YouTube SEO: How to Rank YouTube Videos #1
In this video, I'm going to show you how
to do YouTube SEO to rank your videos #1 in YouTube search. And we've used this exact process
to rank #1 for all of the most coveted keywords in our niche like… "SEO,"
"search engine optimization," "keyword research," "link building," "technical
SEO," "content marketing," "internet marketing," "online marketing," and the list goes on. And beyond warm and fuzzy feelings,
our YouTube search rankings resulted in nearly 1.3 million views last year. Now, you might be thinking, "why is YouTube
SEO important when the most views come from suggested and browse features?" Well, there are 3 absolutely critical reasons
why I think you should have a YouTube SEO strategy especially if you're trying to
get that initial traction to your videos.
#1. Suggested and browse views usually
require you to have an existing subscriber base and an existing library of relevant videos. #2. Search views are super consistent. And consistent views lead to consistent
subscribers, assuming you're delivering on the title of your video – more on this later. And #3. Search views have high average
view durations – at least how-tos, tutorials, and tips videos. In fact, in 2021, we had over 101,000
hours of watch time to our tutorials from YouTube search.
To put that into perspective, that means
in 2021, our videos got over 11 years of continuous watch time from YouTube search. Bananas! Alright, enough of the flexing. Let's get straight into the YouTube SEO tips
and processes that are going to help you rank your videos #1. The first step is to do
YouTube keyword research. To get started, you'll need to
generate a list of keyword ideas. And there are a few places you can look. The first is YouTube autosuggest. Just start typing in your keyword and
you'll see a list of queries that other YouTube users are searching for. Jot down some that interest you because
at this stage, we're just brainstorming. Now, because YouTube doesn't show you any
search volume data, you can throw them into Google Trends, make sure you have
the search mode set to YouTube search, and you'll get a general idea of
search popularity on YouTube.
And just so you know, Google Trends
doesn't show you absolute search volumes. They show relative popularity instead. So in this case, over the past year or so,
"makeup tutorial for beginners" was more popular than "makeup transformation," and
both of these keywords were more popular than "makeup routines." Another way you can find keyword ideas
is to use a tool like TubeBuddy, vidIQ, or Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer. Here's how they work starting with TubeBuddy. After you've installed their Chrome
Extension, just click on this icon, and then go to Keyword Explorer. Next, search for a seed keyword, which is
just a broad keyword related to your niche, like "makeup." And right away, they'll give you some
scoring metrics, the number of videos in the search results and the estimated
monthly search volume.
Hit the Video Topics tab to
see more keyword ideas. Now, personally, I don't trust their search
volume estimations because I've compared a bunch of keywords that our channel's
videos have consistently ranked for, and TubeBuddy's estimations were quite a bit off. More on this in a bit. Now, if you're going to use this tool, then
I'd focus just on the video topics tab to come up with some keyword ideas. The second YouTube keyword
research tool is vidIQ. To get started, login to your vidIQ
account and hit Keywords in the menu. Then just like last time, type in a
seed keyword and run the search. And you'll see significantly more keyword
ideas than the other two tools I mentioned. Again, I don't trust their search volume estimations
for the same reason as TubeBuddy, but you should be able to find some interesting
topics worth creating videos on, if topic generation is your goal.
Finally, is Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. Just select YouTube as the search engine,
enter your seed keyword, and run the search. And right away, you'll see the search volume
for your target country, the estimated number of clicks to videos, and the global search
volume broken down by country. And as far as I know, Ahrefs is the only
tool that shows you country specific YouTube search data. Now, to see keyword ideas, just go to the
matching terms report and in this case, you'll see well over 300,000 unique keyword
ideas with plenty of filters to play around with seeing as this keyword list is exponentially.
larger than all other tools combined. Alright, so we need to address the elephant
in the room because I've made some pretty bold claims on these tool's
search volume estimations. I actually pulled our view data from YouTube
studio for 14 random keywords we had consistently ranked #1 for in January. Then I pulled search volume estimations from
each tool and compared them to actual views to calculate a rough CTR for each tool. And here are the results. Now, conventional wisdom tells me that
the true clickthrough rate for a top-ranking video would generally be around 15-18%,
so it's clear right off the bat that TubeBuddy almost always drastically
overestimates search volumes.
In fact, their search volume figures suggest that
on average, a top-ranking video only gets 0.2% of clicks with a median of 0.05% clickthrough
rate – and no, this is not a computing error. VidIQ was slightly better but still, their
volumes are drastically overestimated too. On average, their search volumes suggest
a 0.63% average CTR to top-ranking videos for our keywords. And the median was at 0.53%. And it's worth noting that the spread
between their average and median CTRs was the closest of the 3 tools. As for Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer, our search
volumes suggest that the keywords had an average CTR of 37.09% and
a median CTR of 12.42%. And the reason for the huge spread
is because of an outlier in a small dataset where we had an estimated CTR
of 346% which is obviously not true. Bottomline: no keyword research tool is perfect,
so it's important you use the search volumes for what they are – estimations. And I won't go deeper into YouTube keyword
research because we have a full tutorial on that which I'll link up in the description.
Alright, next up, you need to choose
a topic you want to go after. And you should have a brainstormed
keyword list from the last step. Now, what you'll want to do is search
for the keyword in YouTube search while you're in private browsing mode. Then look for two things in the top 3 videos. #1. Try and identify the format of the video –
in this case, we have 3 step-by-step tutorials, so you'll want to create a video
with the same format. And #2. Scope out your competitors. Now generally speaking, you'll want to look at
the size of the channel and their topical authority. So for the query, "makeup tutorial for
beginners," you'll see that the top 3 channels all have over a million subscribers.
Now, this doesn't mean you can't compete,
but if your channel has 100 subscribers, it'll be a David and Goliath story
if you can outrank them. As for topical authority, just dig through
their channels to see if most of their content is on the same topic. In this case, all 3 channels are mostly
about makeup or a mix of makeup, beauty and fashion. So again, if you're a small channel,
I wouldn't try and compete for this keyword at this point. Instead, I'd just rinse and repeat
these steps until you find a topic that's more realistic to rank for. Alright, so after you've chosen a topic to
create a video around, it's time to move on to the next step which is
to create a high-performing video. And by high-performing, I'm referring
to a video that will have high retention, high average view duration, and high CTR. A big ask but let me show you how to do that. For educational type content, which is kind
of the bread and butter of YouTube SEO, you'll want to script your content.
Reason being, people's attention
spans are short. And if you're going off on tangents, you're
going to lose the high retention and high average view durations. Now, