Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Will Azevedo, founder of VloggerPro.

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If you’re using organic traffic to get more clients, then you shouldn’t forget about the world’s second-largest search engine: YouTube. Just a few months ago, it set a new audience record with 2 billion users in just one month. With this data in mind, it’s not a surprise that 80% of marketers consider their YouTube marketing campaigns a success.

If you own an online business of any kind, creating videos and uploading them to YouTube can offer you many benefits. Besides acquiring new clients from YouTube for free, you can embed your videos in your blog posts to increase the average time on page, which Google considers for rankings.

Let’s take a look at how any online business can use YouTube to gain more customers.

The Equipment You’ll Need

The beauty of YouTube is that users aren’t expecting to watch costly videos that require an expensive camera and a professional production crew. Most people expect decent quality videos that anyone can record nowadays with their smartphone.

In other words, if you have a modern smartphone with a camera that can record in 1080p, then you don’t need to worry about purchasing expensive equipment. Just make sure to record horizontally so your video results in the same 16:9 aspect ratio YouTube uses for its player. Also, try to use your phone’s rear camera, since it can record in higher quality.

However, if you don’t want to use your smartphone because you receive calls constantly and you don’t want to drain the battery, a camera with a flip screen can make recording an easy, separate process. It’s useful to get a small tabletop tripod so you can hold your phone farther away, as well as set it on a table. Also, you might want to invest in a microphone to improve your audio quality, a big improvement for a low cost.

What to Vlog About

If you already have blog posts that are performing well then you can start by transforming those into videos. You should know this content well so it will be easy to record. After doing so, you can embed the video on the relevant blog post to start getting views on your video right away.

But if you’re new to content marketing, the best way to promote yourself is by helping people in your market. Help them solve common problems they may have by creating video tutorials and “how to” videos. If you’re able to help your audience for free, they will trust you and become interested in knowing more about your products and services.

Proven YouTube SEO Practices to Get Views

YouTube SEO has a lot of similarities to Google SEO, but there are also other elements that are unique due to the format of the content.

Since YouTube’s algorithm isn’t completely capable of knowing what you’re talking about in a video, it’s good practice to upload a transcript of the content. You can do this by going to your video library and selecting the video that you want to upload a transcript for. Then, go to the Advanced tab and click on “upload subtitles/CC”:

This will allow YouTube to better understand your content and recommend it to more people that might be interested in your subject.

Also, make sure that you’re including a keyword-rich (but natural-sounding) video description:

Finally, in the tag section add all the keywords that are related to your video. Here you can go all-in with the keywords that are related to your content:

Here you’re encouraged to use all the keywords that will tell the algorithm what your video is about. Just make sure that all the tags you use are relevant to the video.

Another great practice is making your videos at least 6 minutes long. After analyzing 200,000 videos, Little Monster Media found that for channels that get more than 10,000 views per month, the average video length is longer than 6 minutes.

Also, try to encourage people to keep watching until the end. The more time they watch, the more your videos will be recommended by the algorithm and the more views you’ll get.

How to Send YouTube Viewers to your Website

You want to attract subscribers to your channel, but you also want to send those subscribers to your website to turn them into customers. There are 4 main ways you can link between your YouTube channel and your website:

1. On your video as an end screen or card – These are links that can appear on your video. They are the most visible ones, but they require you to have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months.

2. In the video description -You can always add an external link on your video description. You should set this as a default in your channel’s settings, so you don’t have to do it every time you upload a new video.

3. In a pinned comment -Try commenting on your own video and pin your comment. This makes it stick to the top of the comments section for high visibility.

4. In the external links section of your YouTube channel’s portrait image -These links are great because they are set-and-forget. They will appear every time someone enters your YouTube channel.

You can choose to either link directly to your products or services, or to a squeeze page to collect their email address and grow your email list. For example, if you run an eCommerce site, you can offer a discount coupon that they can use on their first purchase in exchange for their email. This is a great way of keeping customers for a long time.

Whatever method you do decide to choose, as long as you’re creating helpful video content for people in your market and following the right YouTube SEO practices, you’ll grow your YouTube audience and expand your online business.

Will Azevedo is the founder of VloggerPro, where he teaches over 100,000 monthly visitors how to grow a YouTube channel from scratch. He has a YouTube channel with close to 10,000 subscribers. He’s also an SEO expert that has been featured next to respectable marketers like Neil Patel and Matthew Woodward.