Dental videos are an important part of a Internet dental marketing strategy, and YouTube is not only one of the most popular search engines, but it is also the most popular site for publishing videos.

If you are a dental practice that is using YouTube to spread the word about your dental practice, are you setting them up so that they perform the way that you need them to?

Here are 5 dental video marketing tips for optimizing your dental videos on YouTube for search —

1. Plan your video title.
The video title can be up to 100 characters long, so it’s important to put your dental practice name at the beginning (think about how you want your videos to show up in Google search when someone searches for you) followed by your keyword phrase. Something like, “City Name XYZ Dental Practice Dental Implant Process“ or you could move around your geo-targeted words “XYZ Dental Practice City Name Dental Implant Process.”

YouTube has a keyword research tool at ads.youtube.com/keyword_tool where you can research the phrases you want to use.

2. Transcribe your videos and add keywords.
Be sure to replace YouTube’s video transcription with your own text file. It’s simple to upload and you can make sure that your transcription actually matches what you are saying in the video, but you can add keyword phrases like your geo-targeted dental practice location to further help search engines find your content online.

3. Think carefully about tags.
Think about 7 keywords to use as tags to best describe your video. Tags associate videos with other videos on YouTube with the same tag which creates the “related video” section. What associated videos would you like to appear with on YouTube? As you can see tags are more than just describing what your content is about, it also determines what videos you will be connected with on YouTube.

4. Utilize the description area.
Use the description area as a blog post about the video. Put your web address at the very beginning so that it shows first – right under your video. Make sure to list a contact email and phone number. Too many YouTube videos under-utilize the description area and don’t use it as an opportunity to discuss the video and what you have to offer.

5. Share your videos.
Be sure to share your videos on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and in your dental practice newsletters. YouTube factors the number of times your dental practice videos have been viewed within a certain time-frame. The more your videos are viewed, the higher the video ranks on YouTube, which brings with it the attention of mainstream media and can land your dental videos on YouTube’s top videos list.

These simple techniques can make all the difference in who sees and shares your YouTube videos. Utilizing dental videos is another way to fill up the first page of search with content relevant to your dental practice instead of random websites that simply happen to use the same keywords.

The Internet Dental Alliance provides informational videos that dentists can optionally include in their dental website New Patient Portals. These professional videos educate current and prospective patients on dental topics like cosmetic dentistry, tooth whitening, braces, dental implants, and more. Click here to see how videos personalize dental websites and increase the conversion rate of visitors to appointment requests.