When was the last time you took an in-depth look at your top key phrases on YouTube? For example, if you’re in the fishing supply business, have you ever gone to YouTube.com and searched for phrases like “fishing supplies”?
What you find WILL surprise you.
Case in point, if you search on Google for “fishing supplies“, you can see there are 1,330,000 results. So that means there are 1,330,000 other listings you are competing for for that term.
Now, go do the same search on YouTube for “fishing supplies“. There are ONLY 1,010 results.
What you are thinking is right. “Wow, there is hardly any competition for my #1 key phrase in the world of online video!” So let’s think about this for a moment. Which listing do you think is going to be easier to get higher on? Of course, it’s the YouTube listing. Why is that?
It’s because online video is brand new, and hardly anyone is producing high-quality videos yet. Smell the opportunity? You should.
Eventually, a thing called Google Universal Search will kick into action. That means that videos will begin to be integrated directly into the regular Google search results. Therefore, if you have a high-quality video that ranks well in YouTube, chances are your video be injected into the regular Google search results.
The bottom line is… online video is the new frontier in search. Your competitors have yet to get on board with making videos, but that won’t last long.
Jim, you’ve illustrated the relative search competition question so compellingly here. For any businesses scared to make an online video or concerned with the general quality of YouTube, your argument should be the first one made. The “I can’t be on YouTube because it’s childish” argument is like saying “I can’t be on the Internet because there is so much trash on it.” It’s easy for most reasonable people to see how the good aspects outweigh the bad, isn’t it?
Very interesting! It’s a very good opportunity for companies that haven’t got into SEO a whole lot yet due to the competitiveness of their industry. Most companies probably don’t realize that by creating/submitting/optimizing videos for YouTube, they could gain additional search traffic, and ultimately leads and/or sales.
I agree. Companies should at least sign-up and create a few channels. This will be very beneficial when Google Universal Search comes into play and videos appear in regular search results.