a clear brand, which is slowing your business growth.
Take the time to think about what differentiates you from other dental practices in your area. Maybe you work primarily with children. Perhaps you have a relaxing atmosphere. Or you could offer specific expertise others lack, such as having an oral surgeon on staff. What sets you apart?
This is what you need to communicate at the very top of your home page. Be concise. Get it down to 8 words or less. Then support that text with a large image that also communicates this message.
And finally, include a direct call to action to book an appointment. When built correctly, this will be the most powerful section of your site.
There are many design factors that play into increasing website conversions but the most important is an obvious, purposeful CTA (call to action).
Yes, color, spacing, copy, images are all important for conversions but the one item that can immediately ruin your conversion rate if you do it wrong is the CTA. Every page on your website should have a strong, consistent CTA.
At The HOTH, we spend a lot of time thinking through our customer journey to determine what next step we should push them to in the CTA.
The key is to not overwhelm the user with options. You need one, clear, distinct big bright button on your page that makes the user think “This is obviously what I have to do!”
For example, on lead generation landing pages, the only CTA is to download our guide so we can collect their email. If it’s a webpage for someone whos already given us their email, the CTA could be Create Your HOTH Account Now.
If it’s a landing page for someone who already created a HOTH account, the CTA could be Schedule A Strategy Session With Us Now.
The goal is to always be moving your lead up the ascension ladder until they purchase. And the best way to do that is with an obvious and purposeful CTA.
There are a few super simple things you can do to boost your website’s conversion rate.
Firstly, make your CTA (call to action) clear. Ideally, use a button that stands out and pulls people towards it. Try to use a single word or at most two for the text. E.g. “Learn more”, “I’m in”, “Let’s go”, “Buy now”.
The simpler and more obvious your CTA is, the more likely your prospect is to take action.
Second, test everything. I know this sounds like cheap advice you’d read on any other blog, but it’s true. Aim to test one item each month. With CTAs, for example, you could try different copy, text colours, fonts, font sizes, and even the location of the CTA.
Third, use a heat map tool to see where your potential customer gets stuck or gives up. These tools are a superb way to understand how your visitors use your website, allowing you to gather data and informing the A/B tests you could run.
Fourth, talk to your customers. The more you can do to get in the mind of your customer, the better. You can use the information you gather to inform how you design your website, offers, and CTA.
The best design tips for increasing website visitors’ relies on the UX design which is also known as UX design.
UX design is one of the most important rely on to determine your website brand and trust to your visitors.
Also, there is something that is called load time.
If you have a huge graphic that is not optimized for the web your visitor will leave your website and go elsewhere. You can have the best website but if it doesn’t load fast enough it doesn’t matter.
Make sure all your images are optimized correctly for the website which is 72 dpi, RGB color, and jpg or png format.
Now there are several others that help as well like colors, optimize for a mobile or responsive website that adapts to a visitor’s device like desktop, cell phone, and tablet.
User navigation is a good one too if your visitor can’t find where to go or what they want they will leave.
Minimal design, more white space, 1-2 colors as a color palette is preferred this makes you look professional.
By using these simple techniques your visitors will stick around for a better experience and higher conversion.
One of the best ways to increase website conversions is by using live chat or a chatbot. Live chat can be operated by your internal team or a third party, while a chatbot can be built and optimised over time.
Again and again I’ve seen this strategy work tremendously well with service based businesses (like dentists!) all the way through to eCommerce based businesses.
Think of live chat as a concierge service where your job is to steer possible customers in the right direction through solutions based selling, and aim implement that same philosophy into a chatbot.
Focus on how logical copy and design work together.
Labels and microscopy (those little bits of text surrounding different design and action elements) can help a reader greatly in understanding what they’re reading about, where they can and should do with a certain user interface, be it a website, app, or other forms of UI.
Not to mention button copy for conversion flows. You want the reader to know what will happen after they click on a button. If I click a button that says “Book” I want to know if I’ll get charged immediately.
If you show me prices, then maybe changing the button copy to “Check prices and availability” is much less committing and people will click on it more.
So, what does this mean?
In our experience at Briefer Copy, we realized that having a clear idea, conceptualization of goals, and planning of user flow, helps us grasp how SEO, content, and copywriting messages should come together on a certain page, or entire interface (website, app, etc), thus laying the grounds for designers to build their part of the product.
To increase website conversions, I recommend using both text-based and image-based call-to-actions (CTAs) sporadically throughout content such as pillar pages and blogs that are designed to convert.
These CTAs should ideally be the opposite color of your website theme (based on the color wheel). Ie, if your theme is blue, your CTA should be orange to make it stand out from the rest of the content on the page.
I also recommend bespoke related links to relevant information and a CTA image in the right-hand side margin on blog posts.
Internal linking is another important method to guide users around the site and lead them towards the desired goal.
Finally, and these can be controversial, but in many cases, on-exit popups work well to increase the conversion rate. This is especially true for the goal of getting users to subscribe to a newsletter.
Of course, all conversion rate optimization needs to be split tested. What works for one site may not work for another!
My design tips for clients looking to increase website conversions are informed by two different techniques. The first is to go back to the start and take a really deep dive into your target audience.
Who is your most likely consumer – who is your ideal consumer? What is the ‘pain point’ they are looking to solve when they come to your website?
For example, their pain point may be that they need to buy a new swimsuit, but they’re a normal-sized woman, not a tiny model, and most online swimwear retailers focus on perfect figures and skimpy designs.
How does YOUR brand and online store firstly understand, and secondly solve this pain point better than any of your competitors, and how can you convince them that you do?
What do they love and what are they drawn to outside of your own category? What are their priorities?
You need to completely inhabit the mindset of the people who will be visiting your site, to really understand what they want, then weave this throughout the design and 9critically) the copy.
The second tip is to go through your website ‘blind’ – by this I mean, imagine you’ve never visited it before, and land on the homepage. Begin there. Do you know where to go from a cold landing like this? Does the website draw you in?
Do you feel there’s a logical path, are recommendations and other automated features ‘on the money’ or not? Which hurdles are in your way from landing on the homepage to checking out?
Typical hurdles include navigation issues, illogical groupings of products, illogical recommendations, pricing too high, shipping price too high or complicated, checkout process too long, website overall messy and cluttered, poor photography (or insufficient photography), too many pop-ups and non-brand widgets, a design which doesn’t appeal to your target audience in terms of age, gender, likes and dislikes, etc.
Remove every barrier you can find, make your website flow and ensure it presents your brand in the best light, solving your customers’ problems neatly, easily, and attractively.
This is the essence of increasing website conversions from a design perspective.
Every visitor on your site operates from one of two systems of thinking that influence decisions. System 1 operates quickly and without much conscious thought or control, system 2 involves deliberate, mental activity to reach a decision.
I always prefer designs that cater to both systems: stripped of all distractions with just one clear CTA, that will keep the mental effort to a minimum (system 2), with subtle visual cues to point towards the one thing you want your visitor to do (system 1).
It’s a straightforward and perhaps obvious principle, but I see a lot of sites still overwhelm their audience with choices, without guidance to conversion.
To increase conversions I recommend applying the next tips.
Websites must be optimized for voice search
Voice user interface allows users to interact with websites through voice commands so it adds usability and functionality to your site making it more accessible to all users
Content quality and length matter for rankings
Web pages that contain long high-quality content get more visibility and shares so becoming that trusted source and influencer with timely and helpful answers to questions get rewarded quickly
Mobile UX determines your ranking
In a mobile-first world, you have less time to grab people, attention spans are shorter than ever so video will be used even more to boost rankings.
The world is moving to mobile-first or mobile-only, with fewer people accessing the web on big screens so everyone is tailoring their site, message and content accordingly.
Better use of bold colors and white space to stand out from the competition.
The trend toward simplicity and minimalist design means less is more in the new year as the world becomes crazier and technology gets smaller, faster and more complicated, people are finding new ways to simplify their lives more than ever.
With every website that we take on – whether it’s a new business or a website redesign – we always focus on 4 major things to increase website conversion.
1: Call to Action above the fold
2: Phone Number on the sticky header
3: Simple layout
4: Mimic your GMB’s hierarchy (if applicable).
Having a call to action above the fold is important and it’ll let visitors take action right away. Whether that CTA is calling a phone number or filling out an online form to generate a lead.
On website redesigns, we often see absolutely no call to action anywhere on the site over and over again; which leads us to believe most businesses or web design companies understand the value and importance of conversions.
Along with having a CTA above the fold, having a phone number in the sticky header is an easy win (make sure you track it in Analytics) that allows someone to connect with that business at any time during their site visit.
Having a sticky header allows that part of the site to always be visible no matter what page you are on, or how far you’ve scrolled down.
With everything, keep it simple. We don’t like to complicate or create designs that make it difficult for visitors to navigate through. At the end of the day, make sure you design with your audience in mind.
Bonus points: If you are a local business owner or have a Google My Business setup, then make sure to keep the hierarchy of your GMB copied over to your website.
Almost every business owner that we speak with doesn’t understand the importance of GMB. Google actually prefers their own properties to help with a ranking over any 3rd party site (yes, our own websites).
When you incorporate things such as driving directions, site hierarchy, service pages, and other relevant information that you can grab from your Google My Business profile… you’ll see some magic happen.
I usually follow a certain number of rules when it comes to design and increasing website conversions.
That’s it.
Website design is important to increase website conversion. Here are 3 things to consider
1. CTA’s that POP:
It is important that along with strong “call to action” text, your buttons are a distinct colour that stands out from the rest of the site. Your visitors need to know where to click and why.
2. Just Be Real (Images):
Your images should be of your actual business or product. The main image should show your product or service used with success. This way site visitors can easily relate to the success and say “I want that!”.
3. Design & UX:
Based on research websites are scrolled and viewed a certain way. These frequently or first viewed areas need to be taken advantage of. Call to Action buttons should be placed in the top right corner of the site as well as prominently throughout the home page.
Professional design is important to improve the trust of your business and increase conversions.
To optimize for conversions you’ll need to consider these tips:
Design is one of those things that can make or break the success of your website. Good design will draw more traffic and good conversions. Bad design can have the opposite effect.
Crowded and messy web pages are one of my pet peeves. Without a doubt, a poorly designed webpage will directly affect your conversions.
Although I am not technically a web designer, I am an eCommerce expert and digital marketeer and I have built many websites for both my own businesses, affiliate sites, and friends’ businesses websites.
I have a non-negotiable rule for web design, which says that user-centric design is the cornerstone of the website.
The attention span of the average online user is around 8 seconds. Therefore the site must be easy to use, easy to navigate, easy to read, and it must be easy to buy your product or service!
It should be abundantly clear what the user is supposed to do once they arrive on your site. If it is not, there is a high probability of you losing the customer.
Whitespace and the size of your fonts are important. Don’t use single line spacing, it is better to use 1,5, or even 2. If you have an older audience, possibly bigger.
I prefer 1,5 line spacing and 14 or 16 sized fonts. But it really depends on the site and who it is for. But I will not go below font size 14.
When it comes to conversion, in particular, your CTA’s needs to be on point. One mistake I see many sites make is using different fonts, colors, and buttons on their CTA’s.
Your CTA’s needs to be in a contrasting color to your main color. Use a color wheel to find out which color is the contrasting one. If your primary color is green, your contrasting color would be red.
You can deviate slightly from using the exact opposite color in the color wheel, but the central point here is that the CTA is in clear contrast with the primary color. And be mindful of color blindness!
Our website is designed to be as informative as possible without being overwhelming. The process of receiving our product is a little bit different so our website is designed to educate potential customers to make them feel comfortable in the process.
Websites need to be optimized both for mobile and desktop versions. People tend to browse more in mobile, but purchase in desktop so it’s important to have a website that is intuitive on both.
One of the biggest improvements we’ve had over the last year was increasing the speed of the website through design. We cut back on oversized images and implemented plugins designed to reduce the loading times of our content.
It brings the content immediately reducing the risk of a customer becoming impatient and exiting the website. We saw our conversations immediately increase after improving the speed through design.
My biggest design tip for increasing website conversions is to include product and brand testimonials on the top half of your home page.
Indeed, when a top of funnel customer is initially landing on your website, they need to know that your product and services can be trusted.
By showcasing (1) customer testimonials, (2) press and publication mentions, or (3) social proof/visuals via influencers, you can do exactly that.
Research shows that almost half of internet users rely on a website’s design to assess its credibility. Nail these three essential website design elements, and you’ll see conversions rise.
1. Strong and clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons
Call-to-action buttons need to grab your audience’s immediate attention. Use a contrasting color to distinguish it from the text and graphics above it.
Use language that conveys a sense of urgency, tells them exactly what to do, and explains what they will get when they take action. Phrases like “Start a Free Trial” or “Book an Appointment” communicate clearly and drive action.
2. Effective use of white space
Using plenty of space between the visual elements and text on a webpage makes it easy for people to focus on your main message.
Trying to cram too much information or visuals onto a single page confuses readers. And, in the worst-case scenario, it can even cause eyestrain.
3. Clear and simple navigation
Neil Patel explains the need for clear, easy-to-follow navigation best. “Websites that make me jump through hoops drive me nuts…I prefer to get from point A to point B via the shortest path possible.”
So do your website visitors. Don’t make them guess where to find the information they need.
Clear signposts that guide them to where they want to go in mere seconds will mark your brand as one that they’ll want to do business with.
After all, if your website is efficient, your products will likely be, too.
Create a Buyer Persona
To improve the conversion rate, your content should provide value to your target audience. To make sure your website visitors receive what they are looking for, that content needs to address each visitor’s pain points.
For example, if you are targeting large companies, the content on your service pages should address decision-makers.
It could list such benefits of working with your company as cost efficiency, time savings, higher productivity, and an appealing ROI (Return on Investment).
If you want to capture the attention of an industry professional, you may want to go deeper into the technical aspects of your offer while still addressing the reader’s point points.
To do all the above, you may need to create a buyer persona for each segment of your target audience. This persona creates a clear picture of what each part of your audience needs and wants so you can adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Educational and Organized Content
The content on your service page could be the first thing a potential customer learns about your company. The first impression you make on the visitor relies heavily on the quality of that content.
The service page should explain “why” visitors need to follow your CTA (Call to Action). It should take the user a few seconds to scan the service page and understand how working with your company can solve their problems.
Besides elaborating on your offer in a clear and concise manner, you should provide transparent instructions on what needs to be done next.
Make it easy for the visitor to get in touch with you. Contact details should be readily available in more than one place on the service page.
Be Smart with CTAs
Make sure your CTAs aren’t just descriptive. They should be creative. A simple “contact us” is overused and bleak. Come up with something more exciting, such as “Start saving money now.”
While CTAs are highly important for CRO, overdoing them can lead to a negative effect. Don’t put more than one CTA on the page. This could confuse the visitor and keep them from taking any further actions on your website.
Leverage Visual Proof
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, allow it to do its job. Website visitors have a much easier time processing visuals than reading plain text. In fact, they are more likely to stay on your page if they see something visually appealing.
If you can add examples of your work, before/after photos, product videos, and other visuals, you are likely to capture the audience’s attention. This, in turn, could lead to higher conversion rates.
The best design tips for increasing web conversion rates include making sure that your contact information is always visible (top, side, or bottom of a page).
Make sure to consider including a chat bot, live chat, or a way to leave a message in a contact form easily.
The easier it is for a person to contact you once they are on your website the better chance you have of gaining a new client.
Use quality photos. According to research, 56% of users look at photos and illustrations first when they visit a page. Low-quality pictures can alienate some visitors, and they will close the site.
Compress photos. Users don’t like to wait. Compress pictures to make the site load faster.
Show a real team. Instead of stock images with smiling people, download a section with your heroes – real employees.
Make user-friendly navigation. Have a convenient menu with links to other sections.
It is much more pleasant to wander around the site when everything is intuitively clear and the desired section is easy to find. Easy navigation can even affect the position of the site in the search results.
Test your headers. They should be short and at the same time clearly convey the essence to the user. Do not be foggy – it is better to speak clearly. Especially, this concerns articles: from their title it should be clear what is the benefit for the reader.
We’ve increased website conversions time and time again by implementing these two things in all our designs.
1) Providing some kind of immediate call-to-action at the top of a page and above the fold accompanied with a bold headline and a few subheadings. These will be the first thing your customers see on a page and it’s often all you need to capture leads.
2) If you’re an eCommerce website your checkout process needs to be multi-step. Long gone are the days where customers fill out 12+ text fields all on the same page in order to checkout. Abandoned checkouts are way too popular now.
Make the process seamless and instead break it up into bite-sized pieces. An example would be:
step 1) contact info
step 2) shipping info
step 3) billing info
step 4) place order
If you serve a market with one currency, remove the currency from the price. People will understand what currency they pay, but the omission of the currency sign will make it feel less like they’re spending money, resulting in more sales.
Obviously, this won’t work for websites serving multiple countries, although it can work when you have country-specific TLD’s or can somehow switch currencies based on location or the visitor’s own choice.
Another tip is:
Choose a distinct color for your calls to action (buttons). People should easily note them to click and do what they’re supposed to do. It should be a total contrast with the other colors, so it cannot be missed.
One of my EASIEST tips to implement design-wise is the URQ rule.
URQ stands for upper right-hand quadrant, which is ironically and surprisingly the spot on a website our eyes naturally go first.
Why? Well, it’s because that spot is usually home to the “Login” button on Gmail – or the “Cart” when we’re shopping. We go to that spot intuitively to take action.
Dental offices should make the best use of this spot by including a Scheduling Button there, a link to their portal, or, at the very least, their phone number. Whatever their # 1 priority is, this spot is a great place to put it.
Use a responsive design and A/B test your designs
A responsive design will automatically scale the size and placement of content and elements to match the screen size of the user.
It keeps images from being larger than the screen width so that users don’t have to take extra steps, such as swiping sideways or zooming out, to read your content.
Most traffic now comes from mobile devices, so it is important to ensure your site loads quickly and looks good on all screen sizes.
Using a responsive design that avoids clunky images, large tables, or links that won’t work as intended on smaller screens will ensure a high-quality user experience for everyone who visits your page.
A/B testing is probably the most valuable tool available for a web designer. Instead of following your gut feeling or blindly implementing what “experts” recommend, make data-based decisions.
Always test your design changes to see whether they help or hurt conversions. We test every change we make to our landing pages and we’re often surprised with the design option that provides the best conversion rate.
Websites should be easy to read and not overwhelming. Many people mistakenly pack information into their websites, when clean minimalist designs win.
On the internet there is so much noise and it’s hard for website visitors to pick where they should focus their attention.
But if designers can make browsing simple by adding a short paragraph at the top of the website that highlights the key points they will keep viewers engaged longer and there have more conversions.
Another tip is to have a simple call-out form in addition to a phone number. A short contact form can give customers who aren’t ready to call a simple way to request more information.
After filling out the form customers can be redirected to a calendar where they have the option to schedule a call. This two-step funnel with a lead form followed by a calendar page has been a moneymaker for SoFlo SAT Tutoring.
1. Less is more. When you have a lot of things on the website, people are distracted and they may not do business with you. They want something simple so they can navigate through it much easier.
2. The site needs to look great everywhere else before marketing online (on your social media and business cards, etc). If you can’t make a good impression online, why would people do business with you?
