YouTube is among the most popular platforms for online video viewing. Marketers should look to leverage it by constantly uploading new product-oriented videos, catchy commercials and other interesting clips to it. This is necessary to access the general public that forms its vast audience base. Optimizing for YouTube will help popularize the brand on the internet and engage your prospects in a proactive manner.

In essence, it is necessary to constantly upload videos to YouTube to be indexed into Google. The flip side of it, of course, is that a searcher will directly be taken to YouTube, thus not fulfilling your goal of higher ranking. However, this is perfectly fine if your goal is pure branding. Here are some useful tips to ensure successful branding through optimization of key YouTube page elements:

• Higher ranking on YouTube is a combination of factors like social outreach (for flags, subscribers, ratings, total views and shares), branded/ user channel design plus organic linking.  Optimizing for YouTube enhances visibility and invariably increases the chances of your videos being found on a top search engine like Google for specific keywords and being shared with other users, subsequently.
• To best leverage the site for keyword optimization, important elements of each video page hosted on it need to be oriented for your target keywords. Some of the most effective customizable areas of a branded YouTube page are branded channel information, branding box, and titles tags.
• The META description tag gives you scope to best describe your brand within the permissible character constraint in user-friendly and attention-grabbing manner, prompting visitors to click the link. Search engines index this tag, so it must contain targeting keywords. It should be periodically reassessed to see whether it’s having a desired impact on click-through rates.
• Title tags describe the page and assume the role of the clickable link in SERPs that denote target keywords used by the visitors in bold. It is very critical to click-through conversion. Search engines ‘read and index’ first part of the title tag hence marketers should put prime key terms right in the beginning itself, pushing down all branding elements.
• YouTube’s branding box allows to specify promotional text and to include relevant links. Within it, the title and the main body text can be of up to 100 characters and 4,500 characters, respectively, including the implementation of links plus specific HTML markup. This box not only passes a succinct informational or marketing message but also improves target keyword density.
• Constant monitoring of videos lets marketers manage their campaigns reactively. YouTube’s ‘content identification & management system’ makes it possible to track all your branded content across the platform. The service offers several handy features, including one that helps check ownership of branded products and distribution of content containing any infringement pertaining to exclusive intellectual property.