YouTube is a powerhouse that keeps growing, allowing video posters to reach more and more purchasing consumers. In 2015, time spent on YouTube went up 74% and the amount of people watching YouTube on their TV more than doubled. That means people watching YouTube videos aren’t just seeing snippets on their phones ‰- instead, cord-cutters are using YouTube as their main way to watch TV.

Over half of travelers watch videos to choose destinations and accommodations. Plus, videos are a great way to increase search traffic to your website. With people spending more time watching online videos, it’s important to be able to have your videos found and reach the right audience. When you’re ready to start using online video to market your hotel, you need to follow a few steps to SEO-optimize YouTube videos to be found in search. Here are some video SEO basics.

How to SEO-Optimize YouTube Videos

Search for Keywords

Whether you’re searching on Google or YouTube, videos will show in search that are relevant to what people are searching for. You want to find which keywords Google is displaying videos for in their main search results. For example, when we search for a Charlotte hotel walkthrough, a video pops up. But, when we type “walk through,” instead the Google hotels results appear.

With this information in mind, we know that when we title our YouTube video, we should use “walkthrough” as a keyword, not “walk through.” This way, you’ll be able to receive traffic both from YouTube searches and Google search results.

Use Keywords on YouTube

Now that you have your keywords in mind, use them consistently throughout your upload. Here are ways to improve SEO for YouTube videos with keywords:

1. Rename your video file with keywords before uploading to YouTube (known as the “raw file”)
2. Create your title using the keyword
3. Include the keyword in your video description
4. Add tags with variations of your keyword phrase

Write Long Descriptions

YouTube uses all the information you can provide to index and rank your video. For this reason, writing a long description will provide YouTube with more keywords for your video to rank for.

As an example, if you write in the description that the video is a walkthrough of a hotel in Charlotte, and that it shows the fitness room, pool, and breakfast area, then your video will be in the running to appear in searches like “hotel with pool Charlotte,” even though “pool” isn’t the main keyword being optimizing for.

It’s suggested that descriptions run about 200 words ‰- almost a short blog post. Write in the description everything that you cover in the video. At the end, you can also include a link back to your website.

With this new search engine optimization knowledge in mind, you’re on your way to having your next video rank on Google and YouTube using video marketing optimization.