3. Meticulously think about your font choices and what they say to customers. Stay away from complicated fonts because it makes the page look unprofessional.
4. Make sure that your logo stands out on the page. This way, customers know who it is they are dealing with and what to expect.
5. Be sure your business name shows up on every page so people don’t have to search for you when they want to do business with you again in the future. It also helps in link building and brand building as people of your industry will be aware of your brand.
6. If there’s a lot of text on the webpage, make sure it is broken up with bullet points and sub-headers. This makes the content easier to read and digest, and people can quickly skim through everything they need to take action.
7. What’s the call to action? At the end of your content, you need a final paragraph that clearly states what you want people to do next. Make it obvious so the path is clear. Don’t make people guess!
8. If you want to sell a product, your image needs to be crystal clear and high-quality (no blurry or dark images). People need to be able to see everything they are about to buy. It’s important that they can zoom in close on any details they need to see.
9. Make sure your website loads quickly! When people go on a website, if it takes too long it’s very frustrating for them and they may leave (and you don’t want that). It needs to load in 3 seconds or less.
10. Your site should be optimized for both mobile and desktop viewing so people have the same pleasant experience with your site no matter what device they are using.
11. Take note of where people spend most of their time on your website and optimize that area for maximum impact. Where do most visitors look at first? Where do they go next? Where do they spend most time looking around?
An important first step to designing your website is to have a thorough understanding of your dream client.
This is important because you want to tailor the website so that your dream clients have a good first impression and feel a strong presence with whatever you are selling.
If you can point out your features and how they solve your dream clients’ problems, it will be a lot easier to sell them on your product or service that you’re promoting.
The next biggest step after this is to have a clear and concise call to action that solves their problems. You want to set your website up like a funnel so that you can convert interested visitors into clients or sales.
Try to keep things minimal on your website, but be detailed enough that customers understand what you do and why you do it.
Far too many times, I come across websites that I can’t even figure out what they are selling because they get to into the weeds but don’t identify any customer problems they are solving nor do they have a call to action.
Here are some of my web design tips:
When it comes to website conversions, the guiding question we have to ask is ‘how do we get the user from point A to point B (conversion) quickly and easily?’
With this in mind, my top design tip for increasing website conversions is to have one clear CTA (call-to-action) per page.
In saying that, you can have more than one CTA button on the page, but how you incorporate that into the design should be balanced and the goal should be the same every time.
The most common mistake I see when it comes to CTAs is landing pages with multiple buttons (worse yet, if they are all the same colour) with different call-to-actions.
Having multiple call-to-actions means you are asking the user to do different things – go to point B, consider point C, read more about point D, etc.
Having too many directions to choose from can create barriers to the user reaching the conversion point.
For me, one of the best tips for increasing website conversions is to make navigation easy. I’ve lost count of the number of websites I’ve seen that make a user’s life difficult.
If you’re lucky, you have a maximum of 30 seconds of someone’s attention. It could be and usually is, much less than this. There are many ways to do this.
Your navigation bar is probably the most important. Hamburger menus work well here, as they clearly tell a user how they can get to different pages on your website.
Have a footer that makes sense and has links to the important pages on your website, as well as your social media accounts.
And finally, your navigation should go hand-in-hand with the main priorities of your business. Do you want users to purchase? Do you want them to book a call with you? Do you want them to download something?
Navigation is a make or break for your business, and should not be ignored.
Website builders are a perfect solution for individuals and small businesses to start a website without hiring a developer.
Squarespace, Wix and Weebly make it simple for even a newbie to put together a polished site in a relatively short amount of time, even when they need more advanced features like email marketing or an e-commerce platform.
Here’s a simple list of do’s and don’ts in making your website.
Do’s:
Don’ts:
Web design is all about knowing exactly who your target audience is and what they struggle with. Your visitors are searching for valuable, helpful information or a solution to a specific problem.
Hence, you can only generate conversions if your website addresses that need or desire. Each conversion is a sign that you delivered exactly what they were looking for.
Therefore, your website design, structure, and layout should all serve the same goal: to offer real value to your visitors. When it comes to increasing your conversion rate, you should start with the end in mind:
Keep your design as clean and clear as possible – less is more in web design. Don’t distract or overwhelm your visitors with too much information.
Moreover, make sure each sub-page or landing page only targets one specific issue or topic. That way, you will generate highly targeted leads and conversions interested in one particular product, service, or offer.
These visitors are highly likely to make a purchase and become loyal customers and regular visitors in the future.
Let’s face it, the only reason why a person or a company has a website is to get conversions. Could be someone signing up for an art class, or a corporate SaaS company looking to book more demos for their software. Conversions make the difference for sales.
Have you ever had the intention of filling out an online form, just to be scared away by too many required fields?
It’s one of the best ways to kill your conversion rate. Remove all unnecessary form fields, leaving only those that are essential to accomplishing your goal.
No one wants to be the first person to use a product or service. So, you can put their mind at ease by providing testimonials and/or reviews from past customers. Social proof, including video testimonials, can put consumers at ease.
Many visitors want to buy your service but are on the fence.
They have lingering questions that keeps them from taking that next step
Live chat tools are perfect for helping these people feel at ease and take the leap of faith. Especially after you have helped them with a pain point-type question.
Most live chat tools are easy to add to any site and can add an immediate boost to your conversion rates.
When I write content for a dental website or any other website, I don’t think just words. I also think design. That’s because one of the quickest ways to lose a visitor is with a page that looks intimidating to read. It’s actually not very hard to score big on this aspect of design.
On a dental page, I often begin with a general introduction, then a factual section about the specific procedure or ailment, possibly a section on the cool tech, definitely a section on the caring dentists, and finally a section on taking action (location, hours, call to action).
Most importantly, I write in plain English, which means shorter words, shorter sentences and shorter paragraphs. Not only are they easier to read, but they look less intimidating. And less intimidating is what marketing dentistry is all about.
My top design tip to increase website conversions is to make a site that is usable and inspires curiosity. To make a site usable and enjoyable, web designers and marketers should stop reverting to pop-up forms and huge click-to-call buttons.
That might have worked with older generations, but the younger Internet users are quicker to discern between well-intentioned design and click-bait.
Designers must simplify the experience and give users the basics while empowering them to continue on their journey.
Simple design choices such as teasing continuity, using contrasting colors that attract your eye, and making the conversion process quick and painless, are – in my opinion – the best “hacks.”
For local businesses creating additional landing pages for each service offered and optimizing those pages so that they are easily accessible ensures your potential customer will find what they are looking for and that all of their questions get answered right away.
This is a big deal for conversions and it changes from desktop to mobile so it should be optimized for both.
For example, a desktop website can have a mega menu that displays all pages and services along with an additional menu in the footer highlighting your services and contact information, however, when accessed via mobile there is a single hamburger menu with a clickable submenu along with click to call and basic business information.
This may seem like basic common sense advice, but there are countless small business websites out there with a single service page and dodgy experience when comparing desktop and mobile.
Designing a modern and professional website has been known to increase the chances of converting traffic into subscribers/ leads/ sales.
One forgotten issue is that lots of website owners did not focus on, is the loading speed of the website. An additional second of loading speed could mean traffic going to another website when they are already 1 foot into your webpage.
Here’s how you could improve the loading speed significantly;
1. Do not use a website builder. As they have lots of codes to load. (Important)
2. Get fast reliable SSD web hosting.
3. Reduce the file size of all images on your website.
4. Get CDN, like Cloudflare.
5. Manage your codes in Google Tag Manager. Clear those not using.
6. Clean website database at least quarterly.
7. Use caching if possible.
When you need to use a website builder, then all other steps MUST be implemented.
Blog content typically generates a high percentage of a site’s traffic but has a particularly high bounce rate. This is to be expected but at the same time presents a great opportunity to improve website conversions.
A Call-To-Action at the end of the post is often used but it won’t be seen by every reader. I recommend one or two CTAs within the body of the post.
Avoid using them in the first third of the post, you want the reader investing in reading the whole post and any small distractions in this early part may lead them to bounce.
You should also keep the CTA in context with the preceding content and this will improve the likelihood of a reader clicking.
From a pure design perspective, you want it to be compelling enough to take action, while not interrupting the natural flow of reading.
Aside from the CTA within the body of the content, I love seeing sticky sidebars or headers that maintain a CTA as readers scroll down the page.
What do professionally-built websites do differently than DIY’ed websites? Here’s the thing! You have less than 10 seconds to create a representation of your brand on the top of your website. 99.9% of the visitors to your website are not going to buy that visit. So how can you create a vibe that keeps people coming back time and time again? Let’s go through it!?
1. Use WordPress. WordPress is the gold standard for creating custom, beautiful websites while allowing your team to manage your content, orders, etc. There is no argument for any better CMS platform.
2. Say what makes you unique immediately! Your most creative copy should be in the header of your website. Get straight to the point, but punch people with uniqueness and what makes your brand valuable!
Stop using cookie-cutter templates or themes! Custom and unique sets you apart immediately from your competitors.
4. Have the right Call to Action(s) (ex. Don’t have a “See Plans and Pricing” button. Instead, have it say something creative or something like “Let’s Get Started!”.
5. For every second it takes your site to load consider that a 7% loss in conversions so make sure your website is loading fast. Terrible WordPress or Shopify themes slow this down so make sure you hire a good developer who understands site speed testing.
6. Create an Exciting Loading Page to get your visitors engaged while the site loads.
A common problem that I see with website design is that the designers lean towards an informative website, that only educates the visitors. I frequently see websites that have no call to action anywhere on the page!
The simple solution to improving conversions is to have several CTAs throughout the website. I like to have slight variations on what we are asking the visitor to do, as different visitors will respond to different offers.
I recommend always having on call to action visible no matter where the visitor is on the site.
Additionally, adding a contact form in the footer of the website ensures that not a single page goes without a good way to get in touch with the business.
Using these strategies, I’ve worked with countless businesses to take a website with zero conversions, and turn it into a lead generation machine.
If you want to design your website to increase conversions, then you must design for User Experience (UX).
Your visitors want a seamless, straightforward, and positive experience while on your website and, if you can give them that, you increase the chances of having them convert.
A positive experience for the user also improves your credibility in the visitor’s mind and can make them feel more at ease when they decide to purchase something or provide personal information.
Do not overlook the User Experience when designing your website!
Limit your options. Choice overload is real. If your webpage has too many options for consumers, they’re likely to become overwhelmed and not choose anything.
Use the hierarchy of customer thought to influence what you put on the page. What questions or objections do customers pose during your sales process?
You should be answering objections to get micro “yes” moments as the person works their way down your web pages which lead up to the final “yes” which is the lead/sale.
Meet your audience where they’re at. In automotive, we know that the majority of consumers visit websites on their phones.
That means that the website user experience should be designed for mobile-first, then fitted to desktop instead of having a desktop-user experience that is responsive to mobile-sized screens.
1. Using heavy images and animations will kill your conversion rate
The longer it takes for your pages to load, the more likely visitors are to bounce.
More precisely: 25% of people bounce after 4 seconds, and half of the web users say they don’t come back to a website if it offered poor performance the first time.
Improving your page speed is the most efficient way to improve your website conversion.
2. Being too subtle with CTAs.
Soft-colored buttons that blend perfectly might be the most aesthetic option, but it’s never the right business option.
When it comes to CTAs, high contrast and bright colours systematically lead to higher conversion. And buttons perform better than hyperlinks.
So if you want people to click and convert, make your primary CTA as prominent as possible.
Users of eCommerce websites are 7-10 times more likely to convert than regular users. If you have an online store and you want to increase your sales apply the following strategies.
Make the search box easy to spot
The search box is an important part of any website. It’s where users can find information about your site, and it also serves as a way for them to navigate around your site. If you don’t make the search box easy to spot, then people will either ignore it or miss it altogether.
The best place to put the search box is at the top left corner of the screen. This makes it easier for users to see the search box when they first land
Make the search box big enough for typical queries
Most sites only allow one word per query. But, sometimes people like to type multiple words together. To accommodate this, you should increase the size of the search box to let people enter multiple words.
Also, you should consider adding a dropdown list to let users select the category of the product they are looking for. This would make it easier for them to narrow down their search.
Place a search box on each page
This is another great strategy to improve conversions. When people visit your site, they expect to see a search box somewhere on each page. So, if you don’t have a search box on every page, then they may not bother using it.
This is especially true if there are no clear navigation options. You could also try placing the search box near the top of the page. This gives users a better chance of finding it before they get lost.
Avoid zero search results
People often think that zero results mean that there are no products available. In reality, it just means that there aren’t many products available.
If you want to improve your conversion rates, you should always display at least five results.
Use different search filtering options
Include different search filters so people don’t get confused by too many choices. For example, you could add tags and categories to help people find what they are looking for. You could even add prices to help shoppers find exactly what they want.
If you want to improve your conversions, you should encourage users to leave reviews about your products. These reviews can be used as filters to sort out the best products.
It’s so important to have a strategy behind your design and map out your customer journeys from the start. We usually work by planning the content and structure of the website first and developing a design that brings that structure to life.
One creative way to make your design stand out, improve the user experience and conversions is with micro-interactions.
These essentially provide feedback to the user for taking action – this could be in the form of a transition, animation or a simple change in the text.
An example we did for one of our clients incorporates animation as part of their members’ rewards experience.
Once they have enough points, the user is encouraged to ‘open a box’ for a free treat, and the confetti animation reinforces the feeling of being rewarded, making the interaction enjoyable and memorable.
These little ‘rewards’ help encourages engagement, and they can be used at almost any stage in the journey – from adding an item to your basket to completing a form or checking out a purchase.
They make the experience memorable and motivational, and that in turn will help boost those conversions.
Create design and content that is ADA-compliant. If the design of your page lacks contrast, it may be difficult for visitors to read the text.
If you are missing ALT tags for images, videos and audio files, then those who rely on screen readers will not be able to experience all of the content on the page, resulting in a poor user experience.
Tip: you can check the contrast between color combinations with free tools, such as Contrast Checker.
Create mobile-friendly experiences. Make sure your website design and content are easy to access, navigate and read on all screen sizes.
This will ensure that as many users as possible are able to access your content seamlessly and easily, and will boost the results you see from your website.
Tip: you can check if your site is mobile-friendly just by entering the URL here.
Insert CTA buttons that stand out. Use bright, contrasting accent colors for your most important CTAs on-site, to draw the eye to them. This makes it as easy as possible for visitors to convert when they’re ready.
Don’t make them hunt for this feature. Don’t hide the Contact Us button in a drop-down menu, or leave a product landing page without a clear path to purchase.
Check your page load speed. This is now especially important because, with their most recent algorithm update (Core Web Vitals), Google has started prioritizing the ranking of websites that load quickly.
Additionally, web pages that take too long to load waste the user’s time, and they will likely bounce as a result.
Tip: you can check how fast your site loads using GTmetrix or Page Speed Insights from Google.
In today’s online world, it’s not enough to just have a good product or service anymore. You need to be able to promote it in a way that stands out, beats your competitors, and resonates with your target audience.
One of the most important aspects of promoting your business or product is design and aesthetics.
So, what does that look like? Here are a couple of easy tips to keep in mind when designing a website that will help you increase those conversions:
Navigation is critical: The last thing you want is for your users to be confused about how they can find the information that they are looking for.
High-quality graphics: Remember, you are competing for people’s attention with other websites and quality images are a must.
Responsive design: If your site isn’t responsive, then you are losing out on a ton of potential conversions. Everyone is on mobile now.
Simplicity is more: Remember, you want your website to be as simple and easy to navigate as possible.
In order to effectively increase your conversion rate, you need to be able to design your website in a way that is easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing and gets across your message without being too distracting.
One of the top tips I have found to increase conversions is to create scarcity that feels immediate. Essentially, the way we do this is to create a CTA which embeds in it the current date and month. If this includes a discount so much the better.
For the sake of example, Buy Product with 10% OFF Only in. This creates a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in the user and has helped us increase conversions. If you make such a CTA dynamic, then you have manufactured scarcity every month.
An easy way to do this with WordPress is to sure the Current Date plugin and add a shortcode [current_date format=’F Y]. The plugin can be found here.
If you add this to the pricing section, so much the better, because it is at the point that a user is considering whether to make a purchase or not.
Introduce Micro-interactions:
Although they’re little, micro-interactions play a big role in web design.
They make navigation more simple and humanize the entire browsing experience by offering feedback, allowing users to see the results of their actions, and delivering feedback.
Visitors can learn how to use your website by using animations, as well as visual and sound effects.
For example, a pleasant sound notice can indicate that an action was done accurately, while a flashing, red visual cue can indicate that they made a mistake.
Micro-interactions readily promote engagement and result in a nice user experience, which in turn encourages conversions, because they’re catchy and interesting.
Paying attention to such minor details shows that you care about your users’ opinions.
At the same time, flawless execution is technically hard, which is why, if you want great results, you need to hire a reputable web designer.
Be clear in your webpage’s headline what you are offering. This ensures visitors know whether the content is relevant to them or not.
People will not necessarily stick around to explore your site just to figure what it is you actually do.
Also, being clear and descriptive in the heading and subsequent text, will likely mean including some keywords which will be good for your SEO and relevance of the content.
To increase website conversions for my clients (coaches and entrepreneurs), it surprisingly starts BEFORE the design itself.
The words you use matter so much and strategically using short and benefit-driven headlines that cut straight to the pains and secret desires of your target audience is critical.
Make your copy incredibly specific! It converts better as people think you’re reading their minds, which gives them more trust you can solve their problem and hire you.
Then in the page design, forget walls of text. Break up sections and stick to one column for increased focus. And make sure your page width isn’t too wide as it causes too much eye effort to keep scanning so far across.
Keep sentences on the shorter side and have 1-2 sentences per paragraph. I love interspersing testimonials throughout a website because there’s no such thing as too much social proof after all.
And lastly, increase conversions with a clear next step at the end of each page. Invite for a consult call, contact you, buy now. But don’t leave ‘em hanging!
Focus is the key. To increase conversions on a website, home in on what you want your visitor to do on each page.
Limit your calls to action to one clear, primary call to action per page. Too often, it’s tempting to add multiple calls to action on a website or fill pages with unnecessary clutter.
This is especially true with websites that offer a variety of products and services. Website owners want to draw attention to all of it, all at once. But what ends up happening is the opposite.
When you don’t have a clear focus on each page, nothing stands out. Even if your visitors can’t verbalize it, this lack of clarity makes it difficult for them to make a decision. When the visitor can’t decide what to do next, they leave.
When you make it absolutely clear what you want your website visitor to do on a page, you will increase your conversions and lower the frustrations of your customers.
These days, it’s essential to think beyond the desktop. Web design needs to meet consumers where they’re at and, increasingly, that means mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized design. Today’s consumers are easily distracted.
They’re generally on their phones or tablets, and you’ve got about two seconds to catch and hold their attention before they move on to the next shiny hyperlink on the SERP.
For this reason, mobile-responsive and mobile-optimized designs are no longer a “nice-to-have.” They’re a necessity.
So, how do you improve the mobile user experience? Start with the data. Where are your website users coming from? When are they accessing the site? Which pages do they linger on, and which contribute to your bounce rate?
