If you are looking to get exposure for B2B (business to business) phrases in the search engines, then you may find that using YouTube is a great way to get started.

This is especially true if your current SEO efforts are either just getting started or your website is in the early stages of recovering from a Google penalty.

Since Google owns YouTube, you may be able to bypass some of the “sandbox” time, Panda/Penguin penalties or other situations which may have caused a drop in your rankings.

 

 

Local B2B Search Engine Optimization Using YouTube

This is applicable whether you represent the company wanting to be found for local B2B phrases or if you are a marketer hired by the company to help.

Just be sure that the B2B phrases you choose:

• have some sort of demand nationally
  • you want search engine exposure in major metropolitan areas or for state-wide searches
• are indicative of a possible qualified prospect
• the audience would not mind seeing a video instead of an actual page with words

Regarding B2B keyword research, especially at the local level, you will want to rank for as many possible phrases that are relevant to the core product or service.

For example, if you are a marketer working on behalf of a commercial carpet cleaning company (this is deemed to be B2B because of the “commercial” intent of the searcher) then the searcher likely will want to see that your company serves the searcher’s particular area.

This also will work for smaller cities where the business population is growing.

You may want to rank for suburbs where you know that there are new office developments, medical buildings, and other commercial properties starting to get tenants.

The reason why is that people will be searching for B2B services because they may not be familiar with the businesses that serve their new location(s).

 

WHAT TYPE OF VIDEO SHOULD BE PRODUCED

A valid YouTube video could show before/after examples of your work, commentary on how cleanliness keeps morale up, how carpets being cleaned prevents losing customers, or any other topic which conveys that the cleaning company offers legitimate value.

Customer testimonials can be integrated into any YouTube video so long as you have legal permission from the customer.

Yes, even a “music slide show” video can be the video of choice when it adds value such as showing a “walk through” or “step by step” example of a process.  One example of a music slide show working in the Fort Worth Texas area is the phrase “parking lot repair Fort Worth”.

A YouTube “walk through” slide video shows up in the first few organic results.

For more advanced B2B services, you will want to showcase the “wow factor” your company offers.  For example, I am helping a friend who offers “experiential marketing” and “disruptive marketing” across the country.

His agency is based in Dallas, so he would like to rank well for the “Dallas” versions of the phrases relevat to those two topics.

Since Dallas is a growing business community, especially for major corporations, he wants to get in front of those directors of marketing & advertising who could find his skills beneficial.

We ultimately chose to use a video from a recent project where his firm helped the Perot Museum and the new donors for a specific wing of the museum.

Those donors are tied to the ownership of the Kansas City Chiefs NFL team, and their star running back was chosen to be featured as part of the interactive museum exhibit.

Even though his firm likes using Vimeo, for what his team says is quality-related reasons, we took a truncated video and optimized it for YouTube.

At the time of this posting if you were to type in the local B2B phrase, “disruptive marketing agency Dallas”, you would see the thumbnail to his company’s YouTube video (thumbnail is the NFL running back).

Over time, I want his video also to rank for other in-demand B2B local keywords such as:

• marketing agency Dallas
• interactive marketing Dallas
• experiential marketing agency Dallas
• digital marketing agency Dallas
• (same as above except for “Fort Worth”, “Texas” and the nearby cities with good business growth and a population base of over 100,000 people)

The question is what to do with a video once you have one that conveys “value”.  The first question is what is deemed to be of “value”?  Here are some thoughts which might help convert YouTube viewer traffic into a possible B2B customer/client:

• Intrigue
• Humor (risky to use, but it works well if done artfully for one’s prospective customers)
• Proving a fact and/or refuting a myth
• Testimonials
  • Try to offer more in your video than just these because otherwise it can be perceived as too “sales-oriented” by your prospects
• Introduction of new products
• Elicit a business-minded searcher’s problem(s) and then show how your company’s product/service will reduce/eliminate that problem
• Recordings of a lecture or interview which are useful to the prospective B2B client/customer.  Make sure that the inforation is conveyed in a way where it is easy to listen to the person
  • Do what you can to prevent a “bland” or “boring” tone!
• Making your prospects aware of new cutting-edge technologies or legal happenings
• Any other quality way to convey value to someone watching a YouTube video

From there, you can optimize the video (like on-page SEO) with at least these actions:

• add the keyword into the actual filename of the video
• add no more than 1-2 keyword phrases in the video title
• have a good, lengthy, value-added description.  You can use an article that you might have had saved for article marketing purposes, and you can configure the article to read appropriately for a YouTube video description
• Be sure that your keyword AND lots of related phrases (synonyms, antonyms, acronyms, industry jargon, etc.) are included in the description
  • Just stay relevant to the video and you should be fine!
• Tags –> try to keep the number under 10.  Occasionally you will go over, but keep the tags under 10 if you can
• Under the “Advanced Settings”, set all of your parameters; and then include the specific location of the company
  • Think of this as a “citation” that Google will use to match up with your Google Plus, old Google Places, Yelp, BBB and other local high-authority web pages which have your address & phone number

There are other on-page (“on-video”) actions such as altering the transcript, using the various annotations, etc.

