YouTube SEO: How to Rank Your Videos in Search | Step-by-Step Guide 2024
If you wonder why your video doesn't get enough
views and likes, why YouTube search doesn’t show it to a bigger audience, then probably
your video lacks optimization. No worries! We can fix it together. Intro Hey everyone! It’s Mary from SEO PowerSuite here, and
in this video, I’m gonna share with you the entire process of optimizing videos for
YouTube, from A to Z, as well as little-known hacks and strategies to make your video visible
and rank high in search results.
Let’s go! And the best way to make your video rank high
on YouTube is to make it match a relevant query. How do we do that? The answer is pretty obvious – keyword research. You’ve heard a lot about keywords, but this
is actually the ground for any search engine and YouTube is no exception. Keywords that you use in titles, descriptions,
tags, keywords that you pronounce during the video help YouTube understand what your video is about.
And the better it understands what your video
is about, the higher you’ll rank. Here is what YouTube says: Like Google’s search engine, search on YouTube
strives to surface the most relevant results according to keyword queries. There are several ways on how to find video
keyword ideas. First. Use YouTube Search Suggestions. Why are these queries good? Because these are what people actually type
when searching for a video. And if YouTube suggests them to you, then
they are certainly very popular. You can also pick the most popular video that
appears in the results… …and check out the keywords this video has
in its title, description, and tags. There are two Google Chrome extensions that
I strongly recommend to install and that are going to help you a lot with keyword research.
They are: Tubebuddy and VidIQ. When you add TubeBuddy in Chrome and connect
it with your YouTube channel, just run a search and look at the sidebar. Here you’ll see a keyword score showing
search volume, search per month, how competitive the keyword is, what tags are used most. Tubebuddy tells you whether it’s a good
idea to target a specific keyword, or it’s better to pick something else if this particular
keyword is too hard to rank for. With VidIQ the installation process looks
similar. Add it to Chrome, log in and see the top keyword
opportunities, competitors, related queries, tags used in the video by a channel, and more. When you click a video both Tubebuddy and
VidIQ show you video analytics which is super convenient. You can see the video summary, what SEO practices
were used in this video, as well as video tags. All this data might help you in the future
when you’ll optimize your videos. Now the previous methods are good except for
one thing. You do spend a lot of time checking each of
your keywords manually. To speed up the process you can use a keyword
tool to check all the video keywords at once.
If you use the Rank Tracker keyword tool,
go to the Keyword Research module, choose Autocomplete Tools, select YouTube Autocomplete,
and type your keyword phrases just as you would on YouTube. The software will show you the list of the
most popular autocomplete options. The key point is that you can check as many
keywords as you need at once, thus saving yourself much time. The software automatically saves the results
in the table, so you don’t need to write down the results the way you would with the
YouTube Search Suggest. Rank Tracker also collects Google’s latest
search stats, letting you compare the keywords in terms of monthly search volume, competition,
and difficulty, and decide on their potential.
When you've already come up with a list of
keyword ideas and need to compare them to pick the most popular one, it is a good idea
to use Google Trends. To launch its YouTube search feature, open
Google Trends > enter query > click search > select Web search > and choose YouTube search. Here you can compare one keyword or keyword
phrase with another one. See which keyword is used more frequently
in a specific region. And see popular related queries. Top queries and Rising ones. Awesome! So you’ve done with keyword research, you
know which keywords you want to rank for, what should we do next? Optimizing metadata! The video metadata is all the textual and
visual information that describes the video to users and search engines. Titles, thumbnails, descriptions, tags, captions,
timestamps – all these are called metadata. And we need to optimize every element of our
video to make it visible, rank high in search results and appear for relevant queries. Let’s start with a title. This small text line is extremely important,
as it helps viewers decide if this video is something they were looking for and wanna
watch.
A well-optimized title has not only SEO value
but can drastically increase your click-through rate. Here is what YouTube says: Well-written titles can be the difference
between someone watching and sharing your video, or scrolling right past it. So…the idea is clear – the titles should
be catchy, accurately represent what’s in the content and match viewers’ expectations. It’s proven that videos with exact keyword
match in the title do rank better.