Once you’ve separated the late-night doom scrollers from the catching-up-between-meetings crowd, it’s easier to design your website around your audience’s particular needs.
Above all, simplicity is key to effective web design. This is especially true when considering the mobile experience. Cut the fat in your copy, make sure your load time is lightning fast, and make the buying portal easy to navigate.
One of my favourite techniques for increasing website conversion rate is removing every unnecessary button. Whenever we build a landing page we always A/B test it.
What I like to do is completely remove every button that is not a buy button. This includes header and footer too! I simply remove them so that the visitor cannot be distracted by anything else on the site.
It’s part of a theory in neuromarketing, which suggests that a part of our brain called amygdala (our “lizard brain”) makes us notice a lot of different things in our environment.
It is the part that is responsible for human instinct and survival, so it’s said to be the part of the brain responsible for our decision making on a fundamental level.
Studies have shown that fewer choices actually make the customer more likely to buy, so by removing all unnecessary distractions from the page you’re much more likely to convert them.
We have found an increase of 30-80% in conversion rate of our landing pages when we remove the unnecessary choices and funnel the visitor through the exact steps we have designed.
1. Offer a clear price offer on your website landing page. Most buyers understand tiered price packages. So, it’s best to put that on your site. This way, you can attract leads who have the capability to pay for your services.
2. Avoid sliding images in the HERO banner. You should clearly mention your brand messaging. For example, you are a wellness expert for new age first time entrepreneurs.
3. Promote your lead magnet or a video section of your brand. If visitors find information about your services, they are more likely to enquire.
4. Add an exit intent pop up when someone is about to exit. This puts an urgency and lets you capture leads information for a quick follow up call.
5. Well optimized mobile website is a MUST for high conversions. You can integrate a chatbot or a phone call icon. Most visitors are scanning, not reading. You have very limited opportunity to grab the attention.
Web design, SEO, and branding are closely intertwined, so to increase conversions, you need to keep all three in mind when working on your website.
SEO comes into play based on the keywords you use to get organic traffic to your website. If you focus on keywords that are less related to your products or services, you’ll see less conversion.
For example, if you own an e-commerce store that sells a specific cut of women’s sweaters, using niche keywords that describe your product (ex. “women’s cowl neck cashmere sweater”) will likely have a higher conversion rate than a more general keyword like “women’s apparel.”
The next step is branding. Once you have the keywords you’d like to use, you need to incorporate them into your website copy.
Using your brand colors and voice throughout your site helps people get to know your brand and feel more comfortable reaching out or making a purchase.
Finally, the star of the show – web design. Adding calls-to-action (CTAs) is the first step to increasing conversion. If people don’t know what you want them to do next, how will they do it?
CTAs on e-commerce websites are straightforward (ex. buttons that say “Shop Now” and link to a product page). Service businesses can be more nuanced, depending on the next step in their marketing funnel.
One conversion could be signing up for a newsletter, another could be submitting a contact form, or you could prompt people to schedule a consultation.
No matter what action you want people to take next, you need to make it clear with calls-to-action throughout your website.
You also want to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and search, so that people can find exactly what they’re looking for and convert accordingly.
If you are looking to increase the conversions on your website there are a number of different things that you can do. I’m going to go over a few of the most important aspects Dentists should consider for their site.
1. Make sure to look your site over on mobile to ensure everything looks good as many users will only access your site through their phones.
Furthermore, you should ensure that you have mobile-specific elements such as “click to call” buttons that will auto-dial your number for patients when they click them.
2. When your website first loads you should have a “call to action” in view without the user having to scroll down or look for it. This can be a button to book an appointment, a click to call button, or a contact form. Determining the best call to action depends on your business and how you prefer patients to contact you.
3. When you first start building your website you want to have a clear goal in mind for how users will navigate through it and find the most important information. Make sure you are leading users to not just read about you online but to contact you.
4. Make sure to include testimonials and reviews of previous patients in an easy-to-find spot for additional social proof and to ensure new patients feel comfortable reaching out to you.
5. Try and avoid using stock images when possible, having authentic high-quality photos of your practice and team will give patients more confidence in your business. Especially in a field like dental where patients want to ensure they are in a clean and comfortable environment.
6. Have you donated to the community, won an award, or been featured in any local papers? Make sure to mention it on your website!
7. Add a social media feed to your website to encourage patients to engage with you online! This will make it easier for you to retain patients and keep them coming back.
These are just some tactics that we recommend you employ when deciding on a dental marketing strategy for your practice and looking for the best tactics to increase conversions.
The number one factor that makes or breaks conversions is trust. Building trust is paramount to increase website conversions. Implementing trust-building factors into the design is done in several ways.
Be transparent by having contact info easy to find.
Make sure that your grammar is solid. Typos and poorly written content lower trust.
Place “as seen in”, “has worked with”, and badges for professional associations. This will help website visitors know that you are proficient and reliable.
Other trust badges are “Free Shipping” and “Money Back Guarantee” depending on your industry.
Another major trust factor is the use of real reviews and video testimonials. The best practice is to use a review aggregator so users can see the actual reviews from your GMB, Facebook page, or Amazon page so they can click and see the actual review.
And on a broader scope design itself can make or break trust. Having a clean, user-friendly mobile responsive website relays that. Whereas a poorly constructed website does not inspire trust.
It’s best throughout the design process to keep in mind that people are skeptical, and for good reason. Each element of a website will either create more trust or lessen it. So think of the user and how they may interpret the design.
Something often overlooked is the commitment that people have to make to follow through with a conversion.
A service or product that costs $100 is far more likely to have people convert compared to something like a vehicle or new home build. Buyer journey and the length of journey are extremely important to take into consideration.
Once you understand this, it becomes easier to know what you need to be offering. For home builders, free brochures will always download (convert) higher than phone calls or form submissions.
A call to action banner is always a great go-to option, particularly for pages with a lot of content. If users are having to scroll a long way to get to the bottom call to action, you’ll be losing customers.
It also works to break up your page and give a bit of breathing room.
You have to be strategic though. I’d recommend putting it at about the halfway mark of your page. Far enough down that users have read a decent amount, but not too far that you may have lost them.
Always follow these call to action banners with more content. It needs to act like a quick half-time pep talk before getting back into the good stuff, and then rounding out with another final call to action in the form of copy.
A/B test your website design and messaging.
2. Create a compelling reason to buy from your store.
3. Use bright colors to attract visitors, but keep the colors consistent throughout your website.
4. When designing a menu, make sure it is easy to use and doesn’t distract visitors from the main call to action.
5. Make your site easy to read by using sub-headers and bullet points to break up text into smaller chunks.
If you want your website to have success with conversions, the two most important page elements to include are a well-crafted message paired up with a strong call to action.
Without a powerful headline, you’re unlikely to attract the attention of website visitors. The message has to resonate well with website visitors, so it’s important to think about who is going to be landing on this page when writing this.
Your message should quickly summarize the solution or product you’re offering to the visitor and why it’s going to help them overcome a problem they are having.
After attracting enough attention to keep a visitor on your website, you’ll need a way to push them into converting.
Your call to action should work as a direct follow-up to your primary headline. Any text, including the words on the button itself, should reinforce that your offer is the best way for the visitor to get what they are looking for.
It takes about the first 3 seconds for the visitor to decide whether they want to continue on the website or exit.
Hence, it is important to avoid cluttering your website with multiple widgets, pop-ups, flashy graphics, etc., that can distract the visitors, resulting in a higher bounce rate.
Single column layouts and minimal widgets, and sticky pop-ups should be the ideal choice for designing a website.
Over 80% of the website traffic typically comes from mobile devices. Most of your prospects will ideally be visiting your website from their smartphone.
Furthermore, Google tends to prioritize websites that have a mobile responsive or mobile-friendly website for their SERP rankings. Hence, it is essential to create websites that are mobile optimized and suit different devices.
The key to maximizing conversions from a website is to use strong and compelling CTAs. The stronger your CTAs, the better are your chances of scoring a conversion.
In addition to that, ensure to place the CTAs prominently and use different color contrasts to make them pop which will help in encouraging visitors to take the desired action.
When it comes to design websites, it is no longer solely about how aesthetically pleasing and unique your site is because websites today, play a tremendous role in converting potential buyers into actual sales (hello digital world!).
To help you with the process of designing a website that increases conversion, consider these tips: Stay true to your brand. Reference your brand style guide to ensure you stay ‘on-brand.’
Remember that the best brands are those that are able to humanize and make themselves relatable- consistency here is the key which is why you absolutely need to reference your brand style guide during the design phase.
Design with the user experience in mind. Ensure your potential customers enjoy visiting your site and can navigate easily – this also means that you must consider the mobile experience as well (this is critical!).
Something as simple as whether a pop-up will help or hurt your chances of keeping a customer engaged should be discussed (test and learn). Minimize options whenever possible.
Choice overload can cause paralysis by analysis causing your potential customers to not make a choice.
Where possible, simplify your website messaging and solutions- if need be, elaborate once you get the customer further down the sales funnel with a phone or in-person conversation.
Creating a homepage that reads like a story seems to be an effective way to lead the viewer through your desired funnel right up to the point where they purchase what you’re selling.
To do this, you’ll need to meticulously plan and design a homepage that does the following:
Quickly explains who you are, what you do, and why they should care. Explain the problem you solve. Provide examples to make you appear reputable and legit.
Impress them with your advanced tech, expert team (or whatever your major selling point is).
Offer a deal that is ‘too good to be true’ and wrap it up with a call to action.
An expertly designed homepage can quickly increase your conversions and make a big difference in how a website visitor becomes a paying customer.
Negative Space is Your Friend
It’s tempting to offer as much information as possible on your website, but this might harm you. Negative space allows your pieces to breathe and guides the visitor’s attention around the screen.
Allow your viewers to scroll down the page to see each aspect independently.
Negative space does not just refer to the gap between your page’s major parts, such as the space between your header and your content or the space between your sidebar and your content.
It also refers to the space between all of the smaller components on your websites, such as the space between paragraphs, lines of text, and even letters.
Keeping all sorts of negative space on your site in mind helps to maintain everything readable, scannable, and easy on the eyes. All of this, of course, leads to greater conversions.
Make your call to action stand out.
It’s easy for signup buttons, buy now prompts, and other calls to action to get buried by other information, so you need to make sure everyone sees them.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme.
The easiest way to do this is to make your calls to action a color that contrasts with your main theme. (I’ve included an example below. I like the way that the “See if you qualify button” contrasts against the greens.)
Another tactic, especially if you’re incorporating your call to action into a blog, is to style your call to action in a different font or font size than the rest of the text.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
For instance, you might make your call to action bigger, or stylize it with an H3 header tag to ensure that everyone sees it.
Keep in mind that if you make your call to action button the biggest thing on the page, your content is going to come across as too salesy, and readers are likely going to bounce from the site.
The trick is to incorporate your buttons and prompts into the content in a way that feels natural while also highlighting them.
1. Simplify by default
If it takes too long to find something, visitors will leave. Some websites are so packed with widgets, pop-ups, and flashing graphics that users lose interest and leave.
Sidebars, supplementary menus, and pop-ups may keep visitors on the page, but they deter action. If visitors are overwhelmed with options, they may do nothing.
2. Stunning graphics and visuals are in.
With people spending a whole day online each week, it’s vital that websites give a holistic experience. Hire an expert photographer for unique images.
Remember that visitors will notice if your photos are irrelevant. Also, remember to use appropriate ALT tags and captions for optimal website visibility
3. Design responsively
Mobile devices account for over 52% of all website traffic. Asia and Africa have significantly higher figures at 65.1% and 59.50%. Visitors will leave a website if the links are too small or the site doesn’t render appropriately.
Rather than establishing separate mobile and desktop websites, we propose embracing responsive web design. With responsive design, your website will appear great on any device.
4. Use heatmaps
Most web users skim a page from left to right and down, rather than reading every word. Heatmaps help you see where users interact with your site.
Thank you so much to all the experts that have contributed to this expert roundup! Please share this post with your friends and followers on social media.
So, you have built your website (or you are thinking about it), make sure that your design and branding touches on the best marketing practices and you are now wanting to build your brand in order to gain future business.
It’s at this point that most people begin to consider PPC marketing. PPC is one of the most popular marketing techniques businesses use nowadays. It’s easy, has very big sales potential and most importantly, is budget-friendly. But the thing about PPC is that it can quickly cost you a lot of money.
Yes, it is budget-friendly, but only in a way that it allows you to set the amount you are willing to spend. It is in no way capable of giving you direct sales.
Client-based businesses are at risk of losing money from PPC marketing if they do it wrong – or if they neglect to do it as part of their overall web design and marketing strategy.
To help you skip the phase of learning from a costly mistake, here are some solid ways to generate clients using PPC marketing.
Let’s start by focusing on your branding and PPC marketing on Facebook. The design is mostly taken care of for you – but you still need to brand the page in a manner consistent with your web design in order to build continuity and a community that identifies with your service.
Then comes the steep learning curve. Using PPC marketing on Facebook is very tricky. You’d think that putting up branded ads promises you clicks, likes and shares.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If people see that you don’t have enough of an audience who believe in you, this could also pull them back.
The best way to solve this sales hindrance is to build an audience, and you can’t focus on PPC marketing alone to achieve this. This advice would be quite useless if you do that.
You need to incorporate your design and branding into the PPC process. This not only creates social trust but also imbeds brand consciousness on the prospective client or consumer.
There are a plenty of PPC management tools and services used by both PPC management agencies and business that can help you to create the perfect campaign. But there are also a good number of easy-to-establish strategies that almost anyone can begin to implement.
One way to build an audience on Facebook is by creating a business page.
To begin, always build a page using that company’s name. If you are working alone, name that page with your name and the services you offer.
Once you have done the legwork (Web design, interactive page content like contact forms, blog, about and privacy page) it’s now time to start gathering a clientele. You might start with “false” followers (i.e. people you know personally).
Eventually, you’ll end up with a significant number of followers and your credibility will rise with that number. With enough of a following, search engines will also begin to value your online presence.
Once you have this at hand, the PPC clicks you receive will more likely end up leading to a new patient or client acquisition.
It’s understandable to be hungry for new patients or clients. Closing leads the goal of every small business. But more often than not, the old saying “slowly but surely” is the path of greatest success.
Every once in a while, offer relevant, informative content in your ads instead of just promoting your business. Articles and videos are some of the best ways to gain people’s attention and trust.
Once you have successfully acquired people’s trust, you can eventually squeeze in your sales pitch. Sometimes, you don’t even have to do anything. Once you get people to believe in your knowledge and skills, they’ll knock right on your door to do business.
Come up with a number of informative articles and videos that you can promote on interest-based platforms like Facebook. Creating content for your ads – say, on dental hygiene and perhaps significant advances in dental treatment can help expand your authority and your audience over the long haul – even if they don’t garner immediate conversions.
Video advertorials that have solid content – useful to your target audience – can also create a steady stream of new visitors and is a good long-term strategy.
For keyword-based platforms like Google, you’d want to retain the people who click through an ad to enter your website. Having a low-quality website design with zero relevant content could push potential clients away.
Make sure to fill your website with all the information people expect to get. Incorporating regular articles and blog content as well as rich media can increase readership and consumer loyalty. and other site content. This is not only great for retaining site visitors, but it will also help your organic search engine rankings.
Value Adding as part of your web design and content strategy is a key component to the success of any PPC campaign.
Some of the things you can do are explain what your business is about and showcase your work, your experience and your qualifications. These should be standard for any branding endeavour.
Create pages for the reviews you have received and then show off your portfolio – if you have one.
The best thing about your own website is that there is no limit as to what you can put in there, unlike Facebook or LinkedIn. So grab this opportunity to beautify your site and fill it with content that will prove to be valuable to your target audience.
Good design leads to good conversions, which in turn ensures that your PPC campaigns and other marketing efforts provide an acceptable ROI.
High-intent keywords refer to the type of keywords that are obviously directed towards a purchase.
For Example: “buy [brand] sneakers”, “the cost of sneakers”, or “discounted sneakers”.
People who type in these keywords are generally at the decision-stage of their online browsing. They have already made up their minds and are now looking to spend. To make your PPC marketing worth the investment, target these kinds of “Buyer-ready” keywords.
Some niches are more competitive than the others, so add a number of other keyword techniques to take advantage of this strategy. Some of the things that you can do are make your high-intent keywords long-tailed.
Adding a geographic location to your keywords is also a clever way to get good leads.
Some business owners are so sales hungry that they end up misdirecting potential clients. To generate clients and to close sales, don’t forget to match the keywords and titles you used in your web design with those being used in your PPC ads.
If you promised content that tells them “How To Find The Best Dental Clinic in Michigan”, give people just that. Don’t lead them to a landing page that is irrelevant to their search query.
To close a new client, patient or consumer, consider the mindset that people have when they click on your ads. Are they looking for immediate service? Are they just looking for a long-term family practice?.
Focal Point: Give the Site Visitor What They Anticipated: Both in Word and Landing page Design.
The answer to these questions will have a direct effect on the wording and web design used in your PPC campaigns and your landing page web design.
Overall, PPC marketing is one of the most effective marketing techniques any business can take advantage of. It is a top strategy for dental and orthodontic clinics and allied dental health services.
If done right, and in harmony with your site design, content and usability, it can provide an excellent return on your investment, reach thousands of new clients and, keep your existing clients coming back.
Learn more from the best dental marketing blogger.
Small business professionals and dental surgeries know that in order to be successful, they not only need to acquire new customers, they also have to keep their current customers happy so that they become repeat customers.
Client retention is more valuable and costs less money than finding new customers. Current clients (or patients, or customers – depending on your industry) are already familiar with your business offerings and have already been exposed to your brand. New customers are a more difficult sell because you are essentially starting from scratch.
To acquire a new client, you have to spend money on marketing, lead generation, analytics, and advertising.
If you still need convincing of the major role customer retention plays in helping your business grow, take a look at a few statistics:
It’s also important to note that client retention is no longer simply the domain of traditional marketing. Search Engines like Google are also factoring in retention as part of its ranking algorithm.
In providing SEO for Dentists, which is what we do around here, we are very mindful of the fact that Google is looking at things like time on site in order to determine client retention and loyalty for the purposes of organic ranking in search results.
So, in understanding the importance of retaining your clients, here are some simple, yet effective customer care and business strategies for you to utilize in your business that doesn’t require any additional financial outlay.
Happy and satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat customers and more likely to recommend your business to others. Therefore, it is obvious that the success of your business is directly related to the satisfaction of your customers.
However, good customer service goes way beyond simply answering a question or replacing a defective product.
It is vital for you to understand what is important to your customers by listening to them and resolving any issues they might have in a professional and timely manner.
Although it is important to get back to customers in a timely manner, research shows that the quality of your response is actually more important than the speed.
A study conducted by the Gallup Group shows that customers who evaluated the service they receive as helpful, courteous, and willing, are nine times more likely to be engaged with a brand.
This is in comparison to those who viewed the customer service as speedy and are only six times more likely to be engaged.
Such insights into consumer psychology are priceless for those who want to retain their customers. Every customer wants to be treated as if they are your most important customer and want your undivided attention. In other words, you should give every customer the VIP treatment.
Be sure not to rush, ignore, or minimize the importance of an issue from one of your customers.
