When most people think of social media, Facebook and Twitter immediately come to mind. However, with the growing popularity of video content, your business needs to have a presence on YouTube.

While YouTube is a social media channel, it’s also the second largest search engine in the world. As of 2017, more than 300 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Today’s marketers understand the power that YouTube has in reaching an audience, which is why the space has become so crowded.

If you want to strengthen your search engine optimization strategy, YouTube needs to be part of the equation. Here are several ways to use YouTube to create brand awareness and drive more traffic to your website:

1. Take advantage of YouTube advertising.
In January of this year, Google announced that it would be making some enhancements to AdWords to allow marketers to better reach mobile users. Marketers can now target viewers on YouTube based on Google search history. By enabling marketers to target ads to people that have previously searched for a related product or service, people are more likely to watch the entire YouTube video and click through the ad to the website.

2. Use video keywords to optimize your YouTube search ranking.
While Google already gives YouTube videos an edge in search rankings, you can further improve your search ranking by optimizing your YouTube video descriptions with video keywords. The more you can tell YouTube about your video, the better the social media channel will rank you for your targeted keywords.

3. Earn more video views from targeted online communities.
Earning views of your YouTube videos from your targeted groups in LinkedIn is an effective way to get people to share your content. Since people won’t appreciate you pushing links to your YouTube videos in just any LinkedIn discussion, take the time to search through questions that your online community is asking and share a link to your YouTube video when relevant. This search engine optimization tactic will allow you to deliver value and earn more quality, high-retention views of your YouTube videos.

4. Ask viewers to subscribe to your videos.
The YouTube search algorithm places a lot of weight on the user experience when ranking content. If a viewer chooses to subscribe to your YouTube channel after viewing a video, it demonstrates to YouTube that your videos offer value, thus helping your content rank higher. Be sure to include a call-to-action to ask viewers to subscribe at the end of each video.

In summary, with so much emphasis being placed on video content in 2017, YouTube needs to be part of your search engine optimization strategy. Creating video content that adds value to your audience and using the tactics outlined above will allow you to boost your search ranking, drive more traffic to your website, and earn more conversions.