Video SEO is hard. But here are some good tips for VPN affiliates.
Much like my brief embrace of backlinks, there was also a time when I was convinced that posting VPN videos on YouTube would bring me riches.
This was mostly the result of buying the book Googleopoly at an airport and reading it front to back on a long flight. By the time I landed, I was 100% convinced that video was the missing key to online riches!
But video is difficult.
Introduction to Video SEO
It is not easy to make high-quality videos. Ultimately, I was proud of the handful of videos I published, but they took a lot of time and, again, didn't produce much in the way of conversions or SEO boost.
I think it doesn't hurt that Google sees I have some videos, but I haven’t done any additional ones since my initial surge.
Part of the problem for a VPN affiliate is that people find the videos on YouTube and it is hard to “unstick” the visitor from YouTube's main display and get them to click on any affiliate links in your video’s Description section let alone those on your website.
You really only have that Description section immediately under the YouTube video display to do that and most people won’t bite.
I used some nifty techniques, such as making sure my website was mentioned prominently and early in the description, so it was always visible.
In the end, I don't think they generated enough or maybe even any commissions to justify the time it took for me to produce the videos.
Perhaps a regular drum beat of weekly videos would do the trick, but who has time for that? Not time-starved, solopreneur VPN bloggers, that’s for sure. Not unless you are extremely gifted and can do everything in one take without the video coming across as lame or cheesy. That is no easy feat.
Tips for Posting VPN Videos to YouTube
If you do decide to produce videos for YouTube, keep these things in mind:
Title
YouTube displays only 32 characters of the title when most “scrunched up”.
Description
You can have up to a whopping 5,000 words in the description for your video.
However, the Description will initially display only the first 150 characters, so put your call to action (e.g., a link back to your site) right at the start.
I also recommend you use a chunky, eye-catching character such as ►.
Use Pretty Links to shorten the URL to save precious characters and to enable you to track the number of clicks being sent to your website via the video.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
https://www.cogipas.com/vpn-video ► Do you really need a VPN? Find out what a VPN is, how it works and the top 10 cool things you can use a VPN for.
To see the remainder of the up to 5,000-word Description, YouTube visitors will have to select ‘Show More’. The vast majority won’t, but it’s still good to enter a long description full of relevant keywords.
Also use some white space in the video Description, including empty lines, bullet lists and indents. I recommend you first use a word processor such as Word or Google Docs and then paste the text into YouTube.
Wrap Up
Think long and hard before you embrace posting videos on YouTube as an SEO strategy for your VPN website.
Videos take time and don't generate a lot of direct traffic back to your website.
Organic search is a much better strategy for solopreneur VPN bloggers. But if you do post videos, take into account the tips above to get the most out of this approach.