Ready for a superbly weird fact?
YouTube ranks second just after Google as a popular search engine. Wild, right?
So if you use YouTube right, you could make tons of money, correct? Ding ding ding!
So, uh… how in the world does one optimize for YouTube?
Well, since this is a topic near and dear to our hearts, you’ll be unsurprised to find that SEO, as usual, is the solution. With the proper SEO tools, you could make a substantial amount of money from uploading videos on YouTube. You’ve gotta optimize your videos, though.
YouTube SEO: Fast Forward
Unless you’re a celebrity or you regularly upload videos, to start, your videos must be high-quality and contain unique content for you to monetize them and generate numerous views. For videos to have a good ranking and appear in response to anyone’s search query, you must have top-tier optimization in place.
Let’s assume you have compelling content. After all, we believe in you, you badass.
You’re willing to share and promote to get views and generate income, but understanding how SEO works for YouTube is still lacking. Since we’re the best and, again, we believe in you, we’re about to provide you with various tips on how to direct organic traffic to your channel via smart SEO for YouTube.
Before you read these tips, understand that YouTube has a specific algorithm regarding how it ranks videos. The amount of time a user watches your video is a critical factor to remember in determining your rank. If someone views the video to the end, you rank better than if they start to watch it and change it after the first few seconds. We already know that you work hard to create captivating videos, so let’s look at a few YouTube SEO tips to get your videos higher up on the food chain.
Using Keywords In The Title Of The Video
The video title is the name of your video. That tells people what said video contains. Having a title that best matches what your video is about makes for happy viewers and is friendly towards YouTube’s algorithm. Consider this your first line of YouTube SEO deployment: title optimizing. There are several strategies to optimize your video’s title.
Both Google and YouTube have this fantastic feature called autocomplete. Um, hell yes. Autocomplete can be an abundantly resourceful tool in deciding which keywords to put in the title of your video.
In other words, if you think people will search for your video on Google, then use Google’s autocomplete feature.
Type a few words into the search bar and several suggestions appear under your query. These surface in response to the use of the keywords because they are the most searched for variants. How does this help you optimize your video’s title? Well, Google knows what’s up. Let’s be super clear on that. Take suggestions from Google and use it as your title. This strategy tends to produce better rankings on Google searches.
If instead your video can be more searched for on YouTube, then instead use their autocomplete feature.
No, really. Take advantage of this feature. It doesn’t just help those searching for your content; it can help those who create it too.
Your Video’s Description
The beginning two to three lines of your description can have a drastic impact on how your video will rank. Aim to have a summary that briefly describes what your video contains. You can again use the autocomplete strategy to include keyword phrases in the description. If the keyword you search matches the first two lines of your description, you’re likely to find yourself ranking higher.
Ultimately, be wise in the description of your videos. Help those keywords appear both there and in the search bar.
Don’t Forget to Name Your Video File
Once you have created and edited your video, you, of course, are ready to upload it to YouTube. While you might not think it a big deal, the name of your video file matters.
If the filename has some random name and number, AKA a jumble of nonsense, make sure you rename the file before you upload it. This tells the search engine what the contents of your video are. Remember, a search engine can’t watch your video (that whole AI thing makes it difficult) and relies on your keywords to indicate what the video contains.
Including keywords in your file name aids in indexing your video appropriately and boosts your rank. Reiterate? Sure: add your target keyword to the file name before you upload your video.
Use YouTube’s Closed Caption (CC) Feature
YouTube also has a closed caption feature that will show your text over the video. That helps the viewer to understand the narration in your video, and it can also translate into various other languages, transcribe the text of what it says into the video, upload the video’s transcript, and more.
YouTube’s new algorithm converts your voice to the transcript automatically, which facilitates the activation of the closed caption. Alternatively, you can write the closed captions yourself if there are no voices in your video.
Using the closed caption feature allows YouTube to index your video into its search engine since your keywords are in there. Writing your transcript into the video description also makes for rich keyword content that is friendly to search engines. In addition to using the closed caption feature, you can take advantage of the ability to create captions for your uploaded videos.
Keyword Research and Tagging
Tags are necessary ways of establishing rank in YouTube searches. Check out these often overlooked tips on how to put tags in your videos:
- List your specific tags first: Writing your main keywords first adds weight in algorithms.
- List general tags: Write your general and matching keywords. You can use YouTube’s Tubebuddy tool to help you find the most appropriate tags for your video. In addition to that, it shows what ranking that particular keyword generates.
- You may want to include common misspellings of your keywords. For example, if your keyword is “marketing” you can put “markeeting” as well.
- Be sure to include a singular and plural form of your keywords and separate them in two separate tags.
Decisively
We know you’re talented and hardworking. Take these tips to heart and get better ranking for your videos.
For more useful tips or assistance in optimizing your YouTube videos and other online platforms, contact Dominate With SEO. We love what we do and we know what we’re doing. Contact us today and let us help you dominate.
