Hi there, I have been a social strategist and media director for 5+ years. Behind the scenes, a lot of the strongest white hat SEO tricks/tactics are going to apply. It simply requires time and some research. There are keywords for search/ads and there are video keywords, as well. That's why when you search for a popular song, the video usually populates first. 'How To' videos also dominant first page results.

Make sure your video is the appropriate filename and title! It sounds silly but if it's not clear, you won't get the traffic or the results. You should also make sure the video you're trying to make draws enough traffic on its own to warrant a first page result. You want traffic from Google AND YouTube. Make sure you're looking at the competitor videos, especially if they're older. You may be able to add quality info that is lacking to a conversation in progress. Also, you want/need quality backlinks from other influencers and websites, and/or the ability to drive quality traffic to the video. If you can build up some excitement around a subject before you launch a video, that is going to drive engagement as well.

I hope some of this was helpful. Good luck! Happy to hop on a call if you have further questions.

Cheers,
Kristina

I love this question!
This is a creative solution for you to try out ;)

1. If you have the capabilities create your own SEO page/landing pages with just the right keywords. Have these landing pages 301 redirect to your own original website (assuming you have one).
2. Embed both a video (per landing/SEO page) and picture of eithe related context or screen shot of video.
3. Leverage Pinterest: their platform is a collection of hand picked topics and that is just what Google uses to rank its findings, if your landing page have good SEO and you pin the pin the images to Pinterest with good descriptions (as it would be searched for) your videos could be thus promoted as Pinterest shows high in google searches.
4. Have these landing pages focused as conversion: goal? Watch one or part of the video and go to YouTube for more or the rest. That way of your goal is monetization you capture views on YouTube and not just landing pages.
5. Have content description exactly as someone would search in your website about the video in mind and link it to YouTube.

This SEO tactic will increase both your websites traffic, but also YouTube views. :)

Tweak or create variations (a/b testing) of the landing pages to find the optimal design/wording/video for each targeted audience per landing/conversion page.

Best of luck! If you like my advice please follow me here on Clarity. https://clarity.fm/humbertovalle

I've done some YouTube work for LawTrades that has gotten a decent traction. We're still experimenting with it, but here's what I learned:

First step would be the make sure the video is actually engaging and most users finish watching it. This is important because the YouTube algorithm takes into consideration how many users actually finish watching the video then actually hit the "subscribe" button right after-- when that happens it tells YouTube/Google to rank your video higher.

Next you want to get some quality backlinks to the video, submit to social sites etc.. standard SEO practices.

Lastly, post it to your own blog with a transcript of the video-- you'll also want to be strategic with what words you use in the title, tags, and description.

Hope that helps to get your juices flowing on some YouTube marketing ideas! But at the end of the day each case is different and it really depends on your business, competition, and subject matter for what exactly you should do to rank your videos as high as possible in the shortest period of time -- feel free to give me a call to learn more.

R