YouTube SEO Case Study: A 55% Increase in YOY YouTube Traffic

On the 21^st of February 2017, we optimized a promotional YouTube video for our client in the education industry. Our aim was to increase the video’s visibility in YouTube as well as increase YouTube traffic. As a result of our efforts, we saw a 54.54% year-on-year increase in YouTube traffic as well as improvements in YouTube rankings.

Some Background Info

Our client’s particular niche in the education sector is seasonal, with demand reaching its peak twice a year in October and April, as shown in the graph below. Although we did see an initial 16% month-on-month increase in YouTube traffic and improvements in YouTube and Google search results, a fair comparison needs to consider seasonal trends.

Context

The main metric we’ve focused on for this case study is ‘Traffic Sources>YouTube’ to discount any traffic from external sources, seeing as the video was also embedded elsewhere online.

Here’s What We Did:

We optimized the video title to increase the click-through-rate and we front-loaded the video’s keywords
We provided an overview of what the company does in the description box and we included a full video transcript
We enabled comments with approval to make the video appear ‘friendlier’ and more engaging
We added relevant video tags
We optimized the meta description (YouTube displays the first 125 characters of the description box)
We made the hyperlinks in the description box clickable
We added a channel header image that included the web address to encourage people to visit the site
We added a channel description and link to the website homepage under the ‘links’ section
We changed the video category from ‘People and Blogs’ to ‘Education’
We changed the country from Afghanistan to the UK

Year-on-Year Comparison: a 54.54% Increase YouTube Search Traffic

21/02/2016 – 21/03/2016 Compared to 21/02/2017 – 21/03/2017

Results After 1 Month – a 16% Increase in YouTube Search Traffic

21/01/2017 – 21/02/2017 Compared to 21/02/2017 – 21/03/2017

Over that one-month period, we also saw an increase in the video’s Google and YouTube search rankings for our targetted keyphrases:

Google Rankings Summary

YouTube Rankings Summary

Conclusions

Given that our client’s industry is seasonal, the fairest way to analyse our improvements is through a year-on-year comparison. As a result of our efforts, we saw a 54.54% year-on-year increase in YouTube traffic as well as improvements in YouTube rankings. After the first month of implementing our changes, we saw a 16% month-on-month increase in YouTube traffic and improvements in YouTube and Google search results

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