YouTube SEO Tips to Rank Your Videos Higher in Search

 

YouTube SEO is a strategy for optimizing channels and videos to improve placement in search results. YouTube is the largest video platform on the internet and is also considered one of the biggest search engines. So it is important to know how to optimize your content for the platform.

It considers numerous criteria, rules and calculations to determine ranking, including factors that are independent of your actions—such as user navigation. However, the more you earn points with the YouTube search algorithm, the more chances you have of reaching the top positions.

So, let’s see some tips for YouTube to favor your channel and your videos in users’ search results.

1.      Conduct Research & Check Competitions 

–    First step, you want to do a little research on competitions and discovered good keywords. When doing research, you want to see if anyone else has made the same video and what kind of titles and thumbnails they use, and most importantly what keywords they use. You just want to make sure, you offering a new or different value to the viewers, to help your video stand out.

 

2.      Advance Keyword Research

 N  Next step, you need to find good Keywords. Good keywords that are heavily searched, but don't have a lot of competition..  For this I recommended to use tube buddy plugin. With tube buddy you use keyword explorer to see how you potential is work such as search volume, competition & Optimization strength. Tube buddy suggest alternate keywords, so you can find even better words. You can use keywords which your competitor are used.

There are two categories of keyword

1.      Targeted Keyword – Are main Keyword for that you are working for.

2.      Related Keyword – other keywords are related keyword they are support to main targeted keyword with variation.

Use your Target keyword is incorporated in beginning of your video. By saying good keywords in your video is actually helping to boost your video SEO. It’s also great if you incorporate related keywords multiple times in video its send signal to algorithm that your video is related to this keywords.

 

3.      Create Clickable Thumbnails 

    Your thumbnails are your potential viewer’s first impression of content. Which make them arguably one of the most important parts of your video’s SEO. If you’re Thumbnails are bad you are not going to get click and if you’re getting clicks, you’re not going to stay ranked in search for long.

Thumbnails images that usually draw viewer attention the most involve action, emotion, suspense or display what the viewer can expect to learn about.

Below are some tips on how you can make clickable thumbnails

a.      A good thumbnail usually consists of two parts number one is eye catching image and number two is text.

b.      Close-up shots of people's faces displaying a lot of emotion tend to get more clicks.

c.       If your video involves sports, travel or pranks you probably want a more action-oriented image.

d.      if you’re doing a how-to or a product review type video, you want your thumbnail to feature the product - food, item or thing your viewer can expect to learn more about your video

So before you even shoot your YouTube Video, start thinking about the thumbnail. Plan some time during your shoot, to specifically shoot a photo for it. This is always going to be more engaging.

Let’s talk about text. Thumbnails are pretty small especially on mobile devices. so best practice is to make sure you use large, easy to read & less is more. So remember to keep your text to as few words as possible.

Tip - Capitalize words in bold fonts are easiest to read on small thumbnails.

4.   Create Video Title 

Your video's title is the next main line of defense when it comes to attracting clicks, but it's vital for ranking and search. If you've already done all your keyword research, then your video's title should actually be very easy. You just want to make sure you grab your main target keyword and use that first in your video's title. By putting your target keyword right up front, you're signaling to YouTube what your video is about and greatly boosting your SEO. Your title should make the viewer want to know more and thus want to watch your video.

You also want to be accurate because misleading viewers by using click bait-y titles that promise something completely different than what your video is actually about can significantly hurt your SEO. By using this, your video will most likely have a major drop off in the first 10 seconds because viewers will quickly realize the video is not what was promised by your title and thus your video will stop ranking for those keywords in search.

Tip - You want to make sure your title is between 20 and 70 characters in length. This is because anything shorter than 20 char might not be descriptive enough for both potential viewers and YouTube algorithm. While anything longer than 70 characters tends to get cut off and thus is harder to read.

5.      Add Video Description

      Your video description is another opportunity to maximize your SEO by including Keywords. Your description should give your viewers details about your video.  YouTube algorithm know what your video is all about so it knows when to serve up your video to potential viewer both in search and suggested videos. So let’s go over some important SEO Tips you can do to help improve your video's description.

YouTube allows you to have a description up to 5,000 characters. Considering your video description is the largest section where you can include text longer. It's best to aim for 150 to 500 words if possible, as the more text you input here. The More information you're giving YouTube about your video.

