Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded on YouTube daily. Getting your video ranked on YouTube is not easy. YouTube SEO: The Ultimate Guide brings you everything you need to know about YouTube SEO.
YouTube is different from any other online platform where SEO can be applied. There are hundreds of videos having the same content. And still, there are some YouTube channels and creators that always get their videos ranked. So how exactly do they do that?
YouTube SEO is the complete process of optimizing a YouTube video or a YouTube channel to make the video rank higher on YouTube’s search results.
YouTube is not only about creating and uploading videos. It requires a lot more than just simple videos content to get highly ranked on YouTube.
So, to make sure that your content gets the right amount of audience and high ranking, let’s get started with the YouTub SEO: The Ultimate Guide.
YouTube SEO: How YouTube Search Works
Did you know that in October 2006, Google, the big fish of the internet, bought YouTube for a massive $1.65 billion? Since then, the trend has changed quite a bit.
No video on YouTube can go viral, if Google’s algorithm can’t understand it. Simple.
One of the biggest benefit online marketers get from YouTube SEO is that they get indexing on Google search as well.
So, to get you video ranked high on YouTube, a lot of traditional SEO methods are also needed to be applied on your videos. A set of well optimized content gives a boost to your overall ranking.
As you might know, search engine A.I., or a bot cannot watch the video. It simply relies on all the additional text to index your video.
The data, or text associated with your video include the title, the description, tags and a few others fields. These are the places where the actual YouTube SEO has to take place.
YouTube SEO: Facts, Stats and Numbers
The internet is packed with numbers and stats of YouTube. Here we present you some of the most shcoking
YouTube has over 1.9 billion monthly logged in users worldwide.
YouTube is the second largest social media network and is the second most visited website on the internet, right after Google.
People watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube each day, more than Netflix and Facebook combined.
The 2017 YouTube sensation, Ryan ToysReview, a six year old kid made $11,000,000 in 2017 from YouTube.
Around half of the viewership of YouTube comes from mobile devices.
YouTube SEO: Major SEO Factors
Here, we highlight some of the major factor and elements responsible for YouTube SEO. These elements and their optimization decides whether your video will get ranked higher or not.
Optimizing these is the only control you have on the video as a publisher. Make the most of it!
YouTube Video Title
One of the most important factors in YouTube SEO, the title of the video is the very first space where you can put your keywords in. It directly effects a lot of SEO factors, such as the click-through rate of the video, the keywords placement in the video and the YSPR, YouTube Search Result Page.
Also, this is the very name of your video, so it better be strategic and relevant. The thing you need to do here is that you should always put the keyword of the video content in the title. It should be relevant to the video and should not contain any useless words.
YouTube Video Transcription
Many people don’t know but YouTube automatically transcribes videos.
YouTube’s A.I. automatically transcribes your videos and uses that data to rank your video in YouTube Search Results Pages.
Adding a Closed Caption [ CC ] attribute added to your video can help boost your rankings on YouTube. You can add the must have keywords in the transcribe script and indirectly increase your click-through rate.
Just simply transcribe your video for each and every word being said in the video and upload it with your video as a text file.
Optimized YouTube video transcribtion has produced some of the best results in the industry.
YouTube Video Tag
Video tags are basically added to any video so as to add relevant keywords, and to better describe your video.
This is the place where you can add those extra keywords in the video. Make sure the tags are relevant to the video and describe your video pretty briefly.
Add at lest 10 tags, all of which should talk about the video and its objective only. Make sure to add keywords in the tags. Also note that tags are case sensitive, so if your video content is talking about Laptop, you have to add the tags “Laptop” and “Laptops” both.
YouTube Video Description
A description is the text that you see under the video. This is the one place where you need to describe what your video is all about.
You should write a description of about 500 words. As its purpose is to increase your overall click-through rate, the description should contain the major relevant keywords of the video.
People search queries. So make sure your information is relevant to the content of the video and is informative.
YouTube Video Length
Having a video that is too long or is too short will negatively impact your ranking. Make sure you hit the right sweet spot.
The videos having the highest number of views, on an average have a 4-6 minutes long duration.
Users are always looking for richly informative and useful content. No one is going to waste his or her time on your useless introductions, worthless stories, and irrelevant hyperlinks.
YouTube SEO: YouTube Keyword Research
Keywords and SEO go hand in hand. And the same applies to YouTube SEO. As mentioned above, there are a lot of different fields along with YouTube videos, where you need to add keywords into.
These keywords, as you might know, help you get higher ranking in YouTube search page rankings. It’s important that you should have only the keywords which are relevant to your video and overall content.
How to Research Keywords for YouTube?
Use the YouTube search suggest feature to research the best keywords for YouTube. Just type in a few words related to your video.
Then, YouTube will itself suggest a list of suggestions related to that keyword. These are the keywords you are searching for.
These suggestions are actually what people actually type in YouTube search bar while looking for a video. These suggestions are popular and are trending. And YouTube itself is suggesting you them, so need to worry about the authenticity and popularity.
Another Popular method of searching keywords for SEO is by copying the keywords from the most popular video of the niche. This method is being used by a lot of emerging creator and has produced a lot of positive results.
Just search the most popular video in your niche and look for its keywords. Just look for some of the most commonly used words in the title, description, tags and captions.
These keywords are tried & tested, will definitely help you rank higher than your current position.
How to Choose the Best Keywords for YouTube SEO?
Now here comes a very important part. Now that you know “How” to do the research for keywords, choosing the best keyword is also an art.
Your sole intention here should be to look for the best low-competition keyword.
These are those keywords which are not too popular, but are not too unpopular as well. The amount of competitions here is just perfect.
And if your channel does not have a high number of subscribers, then choosing the low-competition keyword is very important.
So how exactly do you do that? It’s pretty simple.
Just enter the keyword in the YouTube search and press the search button. Now focus on “About …… result“. This number is the amount of competition the keyword is having on YouTube.
You need to pick those keywords in your video that have the right amount of competition on YouTube. Not too high and not too low. Less competition means higher ranking. And too low number of results means that the keyword is not at all useful. Hitting the right spot is the secret.
YouTube SEO: Best YouTube SEO Tips
Till now we have covered a lot of important tips for YouTube SEO, such as
Adding Keywords in Title, Description, Closed Caption, Transcript and Tags
Doing keyword research and using keywords
Manual Video Transcript uploading
Video Length
Now lets have a look at the some other important YouTube SEO tips, that will surely help you rank higher in YouTube searches.
Compelling Thumbnail
You can choose which frame of your video to display as the video thumbnail, or the cover for your video. Of course you can also upload your own image as well.
A good thumbnail image will help you drastically increase your click through rate. Set the ratio to 16:9 aspect ratio for the best quality.
Using Playlist
Creating a short playlist, approximately of four to six videos, can help you boost user engagement on YouTube. It makes sharing and promoting your similar videos on YouTube much easier.
Just make sure all the videos in the playlist are sub categorized in the same category, and are relevant to each other.
Using Links
Make sure to add links of your other videos, or of your YouTube channel in the video description. You can also give links to your social media handles. Providing links in the description is considered one of the best practices in the videos offering some kind of tutorial, product description, guide or something like that.
Consistency is Important
YouTube is growing day by day. The competition is get tougher each new day. If you are not uploading new and unique videos consistently, you will surely lose the race.
Uploading consistent content is important as it is the key in building a rich subscriber base and long term viewership on YouTube.
YouTube SEO is not difficult. It just needs consistency and a good planned strategy. Take your time out and plan out your proceedings. Make sure you don’t miss out any tip mentioned above.
And don’t forget to check out Video Content Marketing Strategy: The How To Guide to know the indepth analysis of video content marketing.
