VidIQ is a clever and useful platform that helps you to optimise your YouTube channel and get great results from your video marketing.

Optimise Your Videos On YouTube With VidIQ

VidIQ , once loaded, sits alongside your YouTube view and gives you up-to-date metrics about any video you view, whether it be yours, a competitor’s or in fact any video you care to choose. The system loads automatically once installed and presents a host of useful information – even if you are using the free version.

Your screen will look something like this:

As you can see, the video appears as normal over towards the left hand side of the screen and over on the right hand side is the VidIQ panel. There is a lot of information presented here so lets take a look at what it all means and how it could be useful to you.

If this were your own video you could use this data to improve the its visibility and performance in YouTube, (and Google) search results. If it was a competitor’s video you could use this data to ensure that your own videos were out-performing those of your competitor’s.

The VidIQ Score is an overall assesment of the video and Helps judge the likelihood of it being promoted in Related Videos, Search, and Recommended Videos on YouTube. Many of the other metrics are obvious, such as total views, views per hour etc. There are however some more in-depth data which can really help you to set your video apart from the competition. Engagement rate is one such example and would typically be used to identify where videos are not pressibg the viewers buttons and getting any kind of reaction such as a “like” etc.

The other data that I find particularly useful is the Tag data which gives you a reassuring tick when you have got it right and a big red cross when you haven’t. I cannot emphasis enough just how important it is to optimise your videos and to get them tagged up correctly. VidIQ lists all the tags you have on the video and flags any errors so that you can correct them. The same is true of titles,  descriptions, social media share counts etc. If a video is to be found on YouTube and on Google’s search engine results then the tags are of major importance, as are the titles – like the meta titles on a web page.

If you are thinking of developing your YouTube channel to become a significant part of your overall marketing strategy, which in most cases I would strongly urge you to do, then VidIQ is pretty much a necessity. The free version is probably all you need for a basic channel but if you intend to use video as a more important part of the overall mix then the reaonably priced paid versions may be more attractive.

If you intend to monetise your YouTube channel, now that Google have upped the ante with regards to channel subscriptions required, (now 1000+) and total minutes viewed per annum, (4000 !) then some kind of video optimisation is essential and VidIQ would handle most of that for you.

For that reason, if no other, I recommend that you take a look at VidIQ and load the free version to give it a trial run as soon as possible. Paid versions start at $7.50 per month and open up more features however I think that most small businesses could do a pretty good job with the free option – here’s the link.