YouTube has established itself as one of the most popular websites in the world since its introduction in 2005. Ranking in at number 3 according to the Alexa Top 500 Global Sites, YouTube receives millions of unique visitors every single day. People watch a staggering 2 billion videos each day and according to YouTube, 24 hours of video is uploaded to the video website
every minute. These statistics are absolutely incredible and YouTube has limitless potential in terms of generating traffic to your website or blog.
YouTube is no longer used by kids who are solely looking to watch a funny cat video or various sports highlights. It now serves as a great resource filled with thousands of hours of informational videos. YouTube not only functions as an amazing way to generate ad revenue from people directly watching your videos, but also as a great way to generate traffic to your blog or website. Here are 5 helpful hints to use when you are looking to use YouTube to drive traffic to your blog or website.
1.) Create a High Quality Video
Possibly the most important step in using YouTube to drive traffic to your blog is to create a great video. You don’t need a high budget to create a great video, rather a plan of action, knowledge on your topic and some sort of video editing software. Examples of different kinds or effective videos are DIY (do it yourself) or top 10 list videos. These will encourage people to not only click on your video, but also watch the video in its entirety. Nothing is worse than having someone click on your video only to exit out after 10 seconds due to boredom.
2.) Link in the Video Description
This one seems pretty obvious, but I see people forget to add their URL in their video description more often than not. If you make a popular video, why miss out on potential targeted traffic by forgetting to add a silly thing like your website’s URL? Make sure you add it to the beginning of the video description as it will be the first thing that stands out to the viewer. Also make sure you include some information on your video and be descriptive. You want to make sure you do this, because the more YouTube knows about your video, the more confidently it can rank it for a specific keyword.
3.) Get Traffic to Your Video
If you spend hours in creating an informational video only to receive no traffic to it, you’ll be pretty disappointed in your efforts. Unless you already have a solid subscriber base, you will need to promote your video in order to get some traffic to it. Just like search engine optimization for a website, you can use the same methods to promote your video. This includes adding good tags and keywords to your video description, posting it to social sites like Facebook/Twitter/Google+/etc, or sending your new video out to a mailing list. You can also post your video, granted it is helpful, to online communities like LinkedIn or Ouora. Getting targeted traffic from online communities will also help your video and ultimately your website rank better on search engines. If you can generate solid traffic to your well-made video and then tell viewers to click on your link to your website, more often than not they will. This leads us to our next tip.
4.) Tell Them to Click Your Link!
What’s the point of creating a video, putting your link in the description and then not taking the time to tell the viewers that you want them to view your website? Put emphasis on the fact that there is a link to your website in the description and you want them to click on it. If you can create a high-quality, informational video that people want to watch, chances are that your website contains a ton more material that the viewer may be looking for. You can also encourage your viewers to like and subscribe to your video and channel so they will be informed when you come out with additional videos in the future.
5.) Put Your Website URL in Your Actual Video
When using simple video editing software, you should always put your websites URL into the actual video if your main goal is to generate traffic. You should remember that often times videos are shared and embedded onto different websites. This means that your link is being shared and viewed all over the internet and not just on YouTube. Maybe add it as a watermark in the corner of the video, so as not to obstruct the viewers view, but so that they know that it is there. This will also help prevent others from stealing your video and taking credit for it.
There you have it. Make sure you apply all 5 ideas from above when using YouTube to generate traffic to your blog. As a teen it can seen overwhelming when trying to get traffic to your blog, yet these simple, yet effective tips can work wonders for you and your website and help you produce more traffic then you have ever received before creating YouTube videos.