But where to place this keyword or keyword
phrase? I would recommend including it at the very
beginning of your title. For example, I'm looking for a BLT sandwich
recipe, and as you see, most of the videos put “BLT” or “BLT sandwich” at the
beginning of the title. To increase your clicks and make your titles
more readable, don’t be afraid to use colons or dashes after you write your target keyword. Just like here. Also, if you include some words that catch
people’s eyes in the brackets at the end of a title, your clicks can skyrocket as well.
By catchy words, I mean 2021, best, fast!,
new research, case study, original recipe, and stuff like that. Let’s move to a thumbnail. A thumbnail image is like a movie poster or
a book cover, and it is usually the first thing viewers see when they find a video. A well-designed thumbnail attracts the attention
of users and encourages them to click your video. Of course you can choose a thumbnail from
the three options YouTube automatically generates, but according to their statistics 90% of the best-performing videos on YouTube
have custom thumbnails. So, what should you do to make your thumbnail
outperform other videos? Here’s what YouTube suggests: Think about your thumbnail even before you
shoot your video so that you’ve got several options when you upload.
Make sure that your thumbnail looks good both
on mobile and desktop. Make as high resolution of a thumbnail as
possible. And follow the most important technical characteristics. Now these were the most common practices. What else do you need to know? Look at these thumbnails. They are good because the pictures include
a person, which makes it more “alive” and virant compared to thumbnails that place
food only. The text takes up about 30% of the picture,
which makes the image more informative but doesn’t overwhelm it. And it looks professionally made. And speaking about professionally made thumbnails! Let’s have a look at these images. I think you see the difference.
In the first three examples, bloggers took
auto generated thumbnails. These pictures have low quality and there
is no text at all. The videos may be super cool, but I don’t
want to click them. Now, let’s see the second group. I really like all three thumbnails, and I’m
not the only one. Just see the number of views. They are compelling, eye-catching, contain
some text, and people want to click them. So I strongly recommend to spend some time
and create such a thumbnail that people want to click. Another hack, that may be helpful to you sounds
like this: Avoid YouTube colors in your thumbnail. What do I mean here? The YouTube brand colors are red, black, and white.
But it’s better not to use them as a background
of your thumbnail, especially white… because such thumbnails mingle with the YouTube
background. Instead, use colors that contrast with the
YouTube color palette. They are gray, green, blue, purple, pink, orange, yellow. Ideally, all your thumbnails should look consistent. To make your videos stand out favorably from
others, you can think about background colors or thumbnail styles that could be associated
with you or your brand, and use it in all your video thumbnails. Moving on! Video descriptions. People and YouTube algorithms read descriptions
to understand what your video is all about. But what I see very often, is that creators
tend to write one or two sentences in their description section, or insert a couple
of links, or even skip this part at all.
If you wanna be the first in search results,
you need to get the most out of the description field. And here is how to do it. Make sure to put the most important keywords
closer to the beginning of your description. Remember that two or three first lines of
your video description will show up in the video search results, so do start on a high
note. Finally, don’t forget to add some related
keywords around your description a few times. As I’ve already told you, YouTube reads
descriptions to understand the content of your video. No description, no high rankings. So the more details you write in the description,
the better. That doesn’t mean that you should write
a novel under your video, but if you use like 100-200 words and outline the most important
parts of your video, that would be great and more than enough.
Under the Show more button of the description,
you can hide all of your marketing information, like links to your website, social media,
timestamps, and playlists of related videos you’ve created. Now, what are we gonna do next? Optimize tags! Somebody says that tags are not really important
these days. But I wouldn’t recommend neglecting them. Tags make a difference. They can help you rank higher in search and
suggestions. And, it’s another way to tell the algorithm
what your video is about. And we want to use every. single. opportunity. Okay! How many tags do you need to include in one
video? Where to find the most useful tags for your
topic or niche? First. Use tools like Tubebuddy or VidIQ to see which
tags your competitors use for their videos. This little hack will save you so much time! Just click a video of the same topic you wanna
rank for, and see which tags do they use. Here you can see only video tags, but also
the tool will show the channel tags, which might be helpful as well.