Remember that the purchase decision is based on emotions and you want to be sure to provide your customers with a welcoming, helpful, and attentive customer experience to keep them happy.
Relationship building should be part of your marketing and long-term customer engagement strategy because of the value of developing strong relationships with your customers.
I have learned this through marketing and dental SEO. SEO may build search results, but you need client results. It’s not enough to have all your on and off-site optimization in order. You need to actually meet the client, patient or customer where they are at in order to build trust.
Focusing on understanding the needs, problems, and behaviors of your existing customers help build the foundation for trust where your customers will feel like they have a personal connection to your brand.
Trust should be at the center of every customer relationship because it increases loyalty, sales, and referrals.
Trust is earned over time by providing an outstanding customer experience every time contact is made with your company. Some of the ways to earn trust are:
In today’s highly competitive business world, building relationships that enhance trust with your customers become paramount. As soon as you lose the trust of your customers, you have lost their business.
A customer loyalty program is a type of reward system where those who make frequent purchases receive special perks. In other words, long-standing customers will be given special benefits such as:
Loyalty programs serve major functions. They incentivize new customers to make more purchases and ensure that existing customers feel valued by your business.
Some companies who offer loyalty programs are:
For some, the ability to achieve a higher status from your customer loyalty program is a great motivator.
Many loyalty programs give their customers exclusive offers, elevated status, and increasing rewards as they buy more from your business. The more they shop, the more they earn.
Loyal customers are paying customers, spending more on average than one-off purchase customers. Part of nurturing that loyalty with your customers is to stay in contact with them and connect with them frequently.
For example, you can send periodic regularly scheduled emails or make personal phone calls to your customers.
This is especially easy to do when your business offering is a process where you can check in with your customers in the middle of the project, and then again after the project is completed.
Asking them for their feedback, discussing progress made, and reviewing deliverables is an effective and valuable way to stay in touch. Make sure you are ready for their input and be sure to be open, honest, transparent, and professional, even when dealing with negative feedback or complaints.
Ensure you have made use of the best free citation services (I have a list of citation services for dentists here) as a way of further connecting – and staying connected – with your audience.
In order to develop and nurture a strong, trusting relationship with your current customer base you have to know what their needs are, how they rate their customer experience and any concerns or problems they might have.
Reviews that clients and customers provide are a vital means of engaging – and understanding your user-base.
This is especially true when it comes to why they decide to no longer be your customer.
Filiberto Amati, the Founder of Amati & Associates, points out the importance of being able to measure and understand why your customers are leaving.
As an International Business Development Expert, he emphasizes that in order to solve a problem, you first need to know why it exists and to what extent.
It is only then that you can implement procedures and strategies to solve problems or fix processes that are causing customers to leave.
Some of the most effective ways to assist you in understanding your customers are:
Surprises make us happy, bring us pleasure, and are good for the brain. Using the element of surprise with your customers motivates, inspires, and nurtures your relationship with them.
To help your customers trust your business, going beyond your normal service impresses your customers.
Receiving an unexpected valuable offer, a handwritten note of appreciation, or discounts and free gifts will not only affect how your customer views your business, it will help build loyalty and increase customer retention.
The worst thing you can do after acquiring a new customer is to do nothing once they have made a purchase.
In order to build a strong and trusting relationship, you need to not only stay in touch with your customers, you should show them that you value their business by providing helpful and relevant information.
Offering training or ongoing classes on a product they have purchased, giving advice on how to maximize the potential of purchased products or services, and making recommendations on how to get better results are effective ways to provide continuous value to your customers.
In order to consistently nurture relationships with your customers, you should keep a record of all communications each customer has had with your business.
For instance, if someone calls you about a problem or issue, it is important that you have access to the necessary records of any previous conversations that took place with the same customer.
In situations where more than one call is made by the same customer about the same problem, it would be in the best interest of your business to react differently than if the call is the first one made by that customer.
You would probably want to offer more assistance, discounts on future or add-on products, or perhaps even offer to return their money in an effort to turn a negative into a more positive experience.
Keeping records of customer preferences, ongoing issues, support tickets, and phone calls for your customer base is especially helpful when there are changes in your personnel because it enables any member of your team to pick up as a business partner with any customer at any time.
Because consumer behavior has evolved, it is incumbent upon the business to interact and engage with their customers where they are online and where they want to engage.
This is especially important when customers have a problem or issue they want to be resolved.
Being available, visible, and responsive on all channels will provide a seamless and consistent customer experience, help build relationships, and increase brand loyalty.
Research indicates that 87% of customers don’t think businesses are putting enough effort into providing seamless customer service experiences. (Zendesk). Don’t let your company be one of those businesses.
In the age of increased automation, businesses need to make an extra effort to let their customers know they are people and not just a number.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t automate many of your business strategies and practices.
You can and should incorporate personalization into these automations by using personal notes and proper and relevant follow-up strategies based on customer behavior.
For example, you can customize text, images, and promotional pricing on landing pages based on how a user behaves on your site and how they found your site.
This personalized and relevant experience can increase customer loyalty.
Improving customer or client retention in an effort to increase sales is not one-dimensional nor does it happen overnight.
Try different tactics, measure and analyze the results, and do more of what is working and less of what isn’t. Your main goal is to create and maintain stellar customer service while building and nurturing relationships with your current client base.
This will keep your customers happy and increase sales.
Images, Pexels CC0 License, Canva .
Learn more at the best dental marketing blog.
If you own a business, simply having a website and some social media profiles isn’t going to cut it anymore. To interact with your customers you need engagement. For many people, nowadays, video content is much easier to access because it requires less effort than reading or just listening (like we do with podcasts).
No matter the goal or type (how to tutorials, music, funny videos etc), the place where everyone goes for video content is YouTube.
YouTube is the third most visited website in on the web, with approximately 1.5 billion monthly users. That’s where your business needs to be.
Youtube, just like Google has a number of algorithms that are used to rank videos in their search results.
With over 90 videos on YouTube, I’ve received some great results from this platform. It’s helped me get great results in doing SEO for dentists. Being aware of how important is this topic, my team decided to reach out to 86 SEO experts and ask them:
This way you don’t benefit only from our experience. You also get tips from successful SEO consults that do this for a living. We received some awesome tips that we would love to share with you
Tim Soulo
If you go to Ahrefs YouTube channel and sort our list of videos by “Most popular” you’ll see that the top video on our channel has over 600k views. Which is an insane result for an SEO tutorial.
And one of the reasons behind it is that it ranks #1 in YouTube for its primary keyword – “SEO audit”.
Another video from our channel ranks #1 for “how to rank in Google” keyword. And some other videos that we have also rank for their target keywords quite well.
But in all honesty, we didn’t have a goal of ranking in YouTube for any keywords. That happened naturally.
Our focus has always been in providing value to our audience. And clearly, we followed all the best practices of having a cool descriptive headline for your video, as well as fill in the video description with some copy about that video.
So my advice would be super simple and straightforward:
– think what your target audience is searching for on YouTube
– create a high-quality video that tackles this issue
– write a great descriptive headline for your video, try to use the language that your audience may use when searching for it
– write a good description for your video, because it will help you to get traffic from some long tail searches.
At least that is our experience with YouTube, but I want to stress that we’re not experts in YouTube marketing, so there may be some other things that influence your ranking in YouTube.
Steve Wiideman
Ranking YouTube videos has increased in complication and focal points due to the amount of software and spam used by publishers who sole business model is monetizing ad clicks within their channel(s).
Our best advice is to stick to fundamentals. Do what you do best and avoid automated tools or techniques that could appear to be gaming the system.
That said, in a talk, I had with Video SEO Expert Mark Robertson, it was obvious that ranking now had less to do with how many completed views a video has or the length of the view, but had more to do with the YouTube holistic session duration. Meaning, YouTube wants videos that keep people on YouTube.
Here are a few ways to boost rankings, views and (hopefully subscribers) that have worked for our clients:
1. Obviously do your keyword research and write “better than alternatives” titles and descriptions so your video gets clicked on the most
2. Choose or upload a compelling thumbnail, but avoid using a hot model as click-bait
3. Add your video to one or more of your playlists containing similar content
4. Make friends with creators and get your video on as many relevant playlists as possible
5. Work with those same friends to get them to suggest the URL during or at the end of their similar-vertical videos
6. Provide thumbnails and links to other relevant videos during and at the end of your video
7. Use Buzzstream’s Link Prospector to identify web pages with similar content and suggest they link to or embed the video to boost the value of their video-less pages
8. Share on social media, in groups, pages, and timelines, not because YouTube will reward you with higher rankings, but because it garners engagement, boosts views, and may result in curation and sharing off social media
One of the best ways to quickly rank YouTube videos is to add videos to an existing page that already ranks well for a relevant phrase. This works particularly well if a standard Google search for the targeted search query already shows some videos in the standard search results as Google understands video is a good way to answer this question. If you then create a video and feature that video on a well-ranking page you get two benefits here.
Firstly the page itself may do better as it now has a video. Secondly, the video gets views via the pages which help build engagement metrics for YouTube. Typically this then helps the video rank on youtube search or as a video shown directly on Google searches.
I like this approach as it works in lots of different ways. It improves your organic visibility of your initial page. It helps the video rank on YouTube.com and it helps the video appear in blended organic search results. Win win win.
The number of plays in a search ranking factor in YouTube. To increase the number of plays, you need to first increase the clickthrough rate. To increase the clickthrough rate, you can use a custom thumbnail that includes two things:
A person’s face
The headline or topic of the video
The face will draw the viewers attention and the words in the headline will indicate the benefits of watching and give them a reason to click. Once you have the thumbnail address, embed the video on your own site within a popular blog post to start increasing the views.
Here’s an example of what it will look like when you’re done:
How to Improve Your Google Rankings: 9 Steps to Rank Higher Fast Using Analytics
Google Ranking
Once the video started to get clicks and views, the ranking within YouTube started to rise. Today that video has 130,000+ views. This would never have happened without the custom thumb or the blog post embed!
The best strategy is to have an integrated approach with the following:
Be consistent with adding new videos and content
When you post a video to YouTube publish and write a video summary description that is keyword friendly
Create a custom thumbnail cover page to attract viewers
High user engagement in the initial 48 hours is important so post on all the social forums and link back to your video- make as big a splash as possible
Create effective metadata for your video (title, description, tags, and annotations) – higher visibility
Use keywords and keyword tools (SEMrush, Google Search Console, etc.) to drive traffic
Boilerplate at the end with a CTA
These strategies tackle the SEO algorithm that is a challenge to master!
Optimize video title and description with ‘video keywords’ – these are the keywords that trigger videos to show on Google’s search result pages and are used on YouTube (such as “how to keywords”). Find these video keywords using tools, such as SEMRush and Soovle.
Second, get a lot of video views early through social media and promotional efforts. A video that is already performing well (getting views) will be likely ranked well by Google.
When I get a VSEO (video search engine optimization) project, I look at the category of the video in order to optimize it for YouTube. The following videos are the most popular ones:
1. Commercial
2. Tutorial ( how to) related to tech, makeup, training, fashion, training, weight loss etc))
3. Complaining ( about anything politics, competitors, politicians, climate change, companies etc.)
4. Funny videos
First, I ask my client about his/her desired keyword which s/he wants to rank on YouTube. Then I optimize the video based on client’s keywords and work on off page SEO.
So basically you have to do both on page and off page optimization for the video, just like what I do for SEO-ing a website. Embedding video on an article helps with SEO as well.
Lately, I have modified my link building strategy and added some extra components in my YouTube SEO VSEO campaign.
I also do video content marketing in order to increase video ranking. The best video ranking turnaround takes between 30-40 days depending on the competitiveness of the keyword and niche.
Youtube ranking signals have changed a lot over the years. Just back 2-3 years ago all you had to do was name your video file around your chosen keyword, put the keyword in the title, write a long description with the keyword in the description, buy views and you would rank the video in youtube with no worries. Then if you wanted to take things to the next level you could throw a few links at the video and it would even rank in Google.
These days the story is different.
Google looks at the authority of the channel, video stats, and relevance before they make a decision how the video should rank.
So it’s not just an SEO strategy anymore to rank a video but more a marketing strategy.
It’s important to build up the quality of your YouTube Channel – get subscribers, shares & comments on your videos.
The best way we have found to build up this audience is to make use of our own email list, so every time we release a video we actually drive traffic via our own subscriber lists at the video to get views, interaction and increase in subscribers.
This is exactly what Google is looking for and is what’s working NOW in 2017.
Ranking videos on Google and YouTube is all about SEO and understanding the differences between ranking sites and videos. For example, on YouTube, there are plenty of factors that go into play — such as the video completion rate, ratings, comments, embeds, views and more.
Still, backlinks to videos will come into play as well, and this will help videos rank in regular Google results as well. Social shares also play an important role in this process as well. It’s also important to have a custom attention grabbing thumbnail as well, as this will increase click-through rates when people are searching for other videos on YouTube.
For more information and methods on what is working best today, be sure to read through these latest YouTube SEO guides. In each of these reports will find expert tips from Brian Dean, Neil Patel, Sean Si, Ryan Stewart and many others who have mastered the art of ranking at the top of YouTube and getting their videos to list within actual Google search rankings.
YouTube, although it is the second most popular search engine (and also owned by Google – the largest search engine), is quite a fair way behind it’s bigger brother as far as ranking algorithms go!
You might want to consider what it took to rank a website two years ago and do that
But as you’re no doubt looking for my best advice to ranking your YouTube video, you need a few elements working together:
1. A catchy title that includes your relevant keywords. Keywords in your title is important to rank, and so is audience clicks. The best videos have short and sweet titles, and aren’t afraid of getting a bit sensational for those sweet click bait clicks.
2. Write a detailed description of your video. For goodness sake, don’t leave this section blank, and no – two lines is not enough! You’re going to get better ranking and trigger for a greater variety of keyword searches if you spend some time in this section.
3. Make sure to caption your video. In 2017, people want captions. If you plan on getting people to watch your video for any extended length of time as the result of a social share, you’re going to do well with correct captions. Don’t forget — Google and YouTube read the captions too!
4. Seek to promote your video online. Social shares are a very powerful way to get your video watched, and videos that are watched rank higher than videos that aren’t. Sounds like a chicken and egg situation, no?
5. Build links to your video. Link building tactics will boost your video’s YouTube ranking. I recommend going for white hat organic links – “natural” links will give you long-term success, whereas spammy links will get you punished.
Here are my tips on how to create SEO-friendly YouTube videos to rank in Google and on YouTube:
1. Make sure the title of your video is SEO-friendly. You can use free keyword research tools like UberSuggest and Google’s Keyword Planner, to find top keywords to target in your title.
Of course, make sure the title is also engaging and not blatantly stuffed with keywords.
2. Make sure the description of your YouTube video is SEO-friendly and that it includes a hyperlink at the beginning of the description and at the end. Make sure that the URL is the full URL – http://www.yourwebsitehere.com, otherwise, it will not be clickable.
When crafting SEO-friendly descriptions for YouTube, think of it like writing a mini blog post. A lot of people think that having long video descriptions is bad, but in many cases, a longer description that is SEO-friendly actually helps boost rankings. As long as the description is relevant and helpful, you don’t really need to worry about having “too much” in there.
You can also paste the video’s transcription in the description area if you don’t want to create a custom description.
3. Use tags. Make sure to tag your video appropriately. I suggest not using more than 10 tags in a YouTube video and make sure they are keyword-specific and actually relevant to your video.
4. Use closed captioning. It’s proven that using closed captions in YouTube videos helps increase rankings. If you don’t have a caption file, YouTube will use its speech recognition feature to generate a file for you.
5. Promote! You must build links to your YouTube video if you want it to rank – especially for a competitive keyword.
You can acquire backlinks by posting the video:
– On your social media
– On your blog
– On web 2.0 properties
– Via social bookmarks
– On press releases
… and the list goes on and on and on!
If you’re wanting to rank a video for a non-branded keyword term, you must build links to it!
Balance three things for a successful youtube ranking result. Topic, watch time and thumbnail. To achieve those you need research, first about the topic and then using search suggestions to expand the vocabulary. Watch time optimisation needs getting the right length of a video and keeping people involved. That’s why you see so many countdown and list videos recently, as they maintain the viewer interest and stop them from either abandoning the video or skipping to the end.
For great watch-time aim for videos that are 10 minutes or longer so that you stand out from the crowd of mini videos but have plenty of content to keep people engaged. Tell people up front, in the first 10 seconds, that there are great things coming later in the video.
Make sure that the words of the video are just right. The title should be a close match to actual search terms and have an interesting hook that makes the viewer curious. A substantial description with another hook in the first line, and several hundred words at least of great reference material will help greatly.
Then the vocabulary in your audio needs to be on-topic and comprehensive as well. Make sure that Google has subtitled it correctly and manually correct or re-record if it is wrong.
Lastly, the thumbnail can profoundly influence your CTR, and good relative CTR will push you to the top. Research what thumbnails you are competing with, and make sure you stand out from the crowd. If everybody else is using a dark thumbnail with text, go for a bright one without. Conversely, if thumbnails in your niche do not typically include words try putting text overlays on your thumbnails to stand out. This works well on mobile in particular.
Bonus tip: Ask specifically for likes, shares and subscribes. Do it more than once, at the beginning of your intro and then also in the middle before giving your primary content, and at the end of your video.
I have heard over the years so many ‘ways’ to rank a video in YouTube. In fact, if you go to many video marketing forums you will hear stories of being able to hack the algorithm through backlinks and ‘clever tricks’.
In truth, the secret to YouTube lies in picking the right keywords and then creating a great video.
Just choose the right keyword for your industry, make a great title and then also a description with the keyword in and that is step 1.
Step 2 is to create a great video that people will watch.
If people spend less time trying to hack YouTube and more time becoming a good creator I believe they will have better results.
In addition having a great video will encourage trust.
That is trust in your business, trust you enough to click a link to go to your website, trust you enough to hire you.
So keyword in the title, keyword in the description and a great video and have faith in YouTube. It might sound over simplistic but this really is all there is to it! The trick is knowing that you should spend more time on the video and less on the SEO when it comes to YouTube.
My favorite way of ranking YouTube videos is to make sure you’re doing keyword research specifically for video search intents. If your target keyword doesn’t return video results, your YT video probably won’t be on the SERP. For the video itself, make sure you’re titling, labeling, and describing the videos in such a way that makes it relevant to the search terms.
Finally, and maybe anecdotally, use closed captions on the video so an algorithm can more easily understand the content. Finally, if you can produce a few pieces of content in the text-based form, and then embed the video into those pages, it can help improve the relevance of the video itself.
YouTube is slightly different to the search engines, and there are more ways for you to personally rank your video without having to get involved in link building. To start off, you want to create a click bait title (yes you want – they works great!), but also make sure to include keywords in it that you want to be found for.
You’ll also want to create a lengthy description to go along with your video, that again includes any keywords that you want to rank for. Around 200-300 words should do the trick, but longer is fine as well. One good way to do this is to transcribe your dialogue in the description. This is ideal for people who don’t have the time to watch your video or are struggling to understand what you have to say. You’ll also want to consider the length of your video. This will depend on what you are covering, so just make it as long as it needs to be.
