By Scott Alden, search engine marketing manager for Ottawa University. Alden has more than 10 years of search engine optimization experience. www.ottawa.edu

Description

The description is where you get to describe what your video is about. Not only is this critical for fans to know what to expect or what they’re seeing, but the words used in the description also are used by YouTube’s search algorithm to determine what videos to display in results of a given search. There are many things to consider when writing descriptions.

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• Be clear and concise. Make sure it’s very black and white as to what you’re showing in the video.

• Put keywords, URL’s, and the most important information about the video first. The beginning of your description serves as the brief description that shows up in the search results. It also is the part of the description that appears before you have to click “more info” to see the rest of it.

• Take as much space as you want to describe what you need to. YouTube offers a huge space to work with… use it!

• Don’t over hype or pitch people. This is a quick way to make viewers click away. People want to see a fun, interesting video; they don’t want a brand to preach at them about a business opportunity. Let your video do the advertising, not your copy-writers in the description field.