Your brand deserves a great story, and these video SEO tips will help you to make your message matter.

While YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world, if you want your story to be heard, you’ve got to master video SEO tricks. But you may be surprised to know that YouTube may not be the best place for your video. Or, perhaps a better way to say it, there’s more than just YouTube, if you’re interested in the best video SEO.

Once you’ve crafted your great video content, you still have to ensure it gets found! So, here are the next steps to follow.

1. For Great Video SEO, put your message on Vimeo.com – It may seem counter-intuitive since Google owns YouTube, but videos on Vimeo.com are actually ranked higher in searches, in terms of video SEO. While the audience for Vimeo is smaller than YouTube, the SEO rankings are based on the relevance of the content. Google will often rank Vimeo.com above YouTube, even with similar keyword content. So, what’s the takeaway from this tip? Get yourself a Vimeo channel and post your content on Vimeo! And, if you don’t believe in the power of video SEO juice from Vimeo, make sure you include a link to your YouTube channel and post your content in multiple locations. While many will disparage duplicate content from an SEO perspective, video SEO is multiplied when your content is posted on multiple sites. Make sure Vimeo.com is part of your marketing mix for great video SEO.
2. Get smart about your keywords and title, if you want great video SEO – Do you use Google’s keyword search tool to determine the name of your video? How about for the keywords you include in the video’s description? Using the keyword search tool from Google adwords will give you great insight into your video SEO. It’s counter-intuitive, but you want to be general (not specific) in order to be found. If you want your video to attract eyeballs, use the Google search tool to identify where the eyeballs are. In other words, use terms that are highly searched and include those words in both the title and the description for your video.
3. Great video SEO starts with great links – Make sure that your description field includes at least one link. It’s a great idea to include a link to your website, your blog, or other content that’s meaningful (for example, if you have a Brand Yourself page for your personal brand, or an About.me page, or even a LinkedIn profile, you can include these links and improve your video SEO. Want to get really fancy? Then include a link to your vimeo.com page, and do the same from inside Vimeo.

Video SEO is What Your Brand Deserves

With these three ideas, you can create greater backlinks, identify additional resources for your viewers, and generate the kind of traffic that gets your message noticed. If you’ve taken the time to create some good video content, you deserve to have that content viewed. Use tools like YouTube and Vimeo to make sure your message gets out there.

And remember, there’s no substitute for great content. Video SEO is about understanding how optimization works, but great content is an even bigger boost to your brand.

About the Author:

Chris Westfall is the national elevator pitch champion, and the author of The NEW Elevator Pitch. His YouTube channel has nearly 700,000 video views and over 550 subscribers. His website is westfallonline.com and his YouTube channel is /westfallonline. His video production business is Your Online Video, Inc. and he regularly consults with high-growth businesses on effective video production.

Jeff is a writer who lives outside of Nashville with his wife, son, and pup. He works for Adventures in Missions and blogs at goinswriter.com.

When you started your blog in 2010, you had some burning questions about making a living as a writer that you were trying to answer for yourself. (To see Jeff’s questions, click here.) With the recent publication and success of Wrecked, it looks like you found the answers. I’d love it if you could share part of that journey with my readers because it’s a trip they’d all like to take too!

1. What were the 3 most significant things you did to grow your blog’s readership?

Great question. First, I wrote content I could be proud of. This sounds like a given, but most bloggers don’t do this. They settle for “B” content, because they’re busy or restless or lazy, and they don’t think anyone will notice. But people notice. I made the decision to always write “A” content for my blog.

Second, and this is an important complement to the first thing, is I ship. I give myself regular deadlines and I meet them, no matter what. At first, this was blogging every day and since has scaled down a bit. The point, though, isn’t the frequency. It’s the discipline you learn when you have a deadline. So important (especially if you want to get published). It also gives your audience the sense that you’re going somewhere, and it builds anticipation.

Third, I wrote for other websites and blogs. I’m a big proponent of guest posting. I started small — with friends and other bloggers who were peers. But then as I built momentum, I started befriending bigger bloggers and leveraging those relationships to help them and then eventually publish content on their websites. This helped me reach a broader audience.

2. As a writer, which social media networks do you find to be the most useful, and why?

I’m not very innovative with this. I stick to what works. First, let me say that blogging is a form of social media, and the best network you can build is your own. Try to get as many people to your platform and get permission (i.e. subscriptions) to keep communicating with them.

Beyond that, I use Twitter and Facebook mostly. I like Twitter more, but Facebook offers better results in terms of driving traffic.

3. Many of my readers are self-published authors. I know you have some eBooks (The Writer’s Manifesto and You Are a Writer) as well as Wrecked, which was published by Moody Publishers. When would you recommend a writer find a traditional publisher versus self-publishing?

