YouTube backlinks are mostly nofollow, but that doesn’t mean they’re useless, i’ve used YouTube effectively as part of a broader SEO strategy, mainly for brand exposure, referral traffic, and link stacking.
When you post a video, the description field is a perfect place to drop:
- A homepage link
- Blog post links
- Links to your social channels or free tools
I had a tutorial on “How to Start a Shopify Store” that got 40K views in 3 months, from the video description, I linked to a blog article that expanded on the steps, that article now ranks in the top 5 for two long-tail keywords, and the page gets backlinks from people referencing it.
So while the YouTube link itself doesn’t pass link juice, it drives traffic, reduces bounce rates, and indirectly generates organic backlinks, embed your videos in your blog posts, google loves multimedia content and tends to favor pages that combine text + video.
I wouldn’t rely on YouTube alone for link building, but as part of a content marketing strategy, it’s very powerful.