With YouTube, you get more positive signals for the number of views, likes and comments you get, so the user experience is key. Encourage your viewers to like, comment and share your video both in the description and in the video itself for maximum exposure.
The best way to rank Youtube videos from our clients’ experience at Prosperity Media, is to create amazing content which is relevant for the query. You also need to complete keyword research to find out which terms are actually driving traffic.
Once you know the terms driving traffic, ensure that you have your video marked up with all the correct terms and ensure that you fill out the relevant tags and information. It’s also important to name the raw file of the video your target term as well which you want to target. =
You need to drive engagement to your videos as this is highly important so driving traffic to a video can be a wise strategy to kick off the engagement on your content also ensure that you share the video with your email list. You also want to drive links to your video.
Overall ensure that you spend the bulk of your time driving engagement to your videos.
Your videos will be most likely to succeed if they are high quality, so the first priority should be creating a good video. If it’s low quality, you have a much lower chance of success.
Ranking YouTube videos is very similar to SEO for anything else: links! Fortunately, posting links to YouTube videos often looks less spammy than your own website so it is not too difficult to do. Start by finding relevant sites where people are asking questions about your niche (that the video is in). Join those communities and start answering questions. When it makes sense, link to your YouTube video. If it helps solve a problem or answers their question, people will share it themselves. Make sure to use a range of places – forums, social media platforms and Q&A sites like Quora are a good place to start.
YouTube also relies on views, ratings and other engagement to rank videos. Try to encourage people to rate/like/comment on videos if they like them.
Rank on Youtube: Optimize the best possible way because everybody else is busy creating content and ignoring the basics practices to optimize their content. Optimize the video file name, the title, description etc. Those alone will help you rank for terms that people search for on Youtube. One more thing, everybody knows about the push of Google to rank videos higher for those that are more engaging. Try to collaborate with other YouTubers and don’t forget a simple call to action directed to your followers. Even a simple request to tap on the “bell” notification icon will help as it gets people viewing your video.
Rank the Video on Google: Try different keywords in the title of your video but I normally start off with the brand. I need to make sure that Google can see that the brand is related to the Youtube channel. For my current startup at https://seriousmd.com – I put up a quick video channel that I haven’t focused on yet and it’s been sending consistent leads to us. Also, embed the videos in your blog posts or guest posts. You’ll start to see those videos ranking.
Being the second biggest search engine, YouTube is an untapped traffic source.
To get your videos ranked, this is what I suggest.
First, start your keyword research, then create your video around them.
Get the most SEO value, by optimizing the following:
– video filename;
– video title;
– video description (include your keyword within the first 25 words, writing at least 300 words);
– video tags.
Then, build views and mentions by posting about it on social media networks, your blogs, your guest posts, on bookmarking sites, on Q&A Sites, or commenting on related content.
First, you have to understand your end goal, YouTube’s end goal, and what topics are achievable. Ranking on YouTube is very different from Google Search. It’s an internal search engine that wants to keep people on the site, not send them away. You have to choose topics/keywords where you can not only rank, but also where you want to rank. Choose wisely.
Second, you need to invest in high production value and take care of all the details. Your video needs to be watchable and discoverable. Plan and edit ruthlessly to maximize attention. Spend time creating a good description. Tag effectively. Invest in captioning. Create a custom thumbnail. Do anything you can to make the video watchable and discoverable.
Third, create both a short and long term promotion strategy. In the short term, you need some numbers to “prove” to YouTube that people will watch the video and like it. In the long term, you need embeds, related videos, and long tail search traffic. These will “prove” to YouTube that it’s an evergreen video worthy of ranking in search.
Over time, all three factors will work together in a feedback loop to help you rank for your target terms – and stay there.
After several years of managing different Youtube channels, I have developed a checklist, that I don’t really share with anyone. This is an exception! So here’s my Youtube SEO checklist:
Keyword research: Find the keyword you wish to rank for in Youtube and/or Google. Since YouTube doesn’t have a keyword research tool, you have to use Google’s Keyword Planner. Find the query how your audience will search for your video
Video File must be saved as the main keyword before the Youtube upload.
In the Title Section of a Youtube video, there should be an exact match keyword.
Video Description: Make sure it’s no longer than 300 words and try to include the keyword’s variations (LSI keywords).
Tags: Don’t abuse this section like many people do. Just add the top 3-8 keywords.
Video Annotations: Annotations are the text pop-ups that appear during the video. This is a great way to add additional optimization.
Captions: Add the text transcript.
Video Engagement: When YouTube first launched, part of the algorithm was based on views. The more views your video got, the higher it ranked. While they still count aggregate views they do so in conjunction with engagement metrics – number of seconds viewed, comments, likes, social shares
I hope it helps to rank your videos both on Youtube and Google
The best strategy to rank Youtube videos is to focus on user interaction.
That means the number of shares, number of likes or dislikes, number of subscribers, and user retention during your video playback.
These are all signals that Google takes into account when ranking videos based on what users are searching for. Obviously, a video has to be relevant but that is easy to achieve.
After that, the quality of your video plays a big part in how well it ranks because the quality influences user interaction with your video.
There are many ways to promote your YouTube videos, but first, it’s important to understand the platforms most important ranking factors.
The reason?
Well, it’s not just for ranking in YouTube search.
The name of the game is to show up in the suggested videos for topics you want to target.
So, what are the key YouTube ranking factors?
1. Audience Retention
Audience retention is the percentage of your video that people have watched.
The higher your audience retention, the better.
2. Engagement
Another very important YouTube ranking factor is engagement signals.
Likes, comments, subscribers, shares etc.
3. Keyword Optimisation
This is all about optimising your video for specific target phrases in your title, description, and tags.
4. Total Watch Time
Total watch time is arguably the most important YouTube ranking factor.
It’s the total time that has been spent by all viewers watching a particular video over its lifetime.
So, again, the higher the total watch time for a video, the better.
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So, now that we know the key ranking factors, how can we use this information to better plan, create, optimise and promote our videos.
Steps for Creating and Promoting a Killer Video
3. Keyword Research
YouTube keyword research is often the complete opposite of the type of keyword research you’d perform for search engines, like Google.
There’s so much to cover, there’s no way I could cover it here, but here are the basics.
– Brainstorm and find some great topic ideas.
– Find and create a large keyword list.
– Narrow down the list to pick the best keywords to target.
There’s a whole process of doing this correctly, but I just can’t cover it here.
That said, often you’ll hear the ‘gurus’ telling you to target the long tail, lower competition keywords.
This really isn’t the best advice for growing a YouTube channel, fast.
The lower the competition and least amount of people searching for or watching videos targeted towards these terms, the fewer viewers you’ll have.
Sure, you’ll grow slowly over time, but in order make any headway with this strategy you’ll have to constantly pump out video content.
Trust me, you’re gonna burn out.
There’s a much better way.
2. Video Structure
When creating your video it’s important to structure the flow in the right way to help increase audience retention and total watch time.
Essentially, you need:
– A great intro and no this isn’t about introducing yourself or your brand, but instead what the viewer will learn or get out of the video. You need to hook them in.
– The meat of the video, where you concisely explain what you mentioned in your intro.
-A strong ending with good CTAs and a recap.
There’s lots of nuance and details here, but this is the basic structure.
3. Promotion
There are tons of ways to promote your videos.
The common knowledge or advice often given is to create and publish as many videos as possible.
This is just plain bad advice.
Firstly, you’re gonna end up burning out, and secondly, your quality will suffer.
Don’t get me wrong. You’ll grow, but you’ll grow slowly. There’s no need to pump out content regularly to grow your channel.
Some people advise you to publish videos daily.
That’s just madness.
There are better ways. Work smarter, not harder.
Remember, quality over quantity.
So, here’s the thing, spend less time creating videos and more time promoting those videos.
Here are some strategies for promoting your videos.
– Email (If you have a list, you should have a list)
– Social Media
– Paid Ads
– Guest Posts (Link to your videos)
– Post Video Snippets on Social Media
– Embed Videos in Your Posts
– Promote on YouTube
Now, here’s the key.
You need to strategically and consistently promote your videos.
This will lead to bigger and faster channel growth.
Again, quality over quantity, with 80% of the time spent on promotion activities.
The best strategy for ranking on YouTube is the approach with having an active channel that’s being updated frequently with high-quality videos, then doing whatever you can to increase the number of subscribers to the channel, and most importantly to increase the engagement of the viewers.
You need to work on getting the viewers to watch your videos for longer and to also take actions after viewing such as liking, sharing or commenting. All these in one package signal to YouTube the value that your content is creating and it will contribute to your videos ranking better. I have more on this in my full “being a YouTube blogger” guide.
With all videos I upload the absolute priority areas in my opinion are:
1) Include the keyword in the video filename, video title, and video description. I also call the YouTube thumbnail by the keyword as well.
2) Secondly, you need to have a high-quality video and for the engagement / watch time to be high which highlights that people are watching and finding the content to be valuable. Youtube wants to rank videos that have the highest engagement.
3) Encourage user interaction through likes, followers, shares, and comments. If the content is valuable then people will typically engage in one of the above actions.
4) Creating the video is only a small portion of the process. Marketing the video will take much more time. If you want to get more views on your video, which are a ranking factor, then you’ll need to market it appropriately. This doesn’t mean spamming views but legitimately finding natural opportunities to share and promote your video online.
5) If possible, I also believe that it’s worthwhile adding videos to your blog with repurposed content i.e. the Gary Vee approach. Take the video, repurpose into a blog, add a blog to site with video included. This will provide you video with a second opportunity to rank in Google through your new blog post.
As everyone knows, videos can be a great source of sharing information and traffic for your website. Although doing SEO for your (Youtube) videos is not as hard as doing it for Google it can still be a challenge. According to Youtube people upload roughly 100 hours of content per minute. So you need to do something with all those massive amounts of content being created. I’ll share a few tips on how to rank in Youtube.
There are a few key parts in ranking your Youtube videos to make sure you get the most out of it.
– Make properly optimized title tags
– Your viewers’ retention (How much do your viewers pay attention to your video?)
– Keywords and LSI words in your video’s description
– General video tags
– The length of your video
– The number of subscribers
– Comments
– Likes en dislikes
-H2- Very long video descriptions
When you try to rank for certain keywords and long-tail keywords treat it like you are optimizing for Google. Use at least 300 words in your video description.
-H2- Optimize your video around so-called ‘video keywords’
Some specific informational search queries are more suited for videos than others. This kind of categories show the most videos in the Google result pages
– How-to terms
– Reviews
– Tutorials
– A lot of fitness and sports-related terms
– Funny (cat) videos
-H2- Social signals for Youtube SEO
The Youtube algorithm doesn’t rely as heavily on backlinks like Google, so there are a few other things to pay attention to when trying to rank. The 2 most important signals for Youtube are followers/subscribers and the amount of frequency of likes.
I would break down ranking YouTube videos as the following:
Keyword Research
On-Page Optimization
Off-Page Optimization
For keyword research, it will depend on what type of company you are. If you are a locally based business, I would initially start with going for the major keywords for your area either using a tool like keywords anywhere or Ahrefs. For a national company or a company has an online store, the best way to rank would be informational content or tutorials. Here, I would research how to topics using the same two tools mentioned. A good example of such a topic would be New Egg’s How To Build A PC Rig on YouTube
The next step is the on-page. You are going to want to optimize your tags and match them to the keywords you identified in your keyword research. Once you have that, add in an optimized description of the video that is roughly 350-500 words. Next, you will want to add in a custom thumbnail to increase your click through ratio.
For off-page optimization, you will want to use a number of sources. Utilize your website to embed the video. If you are a local business, you should be able to embed your video on a number of the local citations that you have. These steps alone are enough to get you ranked on YouTube for many keywords. To take it further, we can do link and embed outreach for your video. If you are doing how to videos, you can post the video on various niche forums. Forums will happily take a video, but usually, will try to ban you if you post the blog post or homepage URL directly. A YouTube link is usually seen as neutral, especially on sites like Reddit. The other source of outreach would be to do link building on the blog post itself if you embed the video on your blog. Here you can get links to your website and also get links to your Video.
It is obviously important to get all the basics right such keywords in the title of the video (ideally towards the beginning) and descriptions. Even making sure you have relevant tags are in place is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. However, for
However, for me the most important strategy that has helped videos rank is gaining views. The more views a video has the more popular it appears and the better it has ranked. Our strategy to get views is relatively simple, like most things it just takes time and effort.
Pushing your videos on social media is a must and getting it shared by influencers is even better. Also embedding the video on your website and sharing it on other sites helps gain genuine views. If you have an email list I would suggest sending it to them and asking them to like, share and comment. Another win for views is to have the video you are currently pushing as the main video on your channel. Increasing views comes with one caveat and that
Increasing views comes with one caveat and that is don’t buy fake views on sites like Fiverr however tempting – YouTube is wise to this and it won’t help you
One of the best ways to rank video (especially YouTube videos) is to turn every question a client has ever asked you into a 3-5 minute educational piece. Once the video is uploaded to YouTube the question you answered should be part of the title. So if the question was, “If I’m getting dental surgery will I be administered novocaine or nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas)?” then the title of the video could be “Novocaine vs Laughing Gas During Dental Surgery”. But, the title should also include the town or city and state your office is located. So now the title of the video would be…Novocaine vs Laughing Gas During Dental Surgery | Hollywood, Los Angeles CA
When a viewer is typing in keyword combinations that might match what you have in your title, your video may pop up as an option to watch. Now, viewers click on and watch your video.
Now don’t forget the description of the video. If you’re video is between the 3-5 minute mark then have the video transcribed and add the transcription directly into the description box, along with your URL and phone number for viewers to visit your website or call with questions. I see way too many people make the mistake of not filling in the description or not filling in enough information and the viewer will watch but have no idea how to get a hold of the viewer maker to ask questions or hire them for service.
Adding keywords will also aid in your video ranking. Now, since Google and many search engines scan titles and descriptions you might not need to duplicate or double up on posting the same keywords or using variations of the same keyword, so try using similar keywords or phrases that add to the searchability of the video instead.
Captioning your YouTube video will contribute to both improve its engagement and SEO visibility
Adding closed captions to your videos will not only make sure your videos are searchable and indexable by search engines but they will also help increase user engagement especially when your videos are shared on social media platforms.
Closed captions come from a text file that your video references as it plays and that text file is readable by search engine robots which is why adding closed caption text files to videos should rank very high on your YouTube video SEO checklist. These files are readable by search engines, meaning they are able to index and rank your videos in search results according to the content of your video.
In addition, it’s a proven fact that captioned videos drive more views and engagement than uncaptioned videos. Because videos shared on Facebook and Twitter autoplay without sound, the majority of social views your video will receive are without sound and it’s very likely that if your video doesn’t have captions or subtitles users will stop viewing and scroll away.
What I found works the best, and what most businesses don’t implement (and should I also add that is the easiest?) – quite simply, you need to talk about your video.
The search engines can’t “see” what your video is about, so you need to tell them what it is all about.
Here are some quick tips to be able to tell the search engines what your video is actually about
1. Get a caption created for your video and install it onto Youtube
2. Change the filename from “my-video-1-is-awesome.mp4”, to something that actually is about your business or your industry, such as “best-teeth-implants-for-men-new-york-city.mp4”
3. Write a full title and a full description – you get about 5000 characters for the description. Use them. Explain about the details of the video, what it’s about etc. Same goes for the title – make it keyword rich
4. Use tags that better identify the content of your video.
5. Get it out there – it’s just going to sit there if you do nothing. Share it and share it again, explain it when you share it, tell people why it’s important
Ranking Youtube videos seems to be getting more difficult than it was a few years ago.
There was a time when you could throw up a video and send a ton of GSA links at it to rank, but those days are over.
When I was actively ranking Youtube videos I got a lot of mileage out of using Microworkers.
Using Microworkers, you can get video embeds pretty quickly. If you don’t have access to a network of sites yourself, Microworkers is a decent alternative that isn’t incredibly costly as well.
Another thing we also would do is link to the video from social profiles. These can be set up rather easily and give a decent link, like from a Twitter profile for example.
We utilize YouTube videos to rank in Google search in two ways:
First, let’s say you’d like to rank for the keyword “tmj treatment austin tx” in Google search. Our first step would be to create a highly informative video on TMJ treatment. You’ll want to make sure the video is 90% informative and only 10% commercialized. Next, you’ll need to make sure to optimize the title of your YouTube video. A good title might be “TMJ Treatment Austin TX | TMJ Specialist Dr. Fred Smith. It’s important to place your primary keyword at the beginning of the title. The great thing about YouTube is that you get to take advantage of their existing SEO authority which makes ranking these videos much easier than ranking a typical page or blog post on your own website.
Second, don’t forget to use your video on your blog. This will enable you to potentially rank both your YouTube video page and blog post on the 1st page of Google for your desired keyword. Taking up more search engine real estate on the 1st page is always a good idea! For your blog post, make sure to embed your video and include a 500 to 800 informative write up to go along with the video. Finally, optimize the Title, URL, Meta Description, Heading Tags, and Body copy for your primary and secondary TMJ keywords.
This alone won’t ensure that both your YouTube video and blog post will rank high in search engines. That’s why you have one final step to execute on… Link Building. It’s important to get links from external websites to both your YouTube page and blog post. To do this, I recommend guest blogging for relevant industry or local publications. You’ll often be able to include two links within your guest posts. Use this opportunity to double dip and acquire backlinks to both your YouTube page and blog post. Eventually, with enough links (shoot for 10) both pages will have the ability to rank on the 1st page.
Ensure that your video is valuable, interesting and engaging. Quality is everything.
One of the most important ranking signal is the amount of user engagement that the video is able to attract.
Allow others to embed your video within their content. If your video is interesting people will love to use your video content to enrich their own content. This multiplies the engagement and sends positive signal all across.
Optimise the thumbnail with your target audience in mind. Just think what will enhance the inquisitiveness of your target audience and convince or attract them to view your video over and above the videos that are being displayed close to your video.
Use transcriptions to add the much-needed food (i.e. relevant textual content) for the search engines. This is helpful for your audience as well. You will be able to repurpose this transcription to create a blog post.
Hire the experts wherever required.
The capacity of the video to attract engagement plays a major role in the success. A bit of additional effort and you will be able to multiply the ROI of your video.
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine by volume, second only to Google.
Which means that all your content needs to be optimized for YouTube the same way it would be for a Google search. SEO alone is one of the easiest and most reliable ways of increasing your traffic and overall ROI. Start with your video title and description. Choose one keyword and make sure you work it into your video title, descriptions and tags. Make sure you use your primary keyword at the beginning of the title, with any secondary keywords or variations used later in your copy.
Steps
– Select a keyword
– Make sure it shows up in YouTube auto suggest
– Do keyword research in Google Keyword Planner
– Double up on keyword research with Keywordtool.io, keyword eg, SerpStats or
– TubeBuddy.
– Add tags
– Write unique YouTube copy (500 words)
– Create custom YouTube image
– Add link inside of content to web page
– Create end screen subscribe and view more videos
– Create card on each video linking to product or web page
– Ensure video settings are correct
– Update and optimize your playlists
The strategy to ranking youtube videos splits into two different parts – SEO & Engagement.