Although YouTube is not restricting the number
of tags, try not to overuse them: up to 10-12 tags is enough. Use this formula to pick up the best tags
for your video. Write your target keywords. 2-3 keywords will be fine. Then add several alternative keywords of your
main keyword. You can easily find them in YouTube suggestions
or generate with Tubebuddy. Target keywords + alternative keywords of
your main keyword + broad terms Finally, include several broad terms. These tags usually represent the overall topic
or industry. Another way to make our video look more SEO-friendly
is to add closed captions or subtitles.
YouTube and Google are more successful in
recognizing text over audio. But captions are good not only for robots. They might be helpful for viewers too. So if your video has poor audio quality, pronunciation
issues, if somebody fails to understand your accent – captions help to deal with all
of these. There are actually two ways you can add subtitles
to your video. When you upload a video, click Add, and then
select how you want to add captions. You can upload a file with subtitles, use
Auto sync, or type them manually.
You can try tools like 3Play Media or Amara
to generate subtitles automatically. And of course, to expand your audience, you
want to translate closed captions. Just click the Subtitles tab of your video,
add the language, and voila – now people all around the globe can watch your videos. The next strategy is one of my favorites. I strongly recommend adding chapters and timestamps,
especially for long videos with multiple topics. Video chapters and Timestamps increase engagement,
help users navigate through video sections, but the best thing is that they help Google
index the parts of your video, and show them in search results for certain queries. So, how to add them in your YouTube video? Open your video description.
The first timestamp starts at 00:00. Hit the spacebar and the name of the first
chapter. If it’s an introduction, than Intro is ok. There should be at least three timestamps
listed in ascending order. The length of one chapter (a part of the video
between the two timestamps) is equal to or exceeds 10 seconds. Try to write short, but descriptive chapters. This way, visitors can get an idea what the
chapter is about. Step #3.
Congratulations! You’re done with on-page and in-page video
optimization. Now, what shall we do next? Improve audience retention and watch time. So, what is audience retention? Audience retention measures how much time
people watch the video. Hmmm…And what is watch time? Watch time is the total amount of time in
aggregate that viewers spend watching your videos. Audience retention helps not only understand
how much of your videos viewers watch but also when they drop off. When do they leave ….and why? Maybe the topic changed…Or maybe they got
bored.
And what about watch time? The more people watch your videos– the better
for you. Because it’s a signal for YouTube that your
content is engaging and it’s a reason to reward the video by showing it to more people
and rank it higher in search results. Here is what YouTube says. Videos with consistently high audience retention has the potential to show up more frequently in Search and Suggested locations on YouTube Okay now, how can we maximize audience retention? Here are a few best practices: Catch your viewer's attention straight away,
and get to the meat of the question without empty chatter.
Remember, that the first 15 seconds of your
video are crucial and people are going to judge a video based on these first seconds. Change camera angles, music, scenery. Viewers will get bored if you stand still
throughout the video. You can also consider adding special effects,
changing locations, or using a green screen for a dynamic background. Add some humor. Remember, you don’t have to sound like a
robot.
Write a script of your video, plan carefully
what you are going to include in it. Consider adding notes, cards, and other attention-grabbers. When checking your YouTube audience retention
report, pay attention to where viewers take off. This may give you a clue as to which part
of your video needs improvement. And what about Watch time? How to increase it? Here is the point. YouTube is a huge business, and like any business,
its main goal is to make money! So the longer a video is, the more ads YouTube
can put in there. That’s why: Consider creating longer videos because this is what YouTube expects from
us. There is no ideal length for a video, but
multiple findings show that videos of 8 to 15 minutes long rank better than shorter videos. To really maximize watch time, your videos
should be very engaging. And this is how we move to the next step: Step # 4. Provoking engagement To boost your rankings, your video needs to
have comments, replies to comments, likes, shares, and new subscribers after a fresh
video has been published.
