Arguably the single-largest multimedia content platform in the world, YouTube serves up more than one billion video views to its audience every single day, and a majority of internet users report having a YouTube account that is actively used. Because of this dominance, it is not hard to understand why so many seek to build content and marketing solutions on this social media platform.

Yet YouTube isn’t just great for building a following through the platform itself: it can also be an optimal solution for improving broader SEO efforts. If your brand is attempting to reach more people, then YouTube videos can be a great solution – but those same videos can also reach others outside of YouTube.

Let’s examine how YouTube can be utilized to improve your overall SEO efforts.

Target Relevant Keywords

Your YouTube presence isn’t naturally suited for the vast majority of web traffic to the platform. With that being said, what audiences are best-suited for targeting?

A wide variety of keyword research tools with focus on YouTube performance exist. The best course of action initially is to utilize these platforms to get an idea of which keywords and phrases will be ideal for your channel’s focus. This won’t only help you determine which niches are best targeted on YouTube, but which are also ideal for reaching audiences through standard search engine results.

Analyze the Competition

There is a very good chance that your target audience will already be getting blasted with YouTube content from competitors. What are they doing to reach these individuals? The best course of action when you’re wanting to start pinging links to your own YouTube offerings is to look at what they’re doing.

Start by identifying your competitors on YouTube. From there, figure out which videos are their best performers. What keywords and topics are they focused on? This can often shed light on potential areas of influence where you can best connect with a target audience. While you won’t want to compete directly with these individuals initially, it can provide some guidance on how best to maximize both SEO and YouTube performance.

Focus on Untapped Audiences

As alluded to prior, competing directly with big names on YouTube isn’t a wise course of action. As such, after evaluating their success, it is worth investigating aligned search terms and niches where you can actually break into the broader industry.

Further research with keyword utilities can help discover low-volume, high-opportunity search niches on YouTube and other search engines. These untapped audiences can provide a foothold into both sets of platforms for you to emerge as a SEO champion later.

Target Results with Existing Videos

For search engines like Google, some search results already have videos displayed as the top result. These are perhaps the best search niches to target with YouTube creations: by pinging links from YouTube that are optimized for these search results, the likelihood of not only improving rankings – but being the number one results – increases dramatically.

YouTube videos can provide improvements in SEO across a variety of categories, but it it these niches and search terms where the greatest direct benefit can occur.

YouTube can be a strong ally in the fight for better SEO. Consider these optimization tips in order to build a strong presence both in search results and on YouTube!