The most obvious things to do are optimising the title and description of the video. We also suggest renaming the video file before uploading it to youtube, to something more relevant than the usual MV0232 etc. Also, Youtube allows you to select a category for your video and also allows you to add tags, so make the most of that too.
As mentioned earlier, the other element to all of this is engagement. The more engagement your video has, the more likely it will show higher on Youtube. To improve engagement, you first of all need to have a good quality video, as people won’t watch junk. You could also spend more time making a more attractive thumbnail. Small things such as making your Youtube profile more attractive, such as channel art, profile picture, channel description etc.
Once that is all done, the next best thing to focus on is links. Have you covered a topic that might sit well on a related blog post on a third party site? Reach out to them and suggest the idea, they may just add it and credit it with a link.
Based on my experiences over the years and having hit the YouTube homepage many times in the past (when that was a thing), there are three main things you can do.
First of all, look at your competition and figure out how long their videos are. If every competing videos is only two minutes and you’re posting a one hour webinar, you’re probably not going to rank. Replicate what already works but do it a little bit better.
The second biggest factor is retention – what percentage of your video do people actually watch? Clickbait views, where people leave right away, can actually hurt your YouTube rankings.
The third biggest thing you can do is get your video embedded on different sites – it’s like the YouTube equivalent of backlinks and counts more than a “traditional backlink” to your video.
Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world – so if you aren’t in the video game, it’s time to get onto it. Inexpensive production values are fine, as in many cases, freshness and timeliness are the key. But how do you rank your videos?
1. Firstly, research the long tail keywords related to the video and convert these into the form of a question.
2. Create a transcript of the video. If you’ve written a script, that’s easy, you can use this in the description of the video on Youtube, of course adding in your links back to social media and your website. If you know your subject well enough to wing it, you can use a service such as speechpad.com to transcribe your video for about $1 a minute. This ensures that the keyword you naturally talk about in the content are now in text form for search. You can also use this file to create closed captions or subtitles – which allows people to watch even if they can’t use audio.
Everyone thinks you need to focus on keywords like on “normal” Google to rank on Youtube, but after wasting my time on that for a while I have found out that the biggest thing you can do is – increase watch time.
Youtube is all about keeping you on their platform for as long as possible in order to show you more ads, and obviously, earn more money.
How do they do that? By showing you the videos that will keep you on there longer.
And those are the videos that have a longer average watch time. Of course, just like with the modern Google algorithms, you can’t just tune your on page SEO (for videos) and hope for the best. You actually have to have great content.
So, if you plan on making a splash on Youtube, you will need to produce content that gets people’s attention, keeps them watching and coming back for more. Because, without the longer watch time statistics, Youtube just isn’t going to promote your videos (ie. rank them higher or show them on related videos).
If you want to see what I am doing on Youtube you can pop over and see if these ideas are working for me (hint: so far this year I have 4x my watch time and almost doubled my subscriber base)
When attempting to rank a video, the main goal should be to get the video to rank in Google for your keywords. If you can get the video to rank in Google, then a lot of the searches that are being performed in YouTube will click on your video in the results. YouTube will judge your video based on how people interact with it. User engagement is the most important YouTube ranking signal. Video retention is another very important signal of user engagement, meaning the percentage of the video that people tend to watch – the more, the better. I’ve listed some tips on how to boost viewer retention below:
User engagement is the most important YouTube ranking signal. Video retention is another very important signal of user engagement, meaning the percentage of the video that people tend to watch – the more, the better. I’ve listed some tips on how to boost viewer retention below:
1. Start off with the topic of the video – provide a quick summary of the video in the beginning. (20% of people that start a video will leave after 20 seconds)
2. Jump right into the content that the viewer wants to see.
3. Add open loops – open loops are a preview of what’s coming up in the video which encourages people to keep watching.
You’ll also want to make sure that your video comment section is enabled so people can leave comments. Another big signal is whether or not someone subscribes to your channel after watching your video. Shares and favorites are also signals, as well as Thumbs up / Thumbs Down.
YouTube Ranking Tip
There are a range of YouTube video marketing tactics, but my top tactic for getting videos to rank well on YouTube starts with choosing the right keywords. What’s really been working well for clients lately is targeting trending keyword searches.
There are two steps to uncover trending keyword opportunities with proven demand on YouTube.
YouTube Autocomplete: You can start by leveraging YouTube’s autocomplete feature. Like Google autocomplete, you type in one of your core keywords into the YouTube search bar and you’ll get a list of the most relevant, closely-related variants that are the most popular searches on YouTube. These are your potential trending keyword targets.
I like to use examples, so let’s imagine we’re doing YouTube trending keyword research for a manufacturer of home automation products. One keyword we might want to target is “smart home.” Here are the results from YouTube.
Smart home
Google Trends: Next you want to drop these smart home variants into Google Trends. In Google Trends, you can select YouTube Search from the drop-down to get trending data specific to YouTube.
Here are the results we get when we add some of the top suggestions we got from YouTube autosuggest.
From the results, we see that the keyword “smart home automation” is the clear winner from a popularity and trending standpoint.
So for keyword targeting on YouTube, it would make sense to develop some video content on smart home automation so you can capitalize on a trending topic and reach your audience.
You could create a video guide on smart home automation or some expert tips on smart home automation. And make sure you optimize your video accordingly.
Finding the right key phrase to target is probably the most fundamental part of video search engine optimisation. A key phrase is a search term that people will type into YouTube to find your video. In an ideal world, you should pick the key phrase you want to rank for before even creating your content. However, you can also retroactively optimise your material, although it’s not the best way to approach things.
When looking for the right key phrase to use, you want to strike a balance between how often people search for the phrase and how much competition (the competitiveness) there is trying to rank for that phrase.
A couple of tools that I use to show me this information are Tubebuddy and the Google Adwords keyword planner. The Adwords Keyword planner will show you Google search traffic and competition so be mindful when looking to create a video that it might not always correlate.
First and foremost, you NEED to get into the mind of the searcher. Who is going to be searching for this content, why are they searching, and what words are they going to be using to search? How do you do this though? You ask them! Find someone, or a group of people, who fit the mold of the perfect person that will be searching for your video and ask them what words they would use to make that search.
Maybe they would say “best newborn baby gifts” instead of “how to buy for a newborn”, this is crazy valuable information. Beyond being in their mind, you can also use Google Keyword planner and the search bar on YouTube itself to see what people are searching for the most and how much competition there is around those terms.
In addition to searching out the right way to structure the title of your video, you will also want to:
– Use the same keywords within your description.
– Tag your video appropriately so YouTube knows what type of content is in your video and how to recommend it to people based on their interests and behaviors.
– Create thumbnails that draw attention so more people click and show YouTube that this is, in fact, a good video.
– Keep the content valuable for the person searching. The more watch time a video gets (aka, the better the content since people wouldn’t watch batch videos), the more YouTube feels like it is a good choice for it’s viewers.
– Embed the video on your website with the same researched keywords and optimize the post as much as possible. Google will LOVE that you have a video from YouTube (since they own the platform) on your website and will rank your post on your website higher because of it.
The best strategy I have for positioning videos is to silo the content. interlinking the videos in the playlist in a linear fashion. So link each video in the playlist, to the previous video, and the next video in the description. With each video also connecting to the head of the playlist. This serves the purpose of helping google and the viewer to consume the content. It also helps users through navigation. Keep videos interesting and not too long, encourage comments and sharing
Be sure to flesh out the descriptions fully on each video. Say what the video is about, and take the opportunity to link to other social media profiles too.
Use a good description in the title of the video. One that is descriptive but also keyword orientated to help drive traffic to you.
Live streaming can have an advantage for topical or event based news, as it is happening right now… or not! You can use software to schedule live broadcasts of your stream.
Once your video is created, share it! use social media, relevant influence rs and groups who will like your content. remember you can embed the video too, so is ideal for press release, including in your blog or news content too.
Ultimately having a creative video is the win, as it will encourage interaction and sharing naturally.
For me, the best strategy to rank Youtube videos in the top-of-the search result is the implementation of target Keywords. For this, you could make use of the YouTube keyword tool or the Google Keyword Planner tool and find out which are the highest searches in your niche and then incorporate these Keywords in your file name when uploading it.
To further optimize your video so that it is easily findable through search, write a click-worthy title that includes keywords along with an engaging description that provides a brief on what the video is about. You could also include a CTA button such as like, subscribe, share etc, which will help boost your video’s visibility, in turn, improving your video’s ranking on the search result.
However, having said, the above strategy will only be effective if the video that is being uploaded/published is of top-quality and provides benefits. Thus, it is crucial that you focus on the quality of the video, its duration and the content when creating a video for Youtube, as then half your battle is won.
Ranking videos on Youtube is not an easy task but everyone gets better at it after working on it over and over.
Beyond optimizing your youtube for more views and visibility organically, you must ensure the video is engaging and you do not sell yourself too early. These two factors can ‘kill the vibe’ of your Youtube video, no matter how well you optimize it.
Kindly note that Youtube has search algorithm, just the same way Google search has. So, keep that in the back of your mind when trying to rank your Youtube.
Having said that, these are aspects of your Youtube video you should optimize for it to rank high in Youtube search:
Video Title: Make it as explicit as possible. Do video keyword research to identify keywords that both Google and Youtube already identified with videos. Use video keywords to start your video title.
Video description: Make your video description at least 250 words. Include links to your website, social media other channels where you can be found. Optimize your video keyword for the same video keywords you used the in Video Title.
Tags: These are very critical to other videos that Youtube will show your video besides. Include more keywords and relevant search terms for the video in the tags. 8-10 tags are great to make them short and topical. Lengthy tags are NO NO. Use similar terms, concepts or popular terms synonymous with the theme/topic idea of your video for tags.
Video subtitle: there are various options for video subtitle, but make sure you subtitle your video so they could rank high in Youtube.
These tips will help you rank your Youtube videos. I have used and re-used them so, I’m sure they work.
Ranking well on YouTube is very similar to ranking well on Google. First and foremost, your videos need to be of high quality and relevant to what you are trying to rank for. When trying to judge the quality of your videos, consider the video’s click-through-rate, engagement and watch time.
In addition to creating high-quality videos you also need to optimize the videos. Be sure to craft an attractive title and include one of your core keywords in it. Your description should cover at least 200 words of unique content and can also externally link to your website or social media profile. Lastly, include video tags on your video. These tags send signals to YouTube about the relevancy of your video.
As with anything there will be some guess, check and revise your strategy. Ensuring that your videos are of the highest quality and offer value is the first step in ranking well for competitive terms.
My best strategy for ranking YouTube videos is as follows:
1. Create great video content, and try to attract viewers’ attention in first 5 seconds. It’s good to have an intro at the beginning of your video. Make your texts shorter and easy to understand and try to keep your viewer engaged during the whole video.
2. Optimize your titles, so they look original, not spammy and match your video content. The more they are optimized the higher your ranking chances are.
3. If you have any link to include in your video description, put it at the beginning of the paragraph. Then follow with short and well written description. Turn your targeted keywords into your title as much as possible and include them in the description too.
4. Make your thumbnails catchy and informative. Imagine how many people click to a video due to the appealing thumbnail. You should make it unique and attractive.
5. Be patient. You have to be patient when working with search engines like YouTube. Wait at least a week after optimizing your video. If the result isn’t satisfying enough, try again until you get what you want.
My best strategy is thinking long-term and treating the YouTube channel like a website – giving it consistent and quality content related to your niche, sharing that content with the right audiences, and growing a viewer base.
We often see that last step as being either very difficult or impossible with some industries, but I believe that this is because many of us in digital marketing focus directly on the sale and neglect indirect sales funnels. For a dentist, you can make your sales videos, but you can make simple advice videos, you can make guides, you can make explainer videos, affiliate videos, and even interview your staff. This not only helps viewers, potential buyers, to gain trust in the company, but it also shows YouTube and Google that your content and your channel is an authority in your industry.
Then, every time you upload a related video to that channel, you’ll see it rank higher and faster.
YouTube algorithm wants new viewers to open the app, watch an entire video, then stay and watch another. Here’s how you do that:
– RETENTION
If viewers leave your video at the beginning, your goose is cooked. The first 10-15 seconds is crucial. If you “hook” a viewer then, he or she will usually watch the entire vid.
Show the viewer exactly what they’ll get from watching the entire video. For example, if your vid is a tutorial, preview the finished product in a before and after shot. Bribe them to stay.
– Bring in External Traffic
YouTube’s algorithm loves when you bring users to their site.
If you have a mailing list, send your YouTube videos out to the list. Use all of your social platforms to promote your videos. If you don’t have a following, then post them on Reddit.
If you know SEO, use keyword rich descriptions, social shares, and website embeds of your videos to rank them in Google.
– Copycat Keywords
To rank in YouTube search, copy the top videos, but add a twist.
Literally copy their keywords from their descriptions and titles. (You can also a video’s keywords by viewing the source code of its YouTube page.)
Use these on your own video. Plus, spice it up with a little clickbait in the title. Doing “X” in “Y” (unbelievably short) amount of time is a reliable, winning clickbait title.
I’d say consider your YouTube channel page as your website homepage and the video pages as landing pages and then start working with the same anatomy as you do for a website.
The very first important step is to perfect the On Page SEO factors for your channel and individual videos. Go to keyword planner, select your targeted keywords (of course with a decent search volume) and try to add your keyword towards the beginning of your video’s title. Do the same for the description tag as well.
Also, make sure you add proper tags for your videos, including the synonyms and variations of your main targeted keywords. The video name should also use your keyword. For example, if your targeted keyword is “Dental SEO Tips” then your video file name should look something like “dental-SEO-tips”. Once the video is live, the next focus should be to get as many likes, shares, and comments as possible. So, make sure to share it in
Once the video is live, the next focus should be to get as many likes, shares, and comments as possible. So, make sure to share it in your social network. Join relevant groups on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ etc. and also find other relevant communities such as Reddit.
On Reddit, you can find a sub-Reddit for almost every niche and it can bring quite a number of visitors if posted at the right place. Also, if you own a website or blog make sure to embed the video in your popular posts.
What you need to do before creating a YouTube video:
Keyword research to find opportunities (one of the most important steps)
This can be done with simple tools like YouTube or Google Trends as well as more advanced tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs or Moz. If you are just starting out, you want to look for longer tailed keywords (avoid very broad and highly competitive queries)
Ask questions to determine difficulty to rank
How recent/old are the videos currently ranking for my target keywords? Can I improve/offer something better than what already exists? Do the videos have a lot of engagement? (Likes, comments, subscribers, etc) How many links are pointing to the video? Tools like: vidIQ and TubeBuddy can help drilling into statistics.
Select keywords
You want to focus on high volume keywords in your niche that currently rank low-quality videos (outdated content, low engagement, little to no backlinks, etc).
When creating a video:
Don’t cut corners
User engagement is rapidly becoming the most important ranking signal on YouTube (and several other search engines for that matter). “Watch time”, CTR, likes, clicks, comments, shares tell YouTube if your video was interesting and if it deserves to be shown to other people. So, you need to think about every detail when creating your video: music, pacing, style, intros, outros, script, CTA’s, etc.
Make your video memorable
The best way to rank a video is to do something that stands out. Usually, easier said than done, this can be the difference between a video that gets seen a few dozen times or a few million times.
Publishing your video:
Title
Your target keyword should be at the very beginning of the title and be written in a manner that will maximize clicks
Description
Add your link at the top of the description to maximize CTR (linking to another YouTube video is a great idea here: YouTube really likes when you keep people on their platform)
Include your keyword in the first 25 words
Make the description at least 250 words (break into multiple paragraphs)
Include your keyword 3-4 times +
When possible, add multiple links to relevant information. (Once again, favor YouTube links)
Keywords
List keywords in order from longest in length to shortest in length, separated by commas. Use very specific keywords, try to use the least amount of keywords possible. Place brand keywords at the end, they are the easiest to rank for.
Thumbnail image
Often underestimated, this is one of the easiest ways to improve your CTR. A strong title with enticing thumbnail always produces great results.
Distribution your video:
How your video performs in the first 48 to 72 hours is critical to determine how it ranks. You want to share it with your most engaged followers like your Facebook groups. Try and get it placed or linked to from high authority pages. (Techniques like “Broken link building” and “Skyscraper technique” can be used.)
Same as with traditional SEO, getting quality links and great engagement are the keys to high rankings on YouTube!
If YouTube notices a video performing well above average, it will test it higher in search results to see how it performs. If the performance continues, you just successfully ranked a YouTube video!
(Be aware of black hat tactics here, they will not help you in the long run)
YouTube – the second largest search engine in the world, owned by the largest search engine in the world, Google. YouTube is a terrific source for traffic and when tapped into properly, can be an absolute game-changer for your business.
At WebDesign499, when we want to rank a YouTube video for a client, we have a system that works for us very well.
First off, make sure your video title and description is optimized for the keyword you want to rank for. This is extremely important. I have seen many YouTube Videos ranked just by proper on-Page optimization alone, depending on the competition for that keyword.
Once you’ve optimized those and your video is uploaded, we have seen tremendous upward movement by utilizing embeds. Embed your YouTube video on Web 2.0 blogs, PBNs, Guest Post sites and other blogs that are niche relevant. Embeds and proper optimization of the title and description will go a long way for your YouTube Video rankings!
If you have the budget for it, you can then build links to the actual YouTube URL directly and also through a Goo.gl shortener to pass the power of Google’s Domain Authority. Let’s get ranking!
Here is my best strategy for ranking Youtube videos:
This free Chrome extension from vidIQ will provide you with valuable competitive data for current videos that are going viral or videos that are ranking well in general for your key terms.
These insights include tags, social shares, average watch time, velocity, and more.
Even more importantly, vidIQ will provide details around the content length of these fields. For example, is your video description too short compared to videos that are ranking and going viral?
Additionally, ranking factors that are largely ignored (like velocity of views) are uncovered with the tool. This will help identify if a small promotional budget can help you compete in more competitive video search results.
Armed with this data, you can now apply these learnings strategically to a video’s title, tags, and description.
Youtube is one of the best platforms you can use to get traffic to your website. Since Youtube is a Google property, you can rank a Youtube video very easily on Google. In addition to that, Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world so you get traffic from within Youtube too.
The best strategy that I use to rank Youtube videos is social signals. I use Youtube ads to get low cost, high relevance traffic from Youtube to my Youtube video. If the traffic and engagement of the video are high, automatically, you start ranking higher as they are social signals.
In addition to that embedding, the video on posts on various websites too help. An embed of a Youtube video is equal to a link in Google’s eyes so more the embeds the higher the ranking.
When it comes to Youtube SEO, user engagement is essential. Optimizing file names and descriptions are basic must-do’s, but creating a video that keeps visitors watching is key to ranking high.
If visitors are coming to your video and leaving immediately, your user engagement metrics will be poor, and because of this your video won’t rank highly.
Like blog posts, YouTube videos also need some On-Page SEO like:
SEO rich video Title (Use Google Trends to finalize your title)
Meta description containing your targeted keyword in the first paragraph. (Earlier the better)
Video file name: Rename your video file name with your targeted keyword like YouTube-
Video-SEO.mp4
Upload custom Thumbnail that too having your main keyword in the file name.
Tag your each and every video with relevant tags. It helps YouTube understand your video topic.
Upload video transcripts.