The more activity – the better the chances
of being ranked by the YouTube search engine. And I know that asking people to like your
video and subscribe to the channel may sound a bit like a cliche and it is in fact. BUT! It works and has a positive impact on your
rankings. So, please like this video and subscribe to
our channel. I would very much appreciate it. Now let’s talk about optimization tips. Add a video link in the end screen of your
video to encourage interaction. By placing a video link at the end of your
video you can remind your viewers to subscribe or, for instance, suggest watching another
video of yours: Ask a direct question to provoke conversation. You can ask your audience's opinion on a particular
subject or a specific question. It’s not enough to write “Leave a comment
below”. Not in 2021. For example, if you own a culinary channel,
you can ask your audience to pick one of the two dishes they want you to make in the next
video. Be active in comments and show appreciation
to your viewers.
People are more willing to interact when they
have a feeling that a host or a moderator of a channel does not ignore them. So, in case you guys have any questions about
YouTube SEO, or want to know more about a particular strategy, please write a comment
or a question under this video, and I’ll answer them. One more way we can provoke engagement is
by adding cards to your video to raise your video's interactivity and promote your brand
as well as other videos of yours. Cards hide under the small i icon in the upper
right corner of a video. The are several types of cards: Video cards to promote a video, playlist cards
to promote a playlist, Channel cards to refer to another channel, Cards to promote your
products Now, when your video is uploaded, and you
did a great job optimizing it, it’s time to share it via your channels. Step #5. Share video via your channels YouTube SEO is important, but it’s not the
only way to get traffic to your video.
You’ve got Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
so why not use these channels? What I'd recommend is to share the link to
your YouTube video on any other social media to get a different segment of your target
audience. These people may even visit your YouTube channel
and watch some more videos. If you run a blog, consider featuring your
videos in blog posts. By doing so, you can significantly increase
the chance of appearing in Google's organic results. You can also highlight your videos in outreach
email campaigns.
Step 6. Super important. And it’s brand recognition. Step #6. Build authority Build a channel that users can trust, and
remain consistent when branding your videos. Here are some tips that will let your channel
earn credibility and trust: have a unique recognizable name for your brand; add a high-quality channel icon to your videos; add links and contacts to the header of your
homepage; make a short trailer about your channel; be authentic and original in your self-representation. I love how grammarly develops its brand recognition. Just have a look. Easy-to-remember name, high-quality channel
icon, links and contacts, short trailer, and nice description. And the last, but not the least step: Monitor
your performance Step # 7. Monitor your performance. YouTube Analytics is a must for improving
YouTube SEO. It includes such metrics as demographics,
traffic sources, engagement stats, search statistics, and many others. Based on this data, you can improve your next
videos, and avoid mistakes from the previous ones. Let's have a look at the Analytics in more
detail.
The Reach report shows the general performance
for your videos: traffic sources, impressions, and clicks. Pay attention to click-through rates. If you optimize your videos well, the CTR
will get higher. Note, however, that an average CTR for half
of all the YouTube videos is between 2% to 10%…Average CTR: 2%-10% except for new videos
with less than 100 views, which can see a wider range. Don’t analyze CTR the next day after you
upload the video, as it’s a long-term metric. Always analyze CTR together with the average
view duration to get a better insight into how people watch your videos. High CTR and low view duration mean your thumbnail
and title might be misleading. Low CTR and high view duration may be a marker
of your thumbnails not being catchy, or your videos being recommended to a wider audience
than your target one. The Engagement report will show you top videos,
top playlists, and top elements of the videos on your channel, so you can compare the optimization
of the top videos to those that fall behind.
The Audience report will help you uncover
your viewers’ interests and watching habits. Here you will get plenty of insights into
how to rank YouTube videos for your target audience. If you really want to win the battle against
the YouTube search, you need to follow a clear strategy. And in time, you’ll get what you want. I hope you guys like this video and found
it helpful, and if you do, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. See you in the next video! Bye!.