The ones I listed should put you ahead of at least 80% (if not more) for most of the local SEO competition (in YouTube) for B2B phrases.

 

WHY DO THIS?

Remember that if you want to rank for lots of local business-to-business keyword phrases that you always can make more videos!  YouTube/Google also may reward you for posting lots of videos over time on your optimized YouTube channel.  This is because YouTube wants returning visitors to your channel so it can show YouTube-sponsored videos and/or ads.

Much like a local TV station, you want to have more than just 1-2 shows playing on “loop”.

The same applies to YouTube, so consider drip-feeding at least one video a month (ideally more frequently) for a minimum of six months.  Should your videos be free from complaints, lots of “thumbs down” or other negative social signals then you are proving to YouTube/Google that you are willing to be a contributor to the community.

Doing so will build your authority within the YouTube community and, over time, Google may reward you for those consistent and quality contributions.  Remember that you also can post your video on other outlets; but YouTube posting is one of (if not the) best methods to give your video exposure in the search engines.

From there, the next question is how does the YouTube video get traffic to it?

Here are several ways to get quality views to your video from local IP addresses.  I mention the last one in case Google one day is able to track “purchased views” then they could discount (or even penalize) any video optimized for local phrases that does have a large number of local views/likes/subscribes/etc.

 

FREE WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

• Rank well in YouTube for the desired keyword phrase(s) and related ones
• Share with your local e-mail list (if appropriate)
• Share on your Facebook and Twitter pages, assuming that most followers are in the local area
• Pinning the video on Pinterest and sharing on Instagram
• Linking to the video in any free press release service you use, targeting the local area
• Getting the YouTube video to rank well in Google for the desired keyword(s).  When this happens you likely will be # 1 or # 2 in YouTube and somewhere on the first page of Google for the same keyword at the same time.
• Share on your personal (and company) LinkedIn pages
• Share on other relevant social media profiles
• Share on relevant local business forums
• Obviously, embed on your website/blog in case you currently are getting local traffic to it through other means
• If appropriate, share the link on various local classified ad sites (including your local area’s Craigslist section)
• Add the link to the YouTube URL in your e-mail signature and any outbound marketing already going to prospective customers.  You can use a QR code in lieu of a long, ugly URL if appropriate
• Other local free traffic to your website (e.g. links in the blog comments section on relevant local blogs, especially when you craft a well-written manual response)

 

 

PAID WAYS TO GET TRAFFIC TO YOUTUBE VIDEOS

• Use the various methods of buying traffic within YouTube.  One way is to target your company’s competitors’ videos
• Geo-targeted Facebook paid advertising (post “boosting”).  Be very precise on your interests-targeting here, such as industry trade publications and those who are members of a national industry association, who live within X miles of your desired geographic area
• Create optimized landing pages on the company website with the YouTube video embedded plus any sort of call-to-action.  Use Google AdWords search network for this.  You also can use the Display Network if you know what you are doing.  You can re-target here
• Yahoo and Bing PPC services
• Other search engine PPC services (not imperative)
• Paid ads on relevant geo-targeted business forums and/or ads on trade association forums, but emphasizing the local area you want
• Purchase an expiring domain with relevance (and either industry-specific or geo-specific “authority”) to make your own “mini site”.  Embed the video and have a call to action for the person to contact your company
• If appropriate, and if offered locally, consider having your local chamber of commerce send out the link to your video on any monthly/quarterly e-mail newsletters sent to all chamber members
  • Same as above for local business networking
• Paid advertising within Linkedin
  • Be smart and careful with this AND be smart with your targeting!
  • LinkedIn ads can get expensive quickly, so be sure to monitor and track your spending and clicks very carefully

 

TRACKING

You can track the success much like paid advertising:

• Look the number of views, clicks to the website, subscribers and other data provided to you by YouTube’s Insights for your channel
• Track with Google Analytics or a similar service
• Use a third-party automated lead management software which can track how many visit came directly from YouTube.  Such a service should be able to do much more, but this is important
• Use link shortener URL’s
• Include a tracking phone number, ideally a local prefix number
• Opt-ins or other tracking from the specific landing page (e.g. “Pretty Link Lite” plugin for WordPress or similar)
• Any YouTube video/channel likes, subscribes, shares, re-Tweets, and other tracked activity of social sharing

Doing all of this for local B2B phrases very well may help your company (or client) notice an increase in overall quality inbound traffic.

Hopefully you will notice that the extra traffic converts to sales or other methods to monetize first-time visitors, especially if you are offering significant amounts of value in the video and/or the page to which you send traffic from YouTube.

If you have questions then you are welcome to contact me.

Please help me to spread the word about this blog post by sharing it on your favorite Social platform.

Feel free to comment below, if you have questions. I’ll be more than happy to help, in any way I can.