Apart from these basic On-Page SEO, make sure you do below things as well:
Every time you upload a new video, add that video to a particular Playlist. Name your playlist as your broad category you are targeting.
Whenever you share your videos on any platform, instead of sharing your video URL directly, copy the video URL from its playlist. So whenever someone will watch your video, more videos from that same playlist will be displayed at the right side of their screen. Means, more views, more watch time and higher rankings.
Include your “channel name” into your tags. It will help your other videos get ranked in the suggested videos section. It will encourage your viewers to watch more videos from your channel which will accumulate more Watch time for you.
This is my YouTube SEO Checklist.
Remember one thing, you need MORE watch time to get higher rankings in YouTube. If you can hook your viewers to keep watching your videos, you’ll get success on YouTube for sure.
My best strategy for ranking Youtube videos is all about 2 things: saturation and conversion.
1) You want to saturate your video content in all the ways possible. Be sure to fill out the title, description, keywords, etc. as well as the other lesser known areas like uploading closed captioning (super cheap through rev.com) and adding videos to playlists and groups. Engage with the comments and use keywords wherever natural. Saturate your video with good SEO practices like you would your website home page. Make sure your video includes the keywords you want at the beginning and end as well – so the closed captioning has that depth to it.
2) Conversion: make sure your video content is actually something that converts! Who cares if someone gets to your video and clicks play only to leave after 3 seconds. Does your video actually entertain and educate? Make sure your video actually engages your audience in ways that are natural and powerful. Does your video actually convert to traffic or purchases? If it doesn’t, then all the ranking in the world and views won’t matter.
As you can make a video that has good saturation and results in meaningful conversions, you’ll actually be in a position to profit from your video marketing rather than just rank up on Google. Oh yeah, doing these tips will also help you rank on Google.
There are two very important metrics which YouTube uses to rank videos – and they are both related to the quality of the video.
In essence, just like on Google you need to have the best content for any given query to rank, the same applies on YouTube.
The first metrics is whether users have seen the full video or abandoned it mid-way. Videos which are viewed in full rank better. What you need to do is create an open loop within your video. That means, in the first few seconds you need to engage the user and show them you’ll be answering the query later on in the video. Every so often you should keep the loop open by reinforcing that you’ll be answering the question soon.
By keeping the user curious, they’ll stick around to watch the video. Of course, your video needs to be engaging enough to keep the user watching.
The second metric is also related to quality. Essentially, it is whether a user subscribes to a channel following a video. If a user has subscribed to a channel, that means they loved what they saw and what to see more.
What is therefore VERY important is to get your watchers to subscribe to your channel. You need to ask them, beg them even bribe them to subscribe, because this is a critical measurement of quality.
These two tricks should boost rankings of your videos significantly.
One of the best ways to rank YouTube videos is to focus on engagement.
It’s almost become a joke at this point for YouTubers to beg their viewers to like and subscribe at the end of their videos, so the effectiveness of it has diminished. Instead, give your viewers a good reason to leave a comment, since that kind of engagement is also a strong ranking factor. Some of my favorite approaches include:
Including something controversial that viewers can’t wait to debate. WatchMojo likes to put surprise twists at the end of their “top # countdowns,” which are often debated in the comments.
Forgetting a small detail that will drive users nuts, then add “let me know in the comments if I missed anything.”
Literally, ask the viewer “which video should I make next?”, give them options, and let them fight it out in the comments.
Mentioning comments from past videos in your latest videos, along with screenshots, to show viewers that their comments will actually be read.
Increase the engagement by giving viewers a real reason to leave comments. Don’t just tell them to like, comment and subscribe, because the incentives are weak.
If you’re uploading a cooking video, finish it with “what do you want to see me cook next? Bacon cheddar ranch egg rolls or fried chicken and waffle quesadillas? Let me know in the comments below.” If you’re making a video about the top 10 rides at Disneyland, leave out Space Mountain and add “did I miss your favorite ride? Let me know in the comments below.” And if you’re making a video about the best way to turn a Roomba into a BattleBot, finish with “If anyone’s interested, I can also put together a PDF of the new schematics. Let me know in the comments below.”
Not only will the comments themselves help your video rank better, but once your audience starts interacting with your video they’re also more likely to take the time to upvote it or subscribe.
Name the Video same as your target keyword e.g., my target keyword is “weight loss in two weeks”, when you upload video make sure to make video name as “weight loss in two weeks”.
Add your target keyword in title too
Add your keyword in tags too but don’t forget to use LSI keywords in tags.
Always create a custom thumbnail, use any free online resource. (The ideal size for thumbnails is 1280 x 720 pixels)
When the video is online and ready, get a freelancer and get maxi embed of such video.
I published a post on my site about ranking videos on YouTube. In this post, I detail every aspect of how one of my most popular videos on YouTube ranked really well. In a nutshell, I did the following.
I created interesting content. The content needs to be interesting to the right audience. I happened to choose an audience of people that wanted to see a foreigner speak in Korean. I optimised the video for my target keyword. I optimised the video title, description and the naming conventions of the files so that the video could rank well on YouTube. I was also hoping that it would rank in both the search results and the recommended results on the side. I hoped that the watch time of the video would increase.
Previously, my video content was very long (Around 10 minutes) and it wasn’t interesting enough to retain people. So I experimented with making shorter clips that were a bit more humorous. This one worked well. But you have to tailor the content to your audience.
I also published this case study about one of my videos going viral on Reddit. The video gets so much viewing time that it is always ranking well and it is always being recommended for watching due to its high watch time. We SEO experts can optimise the videos all we want to, but it is important that the content in the video resonates with the audience. I hope that this helps.
There are many ways to rank a video. When you’re creating your video, try to make it at least five minutes long. Similar to text-based articles, longer videos rank higher. They consistently outperform shorter videos in YouTube and Google. You should also upload the video with YouTube SEO in mind. You’ll want to optimize things like the video filename, title, description, and tags. I’ve listed some tips below for each of those:
1. Video filename – use your keyword in the filename
2. Video Title – the title of the video should be at least 5 words long. By doing this, you can include your full keyword without keyword stuffing. You should also aim to include the keyword at the beginning of the title.
3. Video Description – Since Google and YouTube can’t “listen” to videos, they rely on a text description to figure out the video’s content.
put your website link at the top to maximize click-through rate to your site
include the keyword in the first 25 words
make the description at least 250 words
include the keyword 3-4 times
4. Tags – include keywords so you show up for your target keywords, but also so you show up more often as a related video in the sidebar area of YouTube.
Once your new video is created and then optimized correctly, you’ll be set up to rank for it.
Youtube ranking is similar to Google rankings in many ways yet it does have its differences. In order to rank youtube videos, here’s what I usually do:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is important. You’ll want to target keywords that have enough search volume and know the competition. I know a lot of people don’t think keywords are important for youtube because it’s just video. I use the ‘keywords anywhere’ google extension and this shows me the worldwide volume, CPC and competition. It’s not 100% accurate but it’s a good guideline.
2. Video Optimisation
I make sure that the video is not too short, at least a minute and a half. Then from here, I’ll have a 200+ word description or a transcript. Generally, if the video is about a certain topic, it should have words related to the keyword.
3. Optimise Channel Page
I know people might just want to rank 1 video but the channel page is really important. You have no idea how many people actually reach the video or videos from the channel. Make sure you have a good header image, a welcome video and playlists.
4. Off Youtube
Make sure you link to your video from your blog using a post to introduce it. It doesn’t have to be a long post, just introduce the video. That’s the minimum I’ll do but I’d also want to try to get links to the video from other sources.
5. User/engagement metrics
Make sure your video is interesting. The better engagement it gets, the more likely it will shoot up the search. Get less bounce, more people watching the full video and commenting/liking it.
6. Get social
Share your video across your social media and ask people to share. The more your video gets seen, the better. This will also increase the likelihood of the video getting good engagement metrics.
7. Paid Ads
I don’t always do this for videos but it’s worth looking at. If the video has a good potential ROI then I’ll test Youtube ads and Facebook ads on the video. The more people watch it, the higher your chance to get found on search. For FB, remember to make them watch it on Youtube and not Facebook.
First and foremost ranking a YouTube Video is an extremely valuable ability that will drive your business above and beyond. Ranking a video is a simple process of recording valuable content in which viewers are going to want to watch.
Outsourcing for this sort of thing can be done by connecting with someone on Fiver.com and getting a quality video completed within a matter of days. Of course, there is always making a video yourself in which video editing software will be required.
Once you have your video ready and set to be published on YouTube the next step will be to ensure your description is accurately filled out. You will want to make sure your description is of the good length and contains your website URL and social profile URLs as well.
Most importantly you are going to want your money website contained within the first sentence or two of the description so that it appears immediately without having to expand the description.
Lastly, optimizing the YouTube URL on your own business website and your social profiles with be the immediate way to maximize the viewers. There are other methods in which can be used to maximizes viewers such as paid ads on Facebook and hashtags on Instagram.
Like anything in SEO, keyword research plays a vital role in the YouTube optimization process. But how exactly to do it right? There are lots of keywords which have high search volume in Google while very low in YouTube. So you should find the so-called “Video Keywords”.
My advice: look into YouTube Suggestions. Many views come from these suggestions, as viewers are most likely to end up clicking one of them.
You can also check the chosen keywords in Google and see if any of them you searched for have YouTube video results. Typically videos are shown in SERP for keywords containing “How To…”, “Video”, “Watch”, Songs/Movies, Reviews, Anything fitness and sports-related or Tutorials.
After you have found your “Video Keywords”, make sure you have them in your title and description but do it naturally. Do not keyword stuff video description and tags.
Create longer videos with relevant and interesting content. Make your video at least 5-minutes long. Watch time is the most important ranking factor in YouTube algorithm. So if your videos are longer than the competitors one, your watch time will be more than his/hers and your videos will rank higher.
Our best strategy is the approach we take. Shoot your video as human and natural as possible.
The video itself needs to produce a human feeling, that’s the best SEO strategy you can have.
By getting a human reaction from someone watching the video, the magic happens on its own afterward.
The first thing I usually do is to optimize the filename of the video itself afterward I also optimize the image thumbnail.
I always utilize the end screens and optimize the tags in the video as such that it would target the keywords I want it to rank for in YT.
As for the description itself, I usually go for the URL of the website I want people to go to and then proceed with writing a good copy for the description that doesn’t need to be lengthy.
Instead, I gather bite sized info that anyone can digest in a jiffy.
Afterwards, the title of the video should also be the same as the filename and the thumbnail filename.
This technique has worked wonders for me.
I consider getting a video captioned to be absolutely essential. It’s table stakes. With services like Speechpad.com and Rev.com charging just a buck fifty per minute of video, there’s no excuse not to. Not only does it help YouTube and Google understand the contents of the video, it’s the right thing to do to make your videos accessible to people with disabilities. Assuming that you already have captioning in place,
Assuming that you already have captioning in place, an often overlooked signal in YouTube ranking is what users do after watching your video. Obviously, you want them to watch your entire video, so edit it for have snappy pacing.
If you help YouTube with that goal, your videos will be rewarded. So, always set up a few pathways to compel users to stay on YouTube after they’ve watched your video. Including an endplate with links to other videos is a very useful tactic, and be sure to place your videos inside a well-curated playlist whenever possible.
Most importantly, abandon the misinformed idea that your goal should be to get viewers to click through from YouTube to your website. You can get them to do that later, by running remarketing ads. Instead, make your calls to action in your video all about staying on YouTube: watch another video, subscribe to our channel, like this video, leave a comment below, or share this video with your friends.
I’ve been doing a lot of observations of various youtube channels for marketing-related tips and serps as well and here’s a little something I have to share:
People, LOOK INTO SUBTITLES!
Even though it might sound simple at first, Google seems to scan content within subtitles, looking for relevant pieces and I what I see is an increase of SERP results, where the #1 results is a youtube video. When you click it it starts at a pre-defined moment, at the exact second where the answer to your query lies. How awesome is that? This means that producing videos with well-descriptive narrations might be the next best thing after a thorough and well-formated blogpost, especially if you have both!
If you really want to be as professional as possible – base your actual speech on keyword research. This is the one sure way to make sure you have the best answer out there!
One of the sure-fired ways to help a YouTube video to rank is by writing a well-optimized title and description. Ensuring that both the YouTube video’s title and description contain the keywords for which you want to rank are important factors in helping the video rank well in search engines such as Google, Bing, and even YouTube itself.
Keep your keyword phrases at the beginning of the title and to limit the characters to 70. As for the description, make sure that your first line is succinct as only ~157 characters will appear in the featured snippet, although many search engine results will truncate that even more.
In the first sentence, include your keywords and a call to action if you can fit it. You have 5000 characters to squeeze in as much information as possible for your description, however, you will want to devote some of those characters for links back to your own website’s landing pages.
Most users of YouTube will only read the first two lines of a description, so try to get your message across as fast as possible.
Lastly, you want to use words that speak to your intended audience, given a specific age range, geographic location, and many other factors.
We all know that there is a huge opportunity to grow your business & build brand awareness with YouTube but the point is to where to start and build a proven system in place which works every time when we launch any new video. I remember when I first started YouTube SEO, I followed advice of every so-called expert which includes
Put your keyword in title
Find and write appropriate tags
Save the video with keyword filename
Upload them as a live video to fool Google ?
Write juicy keyword rich video description etc.
But I was wrong and failed so many times before I learnt that “Finding a winning topic” is very important to promote the video.
Just like Google SEO, Keyword research is the first critical step to rank better in YouTube as well. YouTube kW research is completely different than the keyword research you do for Google SEO. So, it’s important to optimize your video around the right keyword.
Here’s a step by step strategy I use to rank my videos on YouTube;
Step 1 – So to start with, focus on finding the winning topic ideas for your video which can be done by looking at your competitor channel to see what type of content is working best for them and put the ideas on your list. Use the same strategy for 10-15 competitors of yours and you will end up with a golden list of proven topics which has proven well. (pro Tip – You can use the filter “most popular” to look at their most popular videos based on views and likes)
Step 2 – Create a better video with more juicy information in that. This can be done by looking at the popular blog posts in Google and curate content from there.
Step 3 – Not to forget that video promotion still plays an important role which includes do an outreach campaign and let people know of your video and ask them if they can watch and embed that in their relevant published post.
The first point is to create some useful, valuable content. You’ll never rank if the content is poor. Content drives engagement, and engagement is really important. Views, comments, and video responses are all used as a metric to rank your video. If people are watching your content through to the end, they are fully engaged, and YouTube is going to rank you better than a video where only the first 10 seconds is watched.
Inbound links, social shares, and video embeds are also important. Use your social media channels, use your website, use your blog, and use email to share your video to your audience and start to drive those views and engagement and links.
You can also optimise the video content. Conduct some keyword research to identify what you want your video to rank for. Ensure this is in the title. Write a real description for your video – think 300 to 500 words, write this naturally and for the reader, and include the keywords where relevant. Add tags – at least ten of them, also including your keyword and related keywords. Also take the time to transcribe your video manually, word for word. Don’t rely on the automatic translation, which is often poor. Make sure it’s done manually.
Also, you need to replicate this across your whole channel. Be aware of your videos as a whole and your channel – if it follows best practice and has engagement, there is more opportunity to rank for your new videos.
SEO and achieving good ranking results always starts with keyword research. Ranking in YouTube is no different. And what’s more, using “video keywords” in the optimisation will help you rank not only within YouTube’s internal search engine but also in Google!
Google gives a huge preference to YouTube videos, so ranking here usually requires very little effort.
Here’s my Youtube ranking strategy:
Google often shows a selection of video results on the first page and these video results tend to be “How to” videos, tutorials, funny videos and anything fitness related so using this type of keyword will give the best results.
I find the best “video keywords” by searching for keywords in my niche and see if this results in any YouTube videos showing up in Google. When I’ve found some video keywords I then check out the search volume for the keywords. I use Google’s Keyword Planner to help with this. Targeting keywords with about 300 monthly searches ensures I get a decent volume of searches actually in YouTube as well as the 300+ monthly visitors from Google straight to my video!
To optimise the video use the video keyword at the beginning of the title and make the title at least 6 words long. The title is the most important factor in ranking YouTube videos so I spend some time on this to get it right. I like a relevant and compelling title as this will lead to more views and better user metrics.
Adding a long description that describes in detail what the video is about, helps Google and YouTube understand the content of the video. Putting your link at the very top of the video description will maximise the CTR to your site, and then as with the title tag, I use my video keyword at the beginning and a few more times throughout the description where it makes sense to do so. Google isn’t good at interpreting video so relies on the video file name, the title and the description, meaning that these are crucial if you want to achieve good ranking. Tags aren’t so important, but they help a little, so I include a few keywords in these too.
Apart from choosing and optimising your video for the right keywords, you obviously need a great video!
Hitting those user experience metrics are incredibly important – likes, dislikes, comments, subscribes, shares, etc, are things that YouTube uses to figure out the quality of your video. Audience retention is another metric that YouTube uses to measure the appeal of your video.
Create a quality click-worthy thumbnail image. CTR is a ranking factor in Youtube’s ranking algorithm. Implement a great image as well as a call to action. YouTube viewers are just like anyone web surfers, they will click the most interesting image or headline. Also, a great thumbnail goes a long way when you share your video on social media.
Embed your youtube video on authoritative websites and share it on social media. Using expired web 2.0’s is a great way to rank your YouTube videos. First, find an expired web 2.0 (e.g. WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Tumblr.com or, Medium.com), register the site and add quality relevant content.
A general rule for content is 500++ words of unique content. The keyword should be included in the title and the body. The keyword should be linked to the YouTube video, the video should be Embedded onto the page and you should also link out to an authority site. To optimize the page further, add the keyword into a H1 tag and a keyword variation as alt text of an image.
Once you have a few posts live, go ahead and embed your video and add surrounding relevant text.
Embedding YouTube video’s on authoritative sites is an important ranking factor in YouTube’s algorithm. I’ve tested this method for clients, and it works well. The great thing about ranking videos for highly targeted keywords, even though they might not have a ton of traffic, they are VERY qualified visitors.
Optimizing your YouTube videos with the best SEO sounds like a difficult task, but is actually quite easy! There are a few simple tricks you can use to make sure your video shows up when a relevant topic is searched for. Here is my short task list on how to have the best SEO for your YouTube videos.
Title your video specifically to the content in your video
Use the keywords that people are searching for in your title and description
Apply relevant and distinct tags to your video
Include a detailed description, treat it as a miniature blog post filled with your keywords
Use closed captioning or upload a transcript for added SEO value
Include a link to your website or your other relevant content in the description
My last piece of advice is to simply create quality content. YouTube and Google rank videos based on a formula that includes watch time, subscriber amounts, keyword relevance, viewer interaction, and video length so make sure your video rocks and pulls in viewer attention. If you check off all these little tasks, your videos will be popping up all over the internet!
Just like regular websites, there are keywords that will trigger Google to show your YouTube video. You can set these keywords on YouTube itself. But if you’re wondering which keywords to choose, there is a perfect tool for that. On Google Adwords, there is a tool called the Google Keyword Planner.
This will show you the number of monthly searches and other important information that will help your video grow. Although this is meant for pay-per-click ads, the effect is still the same. Use the given keywords for your YouTube video, and it is sure to grow!
