Step By Step Guide to Creating a Company YouTube Channel - Part Six - Associated Website

In our final installment of this blog series about setting up your company YouTube channel, we are going to walk through some of the advanced options for your YouTube page, explain how they work, and teach you some best practices on how your company should set them up.

The settings we will be working from this week are located in Video Manager > Channel Settings > Advanced.

Channel Keywords

Filling out your channel keywords will give your channel more weight in search, because it is telling YouTube what your channel is about, and gives YouTube confidence in recommending your content to searchers.

how to use youtube channel keywords

However, channel keywords are just one piece of the puzzle when YouTube is deciding where to rank your channel in search. If you only fill out your channel keywords and don't do any of the other steps in this guide, you will not see significant results. All of the settings and information fields that YouTube provides work together to give the search engine a picture of what your channel is and what content to recommend.

Here are a few tips for using channel keywords: 

• Limit yourself to 5-15 channel keywords.

• Think about your content strategy and what videos you are planning on featuring on your channel. For example, if you're a gym and you plan on uploading videos containing advice on fitness routines, you may choose a keyword like 'fitness tips.'

• Do research to find the best keywords. Go to YouTube's home page, and type in the first word of the keyword you are thinking about using. The auto-fill options will appear to show you what other people are searching for. In the previous example we chose 'fitness tips' as our keyword, but based on this research of auto fill options, we may be better off using 'fitness motivation' or 'fitness workout' as channel keywords.

• Make sure your channel keywords are also in your About description. YouTube is looking for consistency with your explanations of what your channel is about. If the same keywords are showing up in multiple places on your YouTube channel, that looks good to YouTube and they feel confident recommending your videos in search results.

• When uploading new videos to your YouTube channel, quickly reference your channel keywords and add any that are relevant to that video’s tags. Don’t add any that are not relevant, because like we have said before the bounce rate of your video affects it’s location in search. If the video is not what the viewer is looking for, they will stop watching early on in the video and this will negatively affect your ranking in YouTube search.

Associated Website

This is one of the most valuable features in your YouTube channel. The associated website feature allows you to add a clickable link to your company website as an annotation on any of your videos. What this means is, viewers don’t have to visit your channel or read the description of the video to find a link to your site, they can see it right where they are watching  - your video.

Using the associated website feature strategically will significantly increase the amount of traffic driven from your YouTube channel to your website.

how to use the youtube associated website feature

Setup of this feature actually started back in Part Four of our blog series, where we taught you how to verify your YouTube channel. If you don’t see this feature in the Advanced settings on your channel, it’s because you have not yet verified. Go back and read the Part Four blog for instructions on how to verify your channel.

If your channel is verified and in good standing, you will see the Associated Website feature in your advanced settings. Your next step is to go to Google Webmaster Tools and add your company website there if you have not already. To do this, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/, sign in, click ‘Add a Site’ and follow the directions to verify that you own the site.

google webmaster tools to set up youtube associated website

Once you have added your site to Webmaster tools, go back to the advanced settings in YouTube and type the URL of your company website in the Associated Website field and click ‘Add.’

If you set up webmaster tools with the same Google account as your YouTube channel, this should complete the process. However is someone else has set up webmaster tools, or it’s on a different Google account, you will need to request verification.

When you get a green light, you have successfully added your company website and you are ready to start adding it to videos.

how to drive traffic to your website using youtube associated website feature

Once you have added an associated website, you can add it as a link on your videos through the Annotations feature. We will teach you more about how to use that feature in a later blog post. To see how the associated website feature works, watch or skip to the end of the video below and click our logo.

Here are a couple tips for using an Associated Website:

• Since the link opens up in a new window, this is one that you can actually include at the beginning of your videos. Just keep in mind that when the link is clicked, the video will pause and the viewer will be taken to the new window. If they close out YouTube and don’t finish the rest of the video, it will count against your video’s view time. So if you’re going to have it at the beginning of the video, make sure the video is compelling enough to bring the viewer back to watch the rest.

• Use the associated website feature strategically and have fun with it! Work with your video production company to determine where you are going to add the link. For example, in the video you could ask the viewer to click on a certain object or person to take them to your website. Just remember that for now, annotation links only work when viewing from a desktop browser, and not a tablet or smartphone.

If you have been with us since Part One  congratulations on completing your company YouTube channel setup! Now all you need to fill it with great video content. To get started creating compelling marketing videos for your YouTube channel, contact us today.

If your YouTube presence has improved significantly as a result of this blog series, we would love to hear your story over on our Facebook page.

About Talking Head StudioTalking Head Studio is an Orlando video production company offering full-scale video production services to local businesses and national clients alike.