Try to incorporate as many of your video's keywords in your description as organically as possible. This will help boost your SEO. Description section is not a place to add a long list of keywords. Doing this is actually against the YouTube community guidelines and also makes your description look like garbage.  Put Keywords in Tag section.

Also keep in mind that the beginning of your description will visible in search results, so it's important to really make sure your first few sentences are strong and also include your target keywords.

What YouTube calls below the fold, what YouTube calls below the fold which is the part of your description that becomes visible once viewers click the show more button?  The below the fold is the real meat of your description, but it's also an opportunity to direct traffic by including links. It's always great to include links to product you might be reviewing other social media accounts, affiliate links and more.

And finally, at the bottom of your description, you'll want to take advantage of YouTube's new hostages. I recommend using at least three hash tags and placing them towards the bottom of your video. Again you make sure these are relevant to your video's content. YouTube will display those hostages above the video's title. You can include more than three hash tags in your description, but YouTube will only include up to three hash tags above your title.

Tips: Also keep in mind that if you add over 15 hash tags to your description then YouTube algorithm will actually just ignore all your hash tags completely.             

 

6.      Add Video Subtitle

 I highly recommend getting subtitle for your video before you release.  Once you do, they’ll be there to help boost your SEO. Now while YouTube does auto-generate subtitles for your video. I recommended you upload your own for a couple of reasons.

a.      Automated subtitles don't always get all the words right, and you can end up with some confusing jumbles of words. This negatively affects your video. as it can give the YouTube algorithm the wrong Keywords, and place you in unrelated search results.

b.      Automated subtitles don’t have correct grammar.        

c.       if the audio quality of a video isn't great, the automated subtitles help a viewer to understand what’s going on.

 

7.      Add Cards and End Screens

Cards describes as "preformatted notifications that appear on desktop and mobile which you can set up to promote your brand and other videos on your channel."

You can add up to five cards to a single video, and there are six types:

a.      Channel cards that direct viewers to another channel.

b.      Donation cards to encourage fundraising on behalf of U.S. nonprofit organizations.

c.       Fan funding to ask your viewers to help support the creation of your video content.

d.      Link cards, which direct viewers to an external site, approved crowdfunding platform, or an approved merchandise selling platform.

e.      Poll cards, which pose a question to viewers and allow them to vote for a response.

f.        Video or playlist cards, which link to other YouTube content of this kind.

End Screens

End screens display similar information as cards, but as you may have guessed, they don't display until a video is over, and are a bit more visually detailed in nature. A good example is the overlay with a book image and a visual link to view more on the video below: There are a number of detailed instructions for adding end screens depending on what kind of platform you want to design them for, as well as different types of content allowed for them by YouTube.

 

8. Increase audience engagement

 Always encourage your viewers to interact in some way with your video:

 

a.      like

b.      Comment;

c.       Subscribe to the channel;

d.      Share the video.

All of these factors weigh heavily on YouTube’s rankings, as they indicate whether your video met (or exceeded) users’ expectations.

 

        Bonus Tips how to boost your Channel’s SEO

a.      Channel Name - Your channel name can actually be a great place to fit in a keyword. So it was important to integrate a related keyword in your channel name.

b.      Channel Keywords - You might've thought keywords were only for your videos, but they can be used for your overall channel as well. You can enter in channel keywords from the YouTube Studio, by clicking on setting & selecting the channel tab. Here, you can add as many keywords as you like that are relevant to your channel's content.

c.       Channel about Page- Your about page is a great place to pitch your channel to your viewer. By telling them what value they can expect to get out of your channel. But it's even better if you can fill it with keywords, so take advantage of this section and don't leave it blank.

d.      Playlist Description - Playlist Descriptions are often overlooked, but they are another hidden layer of SEO, where you can include keywords.  To add a Playlist Description, click on the playlist tab in YouTube Studio. Once on your playlist page, click on pencil icon

 

You can combine your SEO and video strategy to help supercharge your marketing in a pretty straightforward and simple way. Doing this will not only improve your video watch time, but also get your customers’ attention, and help you further down the line with things like YouTube remarketing. Here are six steps to improve your YouTube SEO to drive more traffic and video views.