Looking to get the most out of your YouTube channel? I’m going to show you how to properly optimize it for SEO in this video blog.

As you may already know, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google, and it’s owned by Google, so it’s really important from an SEO point of view to get as much value out of your YouTube channel as possible. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is that a lot of people seem to be missing their backlinks: Backlinks to the website and then backlink to social sites. If your backlink section here is missing, then this is going to be a great video for you because, one, I’m going to show you how to do it, number two, I’m going to give you some SEO tips. If this is missing, the first thing you’ll want to do is click the gear section here and where it says, “Customize the layout of your channel,” make sure that is turned on. I’ve seen a lot of channels where it’s actually turned off and no information is showing.

YouTube Marketing

Now, if it has been a while and you want to double check that you’re getting as much SEO value out of your YouTube channel as possible, and I’m talking about the channel page itself, not the individual videos, that’s a separate video, you’re going to want to click on this edit button up here in the upper right-hand corner and then click on ‘Edit Links’. This is going to give us the option to add multiple links. One of the things that I recommend doing is your main website. If you’re going to have a landing page, put a landing page if you’re selling a specific product, drive them to that page. For me, I’m just going to send them to my homepage. However, this right here is really important. A lot of times, what I see is people’s business name, in my case Simple Biz Support. However, that’s not what I’ve put here. I’ve actually put Digital Marketing because this is the link that is going to associate to my URL.

Any time you get a backlink, Google is always going to look at what is the text value of that backlink. In this case, it’s Digital Marketing. And so Google is saying, “Okay, this YouTube channel is associating Digital Marketing with this website.” Typically, you do not necessarily want to put your business name in there. Instead, use a keyword-loaded title that is relevant such as Digital Marketing. Number two, add your social media accounts and you can also add other websites. As an example, I have a training video here, or excuse me, a training link that goes to another website that I work on. I’m giving people, “Hey, if you’re interested in training, go check out this webpage.” And you’ll notice that it does not go to the homepage, it goes to the sub page.

The other thing you’ll notice, social media, I’ve listed the primary accounts that I work in. I work in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, those are the three main ones. I am not very active in Instagram or any of the other picture-related social media accounts, and therefore, I have not listed them. Just because you have social media accounts, doesn’t mean you want to list them because if I’m big into Snapchat or Instagram, and I go, “Oh, alright this YouTuber has Snapchat or Instagram,” I go check out your Snapchat account as an example and there’s nothing there… Well, maybe Snapchat’s not the best example because everything disappears. But let’s say it’s Instagram and you really haven’t been updating on a regular basis, then you’re… I’m losing credibility with you at that point.

Only link to accounts that you’re active in. Once you’ve done that, the other thing I recommend doing if you’re targeting a specific country, go ahead and fill that information out and click ‘Done’ and now your page is going to be optimized. While on this page, the other thing that you’re going to want to do is make sure that you have a description that is relevant to the type of clientele that you want to attract and have an email address, so if people want to email you they’ll have all that information. This is going to give you a well thought-out YouTube channel that is going to be properly SEO optimized. Questions, comments, feedback, something you feel I’ve missed? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.