A traditional publisher will help you carry a message to more people (usually). They will also help you create a better product (most of the time). Self-publishing usually lets you make more money, but it’s limited to your own sphere of influence. I would recommend going with a traditional publisher if you have a message the world needs to hear and it’s really not about the money. That was the case for Wrecked. Plus, self-publishing helped me not need to make much money off of it. This is what we call the “hybrid publishing” model, and I’m a proponent of it. Self-publish to make money (and build a tribe), and traditionally publish to establish yourself and reach more people.

4. What does it really take to get published?

Really, all it takes is perseverance. If you work hard enough (and don’t completely suck at writing), you’ll build a tribe, find an audience for your words, and get your message out. And frankly, it doesn’t even take that. I mean, you could self-publish an eBook on Amazon tomorrow, if you wanted.

So I guess all it takes is the desire and the willingness to do it. Good luck.

Today, I was “manning the shop” all alone when an older couple came in for a wine tasting. Being an early Friday afternoon, the place was quiet, and I was able to simply enjoy engaging in conversation with them. Over the course of the next hour, we shared stories about our lives back and forth with each other.

As the husband went out to the car to load their purchases, the wife stayed a talked awhile longer. She confided how much she valued the time I had spent with them. Her daughter had just remarried, her grandson had gone to college and her granddaughter was starting a new job at a local hospital. They have been a close-knit family, living on the same property for years, in and out of each other’s homes on a daily basis, and now this grandmother was feeling “an empty nest, times three!” The sorrow and grief in her eyes was heart-wrenching, and I was grateful that we’d had that time alone to just enjoy one another’s company.

As I was thinking back on that experience this evening, it occurred to me that so few of us really know how to listen. There was a moment when this woman was leaving the winery where our eyes connected, no more words were spoken, but she knew that she had been heard, and her thoughts and feelings mattered to someone else.

In social media, where we don’t have the opportunity to make eye contact, and listening can echo back like an empty chasm if you don’t make your presence known, how do we let someone know we’re listening?

I had another instance earlier this week where I’d seen someone’s name flit through my Twitter feed whom I hadn’t spoken with in a long time. So, I reached out and sent her a tweet, asking her how she was doing. This led to a private (DM) conversation where she shared that Life had been rough of late.

The best way that I could show I was listening was to actively participate in the conversation, but always keeping the focus on her. It’s so easy to want to relate our own experiences with a topic. But sometimes a person just needs to be heard. When using social media, oftentimes it’s feedback (or the much-bantered word “engagement”) that let’s us know anyone is even listening.

Here are some tips on how to demonstrate active listening in social media:

• When someone needs to talk, let the conversation be about whatever it is they need to talk about.
• In real life, eye contact and touch show that we’re engaged. Online, substitute a private message or directed contact to let the person know you are there, you are listening and you care.
• Don’t steer the conversation to yourself. Instead, be genuinely interested in what the other person is saying.  If you can’t be genuinely interested, perhaps it’s not the right person to be deepening a relationship with.

These tips aren’t for every conversation you have online. But it’s important people know you care about more than the product or service you are selling, and that you’re a real human being capable of engaging, feeling and being authentic.

Online friendships can remain at a superficial level for a long time. But when we take the opportunity to deepen those connections, perhaps even bringing them offline, it’s amazing what can happen. What tips do you have for connecting with individuals in real and authentic ways?

The fancy footwork confused me. “Don’t make a fool of yourself,” I thought. “Just watch.”

Reading my mind, an older woman dropped out of the dance, sat down beside me, and said, “If you join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you do not, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance?”

And, she said she had a secret for me. She whispered, “If you do not dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying.”

This statement got me thinking… How many times are we thought to be fools because we let our fears of appearing foolish keep us from trying something new? Not only that, how often do we miss out on finding something we actually love doing because we’re too afraid to even try it?

In February of this year, I met the owner of a local business development center at a networking event. He was setting up a social media seminar series, and asked me if I would be willing to speak about the relevance of social media to business owners. While I had given presentations at work in the past, it was always to people I knew. The idea of speaking in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know scared the heck out of me! But I’ve been prayerfully building my business by stepping through the doors that open for me, so I said “yes” even though I had reservations about it.

That was one of the best decisions I’d made since starting my business. Since then, I’ve spoken an average of 3 times per month at various locations to different groups; all of which is free publicity for my business. Each engagement has led to new clients and prospects and, if nothing else, it’s ensured that people know what I do and recognize me the next time we run into one another somewhere. As you know, the sales process requires multiple “touches” before a prospect is ready to buy from you, and this has definitely been a means of shortening that process.

So, what have you been sitting on the sidelines avoiding? What’s outside of your comfort zone that you probably should be doing? What are you afraid to try that might actually be a blessing to you or your business? If you feel inclined, leave a comment below and share what it is. Then, screw up your courage, realize that you’re going to feel foolish whether you face your challenge or not, and determine to make people think well of you for trying! And while you’re getting started, consider this quote from VaroTango. “There are no wrong moves in tango, only new ones.”