I spend about an hour every day reading blogs about online marketing and search engine optimisation. With an area like this which evolves and changes so quickly it’s the only way to stay up to date with new ways to promote websites online.
It’s funny though.. With such a wealth of how to guides and general advice on what to do/avoid, watching this video on YouTube this morning made me laugh.
Most guides to optimisaing videos for YouTube will tell you things like:
- use a descriptive and keyword rich title for your video
- add a useful description and make sure that is keyword rich too
- add relevant tags
The list could go on for a fair bit more.. but the point is. This video has followed no such guide like this.. and most of the really popular videos on youtube dont either. Just looking at this example:
The video title is “2525835985255_44597.mp4” – like one of the comments on the video says “I am so glad I searched 2525835985255_44597.mp4 – Now my life is complete.”
The description reads “Not sure” – that really adds context and relevance!
The tags that have been used are “ducks”, “unsure”, “Why”, and “WTF” – they aren’t even ducks.. they’re geese.
At the moment, it’s had over 110,000 views in 4 days. That is a lot more than any of the videos I’ve ever put on YouTube. I think it shows: there is a stronger correlation between quality, funny or interesting content and more views than there is between optimising content and views. Optimising content will lead to more views, but the key effort should be put in before or during the video production process, not afterwards.
