The goal of this step is to create a list of keywords we want the video to rank for. Keywords are terms that searchers enter into the YouTube search bar when they’re looking for videos relating to what you do. The main term that relates to the Dr Judy YT channel is “narcissism”. This main term is called the seed keyword or seed term.  There are several keyword research tools you can use to do video keyword research.  We use VidIQ which is linked into the YouTube channel. Adding “narcissism” into VidIQ keyword software harvests all the keyword variations for that main keyword. You can have more than one seed keyword. But to increase the probability of ranking at the top of a search, we usually use just one seed keyword. The results are ordered in 5 columns. Our main focus is on the related keywords, monthly search volume, and search difficulty columns. Explaining the terms. The monthly Search Volume is the number of times a keyword is searched per month. While the term Competition is how difficult it is to rank for that keyword. A closer look at the keyword narcissism shows that it has a high search volume and very difficult to rank for. Generally, seed keywords are very competitive and hard to rank for. That is why the related long-tail keywords are used instead in optimizing videos for search ranking. Long-tail here means having 2 or more words. Extensive research shows the benefit of long-tail keywords is their direct connection with search INTENT and readiness of the searcher to make a purchase decision. Below is a technical article discussing long tail keywords, including how 57% of Amazon sales are based on long tail keywords and represent the top option for increasing conversions. http://www.searchengineguide.com/matt-bailey/keyword-strategies-the-long-tail.php Example  Someone searching for “therapy for narcissism” is specifically looking for videos about therapy or therapists that treat narcissism and is more ready to hire a therapist than someone who entered “narcissism” as a search term. To rank fast, we need to use long-tail keyword variations with low competition and relatively high search volume. We call these the low-hanging fruit. To find these low-hanging fruit, we sort the search results in ascending order of competition from low to high. Immediately, you can see the low-hanging fruits are: Narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic mother, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic parents. Armed with our powerful long tail keywords, we launch to the next step.

We take the keyword variation closest to the theme of the video and plug it naturally into the video title. For our selected video, we chose ‘narcissistic mother’. The term ‘narcissistic mother’ has a monthly search volume of over 43k. It is placed at the beginning of the title because search engines give higher priority to the words at the beginning of your title. We add other long tail keywords into the titles so that if searchers use different word combinations, our video will still rank. In this example, we added “NPD”, the abbreviation for narcissistic personality disorder which has a total monthly search volume of over 36k. Psychologists typically operate in a specific physical location, I added location keywords to tell search engines the location I want the video to rank for. Our client wanted to rank for Los Angeles and New York, but people seeking online therapy want to reach out to those close to them. So when patients in Los Angeles and New York search for topics around narcissism our client’s video pops up. The next step complements what we did in the title.

After the title, the YouTube search algorithm looks at your video description with a major focus on the first few sentences in the description. Again, we naturally weave in our long-tail keywords and variations into the video description. As you see below. Using our proprietary machine learning tools, we have learned how and why the YouTube search engine loves long video description copy and reacts to specific terms at the beginning of the description. Rich content in the video description helps searchers understand what the video is about before watching it. This translates to a better experience for viewers and YouTube will reward you for the effort. We target between 300-500 words in any video description. Assets we add to the description include:

• Timestamps of the video to help viewers navigate your video
• Links to other useful resources
• Some extra copy to persuade viewers to watch your video

The next step is a very powerful but often overlooked optimization tactic.

The YouTube algorithm favors videos with manual close captions (CC) and analyzes them practically to understand, categorize and rank your video. This is another opportunity to add keywords to increase your chances of ranking. We use an artificial intelligence machine listening tool called Otter.ai to obtain the transcript of the video. Then we place the long-tail keywords variations and location keywords at the beginning of the transcript. Again, the long tail keywords are placed at the very beginning as the YouTube search algorithm focuses primarily on the first section of text. The transcript is then uploaded to the video as a subtitle to the video as shown below.

YouTube provides a dedicated section where you can specify all the keywords that describe your video and that you want to be shown for. YouTube provides you with 500 characters to add your video tags. To properly optimize the video for search, we add the long-tail keywords and other keywords from our VidIQ research. After this, the video is ready to be published. But before publishing, there is one last task. To help users understand and sort through the hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of videos in your channel, it is recommended to add your optimized video to a specific playlist.

Once the video is live, we take the video link and share it on focus groups and forums on social media. Spreading the link to different focus groups and forums sends in initial organic views to the video. When people click on the link and watch the video immediately after it is published, that sends a signal to YouTube that the content in the video is highly relevant so YouTube ranks it higher in the search results to show it to more people. YouTube’s business model requires always increasing viewer hours on their platform and relevant videos have the longest viewing time. Thus, you are rewarded with higher ranking because your video is optimized to create that relevancy.

There are two ways to convert your viewers into leads and customers:

1. Displaying your phone number
2. Displaying links to a product or landing page

YouTube provides the card feature for you to display links to your product or landing pages on the video. Cards are those little ‘i’ icons at the top right corner of most YouTube videos. YouTube allows a maximum of 5 cards per video. For maximum conversion, we place the 5 cards at strategic points where a call to action is made in the video to click on the card. In the video below, Dr. Judy refers to her phone number and offer which is present at that moment in the upper right corner via the inserted card.

Another very effective way to drive conversion is to add links to your landing page at the beginning of your video description.

Syndication 

Facebook Groups Details & Sharing  For Dr. Judy, we searched numerous Facebook groups focused on medical and psychological topics and focused on those groups with active members with many posts and discussions. We share videos from Dr. Judy to these Facebook groups for engagement and social signals. Sharing to FB groups helps in ranking on YouTube and also in direct engagement of the video. Research indicates that each video gets around 200-500 views after sharing to these FB groups over one month. While this sounds like a low number of views compared to popular music videos or viral cat videos, remember these viewers are seeking very specific information, not passive entertainment.  A Sample of Facebook Groups URL https://www.facebook.com/groups/299537854680676/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/3339259039439897/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/2168675336732357/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/249345233031716/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1349240068609980/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1774001196005567/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/469589516552928/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/658736607561491/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/1434924003464098/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/786767328082416/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/2202503126706610/ A Sample of YouTube Videos Promoted on FB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk62QnNf3JI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u70tMZWN0WA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eG8aYE5LXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH7e-8W8twc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i6lUBV-jGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnSm37D8YYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvSekm7F_ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI_oHXxq4sI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQjGbJeplI