We all know the importance of having a website… or three. Websites can come in handy for finding people and putting together deals. Some examples of websites for investors may include sites that:
-
Find motivated sellers
-
Offer lists of available properties for your buyer’s list
-
Provide info for private lenders to learn about your business
Whatever websites you choose, they won’t do you a bit of good unless people find them. The way people find your site (usually) is through search engines. And the way you make your site visible through search engines is through a process called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
The 2nd Biggest Search Engine in the World
Maybe you have a website gal who knows SEO really well. She will do everything she can to rank you high on Google. But if you just concentrate on Google, you may be missing out on a large section of potential buyers, sellers or investors.
According to many websites (the infographic below is from the website visual.ly), YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine on the planet – surpassing pretty much everything else except Google combined.
Is it time to have a chat with your website gal? Thinking of YouTube as more of a search engine than just a video-sharing site will help you and your websites rank much higher both on YouTube AND on Google.
Tips for Ranking in YouTube
We are assuming you have a basic understanding of how to use YouTube to post videos (or your website provider does). If you don’t, YouTube provides some introductory instructions. And here is a YouTube video tutorial on how to upload a video, for instance.
In this lesson, we want to stick with ways to improve your business and website rankings for YouTube…
We thought we would give you 5 tips to improve your video ranking. These tips might help you rank when you are running your own website, or they can come in handy when discussing your YouTube strategy with your website guy.
1. Use Keywords in Your Videos – Good keywords are just as important in YouTube as they are in Google. You can search for good keywords with keyword tools such as this one to use in your video titles and descriptions. One place people don’t often remember to put keywords is in their video file name. Try naming your file something like ‘sellmyhousePeoria.avi’ instead of ‘video1234.avi’ when you upload it to YouTube. YouTube does consider your file name as it ranks videos.
2. Create a Channel for Yourself and Add Playlists – You should create your own ‘channel’ where you keep all your videos together. People can subscribe to your channel and see all your videos in one place. Provide a link to your channel from your websites, and vice versa. Add a good description of your channel (100-300 words) and add keywords to it. Once you have added 10 similar videos onto your channel, make a playlist out of them.
3. Post Videos that Don’t Suck – One way YouTube ranks your videos is by how long users watch. Do they watch to the end or click off after 5 seconds? Try to provide content-rich videos. There are plenty of short books on how to make good videos. Of course you can also ‘YouTube’ it. Believe it or not, the higher the resolution of your videos (whether it is HD – high-definition, or SD – standard definition, for instance), the better your YouTube ranking. Whenever you can, make the resolution as high as you can.
4. Share Your Videos – YouTube gives more weight in their searches to videos that are liked and shared a lot. Here is a good article on how to share your videos to all the big social media websites. You can do this on your own with YouTube functions. Just copy and paste the link under the ‘Share’ icon to put it on social media. Or copy the HTML code in the ‘Embed’ tab to post the video on a blog or website. It would also be a good idea to ask viewers to ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ the video with their friends, to get even more YouTube SEO juice. You can add the ‘Call to Action’ in your description of the video.
5. Use a Video Transcript to Help You Rank – YouTube provides a ‘Closed Captioning’ feature on their videos so people who may not be so fluent in your language or are hearing impaired, may understand your videos. YouTube will also pull out keywords from the closed captioning to help you rank.
They provide a tutorial on how to upload a transcript of your video. Then YouTube’s speech recognition software automatically matches the voice sound to the transcript for great closed captioning. The transcript can also be put in the video description section. YouTube and Google will look at the description when ranking. Transcripts can really help.
YouTube is becoming more popular every day as more and more people turn to video to learn and be entertained. Real estate investors can learn from YouTube videos as well, whether you are learning how to analyze a potential flip or want to see what it will take to jack up a house if its foundation is failing… YouTube has videos on how to do it all.
There are all kinds of uses for this great website. Ignore it at your peril!
Your Take
How do you use YouTube for marketing? Share below.
Make educational videos – Make videos to help motivated sellers get out of their jams. Explain to buyers what to look for in a flip. Show you care about your customer doing well, and you will have more customers.
Increase Your SEO using YouTube – Learn more about YouTube and incorporate it into your overall marketing strategy. People who can put a face to a name are more likely to do business with you.
YouTube all your issues – Chances are someone’s made a video explaining how to fix your investing problem. Learning from a video is often much cheaper than just paying someone to fix it.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.