I have three tips to optimize SEO for a Youtube video.
1) Perform extensive keyword research to identify keywords that target people searching on both Youtube and standard search queries. The reason for this is that your video will now rank higher for both searches, and may be ranked higher by Google, even during Google text queries. Here’s an example. Someone needs to know how to install a TV wall mount. Your video is a detailed how-to on this topic. Applying this suggestion: You’d use a keyword phrase like “How to Install a TV Wall Mount”. Now, the person searching may see your video as a top result on a standard Google search because of the keyword and content relevance.
2) Target your video content to the specific needs and desires of your target audience. There are a million tactics to improve SEO, but the king of the hill still reigns – content relevancy. In order to improve SEO, make sure your videos are stay on message to the desires and needs of the target viewers. Don’t start talking about your favorite TV show during your how-to mount a TV video – it will decrease your time per session due to lack of relevancy.
3) Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks. If can get other, content relevant, reputable sources to include links to your video, then Google will increase your page ranking. It’s true for any type of SEO optimization – the more popular the source of the backlink is, the more it will improve your SEO. Here’s a tip, ask for a “follow” when the backlink. Unfortunately, some sources will backlink your content, but put you on a “no-follow”; in other words, you get no SEO benefit.
You’ve created a killer Youtube video, so how do you get it seen? By getting it ranked. What is the best strategy? 3 actionable steps: Research, outreach, and distribution. Begin this process by asking yourself a few questions:
How will this video benefit the viewer?
What are the keywords people will use to search this video?
Lastly, what is the goal of the video?
Are you trying to increase brand awareness, drive leads, or push a competitor’s video down?
Once you have all of these questions answered, it’s easy to figure out how the title tag and description of the video should be written.The most important keywords should always be at the beginning of the title tag, and in the first 150 characters at least twice – preferably towards the beginning. Just be careful not to “keyword stuff” your title and description.
Once the video is on Youtube, focus your efforts on outreach and distribution. Share it on social media, post it on relative blogs, get your friends to share it. Use every platform you can to get it out there. Youtube actually provides you with plenty of sharing options right below the video.
A key tactic is to grab that embed code, reach out to bloggers and get them to embed it on their websites. The more your video is embedded, the more it’s seen, and ultimately – ranked.
Finally, post the video, along with an engaging blog post on your website’s blog. If you have an email list, distribute the video post through there as well. People will read the post, and watch the video. Done right, that page will organically receive links to it from other sites – essentially helping the website itself AND the Youtube video get ranked and be seen.
After doing SEO for over 10 years a see a lot of similarities between Google search ranking results and YouTube ranking results. Let’s assume you have created an awesome piece of content that is both relevant and entertaining to the watcher. But how to rank it?
The very first thing you have to focus on is a descriptive and enticing title without being “clickbaity”. This title should include a keyword or phrase that you want to rank for such as “best hacks for college students”. Furthermore, you should continue this phrase into the description of the video which should ideally be 150-200 words.
This description will furthermore add relevant content to your video which YouTube can pick up on. One last tip is to add a custom thumbnail to your video with some keywords that will stick out while users scroll down YouTube. While this isn’t necessarily an SEO tactic, it will help get more clicks on your videos which in return and bump it up the ranking of the video.
The first and foremost point that needs considering is the quality and relevance of the video, even before you try ranking your youtube video.
Saying about strategy; you must have a title – this phase starts with keyword research. There are few keywords come up as the top result while you search; these are video keywords. Most commonly used keywords that start with, ‘how to’, tutorial or reviews are the video keywords. You must identify them.
Youtube search engine is another way for keyword research. When you enter the chosen keywords, you can find associate other words. Using ”_” gets you more suggestions. Google trends is another method that will help you to find your targeted audience. Use good tags and video description before you take the video public. TubeBuddy is a good source to find your competitor’s video tags.
Once you have published, you can start on with its promotional activities. Embed your video on your site and other sites will improve its rating. If you have other videos that are ranking well you can link your video with that using annotations. Some website SEO tricks can also work-out here.
Embed the video in your web2, Quora commenting and forum commenting for better visibility. Find the articles that describe your video keyword. Reach them with your video.
Youtube is one of the best platforms for sharing a visual medium of your content. Today with cheap editing software and low-cost video recording devices, it is easy to make a Youtube video.
I mainly use web 2.0 embeds to link to my Youtube video. I use IFTTT to automatically post every new video from my Youtube channel to my web 2.0 sites which include Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and Google Sites.
I have tested with both, no web embeds and with web embeds and there is a significant difference in the ranking.
YouTube’s ranking algorithm is complex, so complex in fact that even YouTube developers can’t fully understand it. That’s because the algorithm is controlled by Google’s machine learning AI – the same AI that beat the world’s best Go player. What we do know though, is that the algorithm prioritizes watch time, so we can focus our efforts there.
There are a number of ways we can do this. Creating interesting and entertaining content is the most obvious, and the one that everyone is attempting to achieve. Another is ensuring that you get your content to the right audience and get them to click on it. You have two amazing tools to help you achieve this – tags and thumbnails. Make sure you correctly and comprehensively tag your videos, using every single one of your 500 available characters.
Come up with the key searches you expect people to use to find your video, and then go through every variation you can think of. If you can get these tags right, you’re going to be able to focus in on your key audience, increase your watch time, and work your way up the rankings.
– The way YouTube rankings work is quite different from the traditional outlook. You can’t just throw a couple of links with a couple of content pieces and expect to rank.
In order to rank well on YouTube, you need to establish channel authority. You need to produce quality content constantly and make sure that it is effective too. Now, there are a couple of ways to do it but you gotta remember that just like traditional SEO, YouTube SEO also takes a lot of time to work.
So, how can you build this channel authority? Here are the top 3 things that I recommend you to follow:
1. Work on the on-page optimization of your video. This includes working on the description, tags, and other usual stuff. You gotta make sure you keep your targeted keywords within the first paragraph of your description. But don’t write for the crawlers. Write it for the people.
2. What many people ignore is working on their source file. But you’ve gotta work on that as it plays a major role in ranking your site. You can actually edit your video rating, description, meta information by opening up the properties of your source file.
3. The last thing that you must follow is outreach. You see the more people you will reach to the more people will get to know about it. So, I suggest on following influencer outreach. But you must remember that for outreach to work your content needs to be worthy of sharing on their social media profiles and sites.
There are two key tactics that stand out to me as perhaps the most important when getting a YouTube video to rank.
The first step is to find target keywords that Google uses to show YouTube results. For instance, some keyword searches won’t display any videos, whilst others might display a few. I use SEMRush for this part, where I can simply start plugging in my initial draft of keywords and it will show me if the SERPs are showing video results. After refining that list, I look at the keyword volume and competitiveness to find the ideal target.
The actual production of the video plays an important role too.
There’s been discussion around Google using ‘searcher task accomplishment’ as a key indicator of value to the user and with video, this can be measured quite simply with ‘view time’. So the aim must be to get your viewers hanging around watching. I suggest longer videos to give you the best chance of demonstrating value. For example getting viewers to watch 4 minutes of a 5-minute video is likely more convincing than watching all 30 seconds of a shorter video. There are also production tactics to keep viewers engaged and for this reason, it’s worth consulting film professionals.
Just having an optimized description and keyword stuffing won’t help much with ranking Youtube videos. one among my simplest tricks is to consider Youtube as my own website and building back-links from relevant Q&A platforms.
Quora would be an answer for better exposure. The link can drive many viewers and these viewers are perfectly capable of sharing the answer and indirectly promoting the video if it is worthwhile. More the traffic, more the attention, Better is the positioning in Youtube suggestions. It is that simple.
My other favorite strategies include Reddit and Pinterest.
One can utilize Reddit groups for promoting a Video URL and the archived sections are still valuable for bringing in the traffic.
Pinterest is an image sharing platform. However, Youtube provides direct option to share the video. Also, you could add a thumbnail and provide the Youtube URL there.
For starters, I would recommend creating a video that has a potential to go viral ( For example funny videos, videos with deep messages etc.) and provide a short and concise description, where the first line should describe what the video is about.
Blogging Surgery
When you search for a particular keyword let us say Affiliate Marketing, You will see many times that there will be some videos who will have fewer views but are ranking above then some videos with more views. The reason behind this is such videos includes a well-written description. Hence as the Youtube search looks for the keywords particularly in the description as well such videos rank better.
Tip: If possible always add a written transcript of your video in search description. It will help the video to rank better and there are chances that this description can also be part of Google Featured snippets
For ranking Youtube videos, first thing is to do a basic stuff – place the keywords in the video title, description, and tags. Make a bit longer description, at least a few sentences.
When it’s published, share it on all main social networks. On Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus use the keywords a hashtag. Share it not only on your profiles but also on few Facebook pages, Linkedin groups and everywhere where it’s appropriate and where you have control.
Find few websites/blogs where video can be embedded and do that. It would be great if you can choose title on that blogs/web pages, so you can use keywords in that titles.
Track when someone leaves a comment on your video and answer them.
If you have more YouTube videos, place the link to the new video, somewhere in the description, but somewhere in the comment, also.
If Youtube profile has more subscribers, that will help to rank uploaded video, too. So try to get more subscribers, too, with sharing whole profile on social networks.
Make useful or fun playlist, with videos from different YouTube profiles, and include your video in it.
Ranking videos on YouTube isn’t a lot different than ranking pages on Google if you’re only going to search traffic only. The best way to get views is to find a search term that people are searching and isn’t too competitive.
Once you find a keyword (or words) that people are searching for and you have a good video that meets people’s needs optimizing is next. The optimization part is all about having your keyword as close to the front of your title, reiterated in your description a few times, and using it in your keywords also.
If you’ve done that right then it’s all about a captivating thumbnail that captures interest and looks like it will meet people’s needs. That’s it for on video SEO but then you can also improve its ranking by reaching out to people who would be interested in the video and sharing it with them.
This is a very detailed topic and in fact I wrote a whole article on it here.
Ranking Youtube videos is similar to ranking a regular webpage. You have the usual items like the Title and Description area, but you also have a Tag area as well.
To optimize the Title, keep your targeted keyword phrase near the beginning. You have up to 100 characters to use before it gets truncated, but try to keep it about 70 characters in length. Many people don’t know that you are allowed to use emojis in the Title. It helps get your video to stand out a bit more.
Optimizing the Description area is similar to optimizing a page on a website. You have up to 5000 characters, but minimally try to use about 300 words. Use the keyword phrase in the first sentence, with variations throughout the text. Use it again near the end of the text. Put a call to action at the end, asking people to comment and subscribe as well.
The Tag area is where you insert stand-alone keyword phrases. Use at least three. I have seen videos rank very well solely on the strength of their channel that hasn’t included any Tags, so I am not sure how much it is used for ranking purposes, but Youtube’s suggested section will show other videos that contain the same Tags.
Youtube will also scan the audio for clues about how to rank the video. You can help this process by uploading a text file of the audio for closed captioning.
We also know that the video is scanned visually as well. Given that Google has patents on reading text from image and video files, it’s not far to assume that inserting text (of your keyword phrases) within the video can also help rankings.
Making your videos interesting is not only good for your viewers and getting subscribers, but also helps ranking since overall watch time is another factor that Youtube uses to rank it’s videos.
Thank you so much to all the experts that contributed to this expert roundup! Let us know in the comments below what was were your favorite tips on how to rank YouTube videos. Also if you enjoyed reading this post, do share it on social media with your friends and followers. Looking for SEO services for dentists?
Is your dental marketing company committed to great results? Or do they try to control which medium you use to advertise?
I recently had a very successful and highly regarded dentist contact me about SEO. He has a PPC/Adwords guy controlling and managing his campaign. He’s very happy with the results, and boasts a very high ROI from such efforts. He tells me that even his billboards, radio ads, TV spots etc. didn’t compare to his PPC campaign. He just wants to know if SEO is the right fit for him, to gain new patients. In our conversation, I mention we should review some data within his Adwords account to see just how many people are searching in his target area. After all, if the search volume isn’t high enough, SEO wouldn’t be the right fit for his practice. He asks to think about it.
Later, I find out that the Adwords manager opposed the idea of this dentist doing SEO. He was personally offended that the dentist felt his PPC management wasn’t enough for this dentist. He derided SEO as an ineffective way to gain new patients. This dentist didn’t want to offend his PPC manager any further, so he quickly disposed of the idea that SEO might be worth exploring. This dentist is suffering from being controlled, rather than committed to optimal results.
Too often, I find marketing companies who specialize in alphabet soup dental marketing (PPC, SEO, SEM, elemenopee, etc) have lost sight of what really matters: finding the best fit for the dentist’s marketing goals.
First, you have the direct mail company, who fails to speak at all with the SEO strategist. The photographer and videographer never meet. The SEO strategist never speaks with the front desk, who is in charge of “blogging.” Then, you have the pay per click manager, who is resentful if you try some other form of digital marketing. The guy selling billboard space doesn’t ever ask what your TV and radio message is. The public relations firm is tucked neatly away from the social media strategist. And the web designer you hired seems to have no problem at all asking for “content,” to fill the blank spaces in that new website they created.
The dentist has to translate technical jargon from one department to another. It’s a telephone game. He needs to know how to speak clinician, geek, layman, and marketer speak.
To some, there is no problem here. But if you think on a strategic level, there is a grave problem.
Who’s calling the shots, here? No one is on the same page, and worse yet – each company or department is averse to each other. I find that this is often a result of each marketing specialist taking pride in a platform, tactic, or medium, rather than taking pride in the overall message. It’s time for dentists to take charge of their marketing message, and demand their marketing companies commit to results.
No dental patient ever said “I didn’t care so much about what the dentist said or who he was, I’m glad he bought Adwords!”
It’s time for dentists and marketing professionals to do something brave:
Be willing to admit when your marketing medium isn’t the right fit for a particular practice, and commit to contribute ideas on how to create remarkable content.
Dr. Christopher Phelps runs a company dedicated to helping dentists track real ROI. His service promotes a revolutionary idea in dental marketing: just do what works. He doesn’t try to control which particular medium you choose. He’s in favor of commitment to results, rather than controlling you.
But most marketers don’t think this way. In fact, the only place you’ll find most marketers truly committed is in an insane asylum. (credit: Robert Rose of Content Marketing Institute)
We’re on the brink of 2017. It’s time for more marketing specialists to think like Dr. Phelps.
Dr. Anissa Holmes promotes a message that her audience believes in. Even though she specializes in helping dentists with Facebook Ads, she allows different types of marketers to join in on the discussion of what’s best for any particular dental practice. Just like Dr. Phelps, she’s committed.
Being willing to engage in an organization-wide discussion about what kind of differentiating message you can deliver is the first place to start. Tracking ROI gives you the ability to look in the rear view mirror and learn from past success and failures, but only a comprehensive content marketing strategy, where every member of your team has a say in what rules should govern the message, is the only way to ensure that your team is committed to results, rather than control.
1 QUICK TIP:
Use a project management board, like Trello. Get everyone in your dental office involved in a discussion on what kind of content will resonate with your ideal patient types. Create content rules that govern what kind of differentiated message you can deliver that no other dental office can. You can still use email if you’d like, but with Trello, you can showcase everyone’s feedback and ideas in one organized place.
So how about your marketing service provider? Are they controlling you? Or are they committed to your success? In my next article, I’ll show you the top red flags to look for so that you can know the difference.
Today we’re featuring a dental office who has really turned the new patient faucet on through a variety of internal marketing efforts. Pine Crest Dental’s very own Dr. Williams showcases an incredible Halloween dental marketing strategy which speaks for itself.
The benefits of branding by having children arrive at the practice are immediately evident. Additionally, the practice is aligning themselves with altruistic values and support for America’s military personnel. Promoting great oral health is something you must live by, and preventing excessive consumption of sugars is being demonstrated by Pine Crest Dental in this promotion. Obviously, the contribution being made has benefits to the kids and parents, with cash and xylitol candies being handed out. Overall, this dental marketing idea is one to put in the books as valuable, and one which should be put into action!
From an SEO perspective, this promotion is the sort of thing which can earn you publicity and editorially granted inbound links from local media outlets. Which can improve overall dentist website search engine presence through online buzz.
Dentists ignore these top 3 tips on how to best ask for referrals all the time.
Why should you care? Because dentistry is riddled with bad marketing practices, and instead of blending in with the crowd, it’s now easier than ever before to stand out. You have to love the dentists that ignore these tips because, there they are, your competitors, making it easy for you to shine.
You can apply these tomorrow! Here are the top 3 tips on how to ask for patient referrals:
1. Thanking Patients who refer to your dental practice. Have a system in place to thank those who refer to your dental practice. I’m talking about every single patient, not just the ones you know personally. Have a budget to reward referring dental patients. It could be a bottle of wine with a handwritten note, or anything you believe the patient would most value. If someone sends you a restorative or cosmetic dental patient, you don’t want to pinch pennies, here. Given the lifetime value of a new patient, you want to create a lasting memory in the referring patient’s mind.
DON’T create expectations before hand by promising them a gift card or cash award for any future patients they might refer. This creates a high expectation, and makes it hard to under-promise and over-deliver. The whole point is to exceed expectations. Promise your patients nothing ahead of time for referrals other than the best patient experience and optimal care for their friends and family. Both the referring patient and the referral patient will respect you more for it, in the end.
The other problem with offering cash for referral cases is that it creates the perception that it’s all about money for you, not patient care. Don’t be that dentist. Be someone that stands out from the crowd by showing your patients that this is about their well-being, not your pocketbook. Many patients feel dentists become dentists simply to make money. Nothing reinforces this belief quite like the promise of a multi-level-marketing scheme, which is a close model to what’s being offered with cash-for-cases.
2. Take Notes on Patient Values. Intake forms allow you the opportunity to learn a bit more than the average dentist about your new patient. In my experience, patients actually like to talk about themselves and what they like or dislike on these forms. Better yet, if they happen to mention in passing that they’re a Lakers fan, or follow a certain sport, make a note of it in the patient’s file. This will allow you to pull up the information when the patient is referring to you, and they’ll think you have an amazing memory!
Better yet, they’ll feel that you truly care enough about them to take the time to address such things. The more personal the gift, the better. Do they like a particular brand of wine? Sports fan memorabilia is particularly memorable. Get creative. This is your time to separate yourself from the pack.
3. Free Marriage Anniversary Whitening. Talk about unexpected! If they have a 10th, 20th, or other milestone marriage anniversary coming up, they’re probably thinking about hiring a photographer or at least snapping a selfie while out to dinner. Think of how meaningful it is to have perfectly white teeth for these photos!
It costs you a whitening kit less than $100, and if you schedule it during an open time in your assistant’s schedule, that’s all your out of pocket cost is.
Make a note of which patients refer to your practice and offer them all this deal. While other dentists cheapen their appearance by shooting out mailers for free whitening to every Joe Schmo, you’re only rewarding those patients whom have the highest lifetime value. Think of the conversations their white teeth will start! Remember, this was a referral source before you gifted them. Think of the evangelical reviews you’ll get when you offer this. Even if the couple doesn’t take you up on the offer, they’ll never forget the dentist who did!
In Dental Marketing, perception is everything. Be sure to create the optimal perception. All that return on your investment for dental seo is depending on your relationship building with the dental patients that refer to you.
