When you take on a new client and begin to tackle the prospect of optimizing their website YouTube may not seem to be an immediately obvious tool, or at least not in the way that I am about to illustrate. But don’t discount the video site too soon, it can actually be a surprisingly useful aid for a whole variety of reasons.
Relying on your client to provide all their own keywords and phrases can be risky because there is every chance that something might slip their mind or that, being so close to the subject matter, a particular phrase which they use every day may simply not occur to them as relevant.
The obvious place to start a search for keywords is the Google Adwords Keyword Locato but even this isn’t going to bring up the more obscure references.
A YouTube video and the tags and comments that surround it is the perfect place to find anything that your collective efforts might have missed.
The Video
The YouTube clip itself is a handy tool. Watch it first and foremost to swat up on the subject matter – are there any selling points to the product that your client hasn’t even considered? For example, if you’re optimizing a website for the manufacturer of a ski-jacket, perhaps your client has sold their product for 30 years on its practicality and durability, without having noticed that, this season, the style has slipped back into vogue. A quick YouTube search for ‘ski-jacket’ might teach you that Prada has just launched a similar style and give you a whole new strand of keywords to work with.
Also listen to any words or phrases that are repeated. Particularly with technical and medical fields there will be a whole lot of associated language and this is a good place for you to hear it in context, which will give you a clearer picture of what the market might search for.
Tags and Comments
It is incredibly easy to upload a video to YouTube, which means that everyone – the manufacturer, the reseller, the consumer, the expert in the field etc etc – has an equally high chance of having uploaded one, whether or not they have any technical knowledge.
Aside from getting to watch all of these different perspectives on a topic, you also get to read their descriptions. As they uploaded the video, google will have prompted them to describe it with a title, with tags and with an explanatory description – all of which is great research data.
Also read the comments that viewers have added below the video. It is another new perspective and more often than not can provide you with the most valuable information. People with a genuine interest in the subject often begin conversations here and can provide some great insight.
It Almost Goes Without Saying but…
Any potential keywords and phrases that you find in this way are absolutely going to require more research before you optimize a website for them – site full of user generated content are not going to provide you with only the most accurate information, as you well know – but after a little trawl through YouTube you can head back to Google Adwords Keyword Locator armed with an awful lot to input. You can also take a more thorough knowledge of the topic back to your client, begin some new points of discussion and almost definitely look slightly impressive!
