Get a guide to YouTube SEO and learn how to optimise your videos for better visibility, more views, and higher rankings in search results.
Ieva Treiliha
YouTube is by far the largest video platform on the internet today. Furthermore, it is the second largest search engine online – yes! Right after Google, but ahead of Bing, Yandex and Baidu. That is why, as a business owner, it is important to have a presence on the platform.
You can read more about YouTube in numbers here and more about other search engines and their market share here. If these facts do not convince you of the huge advertising potential on YouTube, I am not sure what will – perhaps the rest of this blog post!
Here, I will dive into YouTube SEO and how you can get started with SEO on YouTube.
You may have tried filming and uploading a few videos to YouTube, but not seen much traffic to your videos. It can be quite demotivating to invest time and energy in video production, only to find it does not attract either your existing or potential customers. There are several things you can do to get more views on YouTube.
The first and most important thing you should consider is whether your video is interesting and relevant for your target audience?
In fact, this is something you should have considered already in the idea generation process. Will your video be interesting for your audience? Does your video provide value to your visitors? Does the content of the video match what the title promises?
If you can answer “YES!” to all the above, your video is ready for publishing. But even then, there are more things to pay attention to, to ensure the optimal number of views and the best opportunities for higher ranking on YouTube. Read on to learn more about the slightly more technical aspects you should optimise for to get more views on YouTube.
To rank highly on YouTube and Google, you need to find out which search phrases are relevant and realistic for you to be found for.
That is why you should do a good old-fashioned keyword analysis. A thorough keyword analysis will help you identify opportunities on YouTube and find the keywords that are generally searched for on the platform, the keywords your target audience uses, and those with the greatest potential in your industry.
Keyword analysis for YouTube is done almost in the same way as a standard keyword analysis. When searching for YouTube search terms, choose phrases for which YouTube results already rank on Google.
There are search terms where YouTube results do not appear at the top of Google’s SERP, but there are specific niches where YouTube results typically appear at the top of Google’s search results:
By choosing search phrases that already have YouTube results in Google’s SERP, you can find niches and ideas for how to get your video to rank on YouTube and also on Google.
There are various tools that can help you with your YouTube keyword analysis. For example – Keywordtool.io, which is a paid service if you want access to different insights such as monthly search volume, trends, CPC and competition.
If you are not ready to invest in tools yet, consider some of these free options:
One thing to remember when doing a YouTube keyword analysis is that the keywords you find using these free tools should have at least 300 searches per month. If they do, they will also have a fair number of searches on YouTube.
To rank on YouTube with your content, it is crucial that your video contains what your customers, potential customers and followers expect from your content. The content should match your brand identity and your “voice” on the other platforms you use, while also delivering what the title and description promise.
If you create a video titled “How to sand your floor nicely” and use the video to try to sell your products, instead of giving concrete tips, your viewers will be disappointed and are likely to click away from your video and not watch your future content.
To rank organically on YouTube, one of the most crucial parameters is video retention. Video retention shows how much of your video people have watched before they click away – the more of your video people watch, the better! 🙂
Here are a few tips for creating a good video:
Be authentic to your brand identity. You have exciting products that people need – show them! Even if you do not find your products that exciting yourself, be creative and show your customers why they should choose your products or services. Whether it is through innovation, price, quality, functionality or something completely different.
With video, you can tell many stories in many different ways! Hold a brainstorming session with your colleagues to generate ideas for how you can showcase your products and services to customers in an engaging way. Focus more on the value the content provides your customers and less on direct sales. The sales will come! If customers see the value in your core narrative, they will see the value in your product.
Before you start recording the video, write a scenario for everything you want to convey in the video and how it will unfold. It is important to outline the process and have a clear idea of what you want to say and how.
Editing may be the part of the process that takes the most time, but be patient and remember that editing is what separates average content from quality content.
Good editing will help you tell exactly what you want in a way that suits your brand, your products and how you communicate with your customers. Cut out anything that does not reflect what you want to say. Videos on YouTube should be short and to the point.
Keep it short and concise – most people will not spend more than a few minutes watching your content, so it is important to try to get your message across as quickly as possible – without compromising on quality.
It will be difficult to get a poor video to rank on YouTube and Google. It is all about high production quality and a strong core story to get people to engage with your content.
Be critical of the final result before publishing. Video production and editing can be a long and costly process, so it is important that you are 100% satisfied with the end result. Before you publish the video on YouTube, evaluate:
If you can answer “YES!” to all the above, your video is ready to publish!
When your video is ready to upload, the most important part of YouTube SEO begins. You need to upload your video to YouTube and fill in ALL the information YouTube asks for. The more you can complete, the better for SEO.
When you upload an image to your website, it is good practice to include your focus keyword in the image file name. The same applies when uploading a video to YouTube – the focus keyword should appear in the file name.
The video title should not be longer than 70 characters (including spaces). YouTube allows up to 100 characters in titles, but anything over 70 characters will typically be truncated in the search results.
To maximise the full CTA potential of your video titles, keep them under 70 characters, include your focus keyword in the title and combine the focus keyword with other relevant terms. For example: “What is an SSL Certificate? – Explained in under 1 min! │WeMarket”.
The description under your video plays a crucial role in YouTube SEO. When you write blog articles, Google crawls your articles to assess the quality and relevance of the content to the keyword. Similarly, Google can crawl YouTube video descriptions to assess their quality and relevance to the topic. The more information you include in your video descriptions, the better your chances of ranking on YouTube and Google. You actually have up to 5,000 characters to write the perfect YouTube description.
Here is an example of a good and thorough video description for a beauty care video. The description includes a brief overview of the video content, CTA, links to the products used in the video, affiliate links to other products in the same category and links to social channels:
Although tags on YouTube videos are less significant than, for example, the title or description, including relevant tags when uploading your video can also help you rank better.
Essentially, tags are the same as relevant keywords relating to the video’s content or topic. By completing these tags, you will be more visible in YouTube’s side menu under “related videos”.
Both your video and description should include a CTA or Call To Action. A call to action can be anything – from “read more”, “follow us on Facebook” to a referral to another video.
But since we are talking about ranking on YouTube, the most relevant CTAs for good ranking on YouTube are encouraging your viewers to click the “like” button on your video, share it on social media, comment below or subscribe to your YouTube channel.
YouTube uses signals from these activities to assess the quality and relevance of videos. This means that if users actively engage with your content, it will rank better on YouTube.
As mentioned previously, YouTube uses some specific factors to measure the quality and relevance of videos on their platform. The ones you should pay the most attention to are:
Today, there are many different forms of advertising and even more channels where we can promote our content. The internet is filled with all kinds of content, and you can find information on any topic you like. However, this also means we have to grab people’s attention quickly and effectively before they move on to other resources. That is why video is a great form of advertising – video content is easier to digest than long blog posts (haha).
What distinguishes YouTube from Google is the way they classify quality content. YouTube’s evaluation of content quality depends on the quality of descriptions and user engagement with the content.
As YouTube is the second largest search engine today, it is important that your content ranks highly on YouTube.
I hope you have picked up some good takeaways from this post which can help improve your content on YouTube and therefore also your search engine rankings. Good luck!
If you are still a bit unsure about YouTube advertising, you can always contact us. We will help you find a solution that suits you and your business. You can contact us by filling in our contact form or by calling us on 71 99 34 74!
Otherwise, feel free to read about the various services we offer in addition to YouTube advertising:
If you would like to get started with YouTube advertising or another form of digital advertising, check out our YouTube channel where we have created a playlist: Marketing Quickfix – perfect for those who want to learn more about different disciplines within digital marketing. You can also find other interesting topics on our blog.
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