FOR YOUTUBERS
Your Complete YouTube SEO Guide
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Highlights
Table of Contents
Things to consider
When looking at how to rank YouTube videos and perform better with your YouTube SEO, there are a few main things to consider. YouTube itself has cited that audience retention (how long people watch your videos) is one of their main factors in ranking. The longer, the better. They factor in the following:
- The average view duration for all of your videos
- Top videos or channels listed by watch time
- Audience retention data for specific videos, looking at different time frames
- Audience retention for your video when compared with the average for similar videos
They’re also looking at other factors regarding engagement. We’ve talked a little bit about this in our article on how to start a YouTube Channel. These factors include:
- Video comments
- Subscribers (how many subscribe after watching the video)
- Video shares
- Click-through rate
- The likes-to-dislikes ratio
With these factors in mind, let’s take a look at some of the various ways in which we can improve your YouTube SEO.
The magic of keywords
When it comes to learning how to optimize YouTube videos, one of the most important things (that you’ve probably heard about countless times already) is keywords. SEO keywords are quite literally that – the keywords (or phrases) within your web content that enable people to find your content using search engines such as Google and YouTube. When you utilize keywords properly in your YouTube video, it effectively ‘speaks the same language’ as those browsing YouTube and Google, making it easier for viewers to find your video.
Not sure how to come up with keywords? Don’t worry. There are some great YouTube SEO tools that you can use to identify keywords and phrases relevant to your video and competitive within the space you’re competing.
For example, check out TubeBuddy – a free browser extension that integrates directly into YouTube. Their keyword explorer allows you to search for different keywords and find out how competitive they are. It gives you a score determined by search volume, competition and optimization strength, as well as how many results there are for the keyword. It also showcases the most used tags and other closely related keywords and phrases.
Alternatively, there’s Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. It’s another great option that allows you to filter your keyword search by search engine, including YouTube. They have a massive database of over 7 billion keywords, updated with fresh data from 171 countries every month. Using their explorer, you can find out details, including a keyword’s monthly search volume, how many clicks it’s received, related keywords and much more.
Even without all of these handy YouTube SEO tools, you can keep things simple and just start typing in a search item on YouTube. You’ll soon see how the auto-complete suggestions are showcasing some of the most popular search results. Take note. If you install Keywords Everywhere, you’ll find additional information about competition and search volume.
To add keywords to your channel, go to the YouTube Studio, click on Settings and then click on Channel. Add the keywords you want, separated by a comma. If your keyword consists of more than one word, put it in quotation marks (“”).
Rename your video file
Believe it or not, if you’re looking at how to rank YouTube videos, renaming your video file to include the keyword is crucial. Remember, YouTube can’t physically watch your video to find out how relevant it is to the target keyword (imagine the workforce it would take.) What the platform can do is read the file name of your video along with all the code. It sounds silly, but trust us, it really works.
If you’ve created a cinematic drone film in New York, name it just that: ‘Cinematic-drone-film-New-York.MOV’.
Use your keyword in the video title
Sure, this may seem like a no-brainer, right? But you’d be surprised by how many people don’t utilize this simple trick.
When you conduct your YouTube search, what is the first thing you look at? The thumbnail (more on that later) and title. If the title isn’t compelling or long and irrelevant to the search term, people simply won’t click to watch.
Ensure that you optimize your title with the keyword included. It goes without saying that you should make sure it’s a natural fit. A winning title is one that tells the viewer exactly what the video is about in a short, concise manner (ideally no longer than 60 characters, in order to prevent it from being cut off in results pages).
Use keywords in the video tags
This one comes straight from the horse’s mouth. YouTube’s official Creator Academy has suggested using tags that A) let your audience know what the video is about but, more importantly, B) let YouTube know what your video is about. It’s no secret that the platform and its algorithms use the tags to understand the content and context of the video. Consequently, the algorithms then know how to associate your video with other similar videos. Remember, showing up in the suggested videos sidebar is a very useful and significant source of views for your channel!
When it comes to choosing your tags, lead with the keywords that you’ve selected. Also, mix in a few longer phrases. We’ve found that questions perform particularly well. For example, ‘how do I…?’ or ‘where can I…?’
Pay attention to your video description
Optimizing your description is another sure-fire way of helping your video to show up in the suggested videos sidebar next to videos covering similar content to yours. Furthermore, when it comes to figuring out how to rank YouTube videos on Google, it’s been confirmed that tailored video descriptions help attract views coming from Google search results. If you use the search terms in your video description that are searched on Google itself and not just YouTube, you may see some success.
It’s recommended to include your selected keywords or phrases naturally within a few sentences that sum up what the video is about. In other words, treat this as an extended version of your title. You have a bit more room to play with, but you still want to keep it short, concise and to the point.
Keep in mind that YouTube only shows the first 2 or 3 lines of a description. After that, the viewer has to click ‘show more’ if they want to read on. Therefore, make sure those first few words or sentences have the most important part of the description. Use the rest to include key information like links back to your site, links to your other social media sites, brand information, hashtags, etc. But you don’t need to re-write the same info over and over for each new video. Use the video templates to include basic information you may want on each video. Then change each video accordingly as needed.
The number 1 MOST important thing in this article is…
The thumbnail. Pay attention to your thumbnail. Above everything else you read here today, it’s the thumbnail that matters most. That can be a strange concept to get your head around, so here’s why it matters.
Alongside the title and keywords (which we’ve already covered above), the thumbnail is the first thing viewers see in their search results. Within 1 or 2 seconds, they have decided whether they will click and watch your video, just by looking at the thumbnail. Why? Because when someone comes to YouTube, they are in a mindset of viewing videos and visual content. They’re judging with their eyes.
While YouTube does offer you auto-generated thumbnails from the video itself, we highly recommend making a custom image. By uploading a custom thumbnail that represents your video’s content well, attracts people’s attention and heightens intrigue (a keyword or 2 can’t hurt either), you can send a clear message to the viewer about what your video is about and why they should click to watch.
We recommend checking out Canva or Snappa – both great platforms that make it very easy and straightforward to create strong and engaging custom thumbnails.
Categorizing
Another key in how to optimize YouTube videos is to categorize them. Under the ‘Advanced settings’ section when uploading a video, you’ll find that you’re able to categorize your video under things such as ‘Music’, ‘Films and animation’ or ‘People and blogs’.
Categorizing works in the same way as other aspects of optimization, helping to ensure that your YouTube video is grouped with other videos covering the same topic and similar content. When it gets suggested in the sidebar or added to a playlist, you’re bound to gain more exposure.
It’s also well worth looking at the top creators and best performing videos within each category to identify what’s working best for them. For example, you may find similarities in production quality, length of the video and format. Furthermore, there might be easily identifiable patterns emerging from the audiences of these channels.
If you can hone in on what makes top-performing channels in specific categories so successful, you can give your video a better chance of performing well within YouTube SEO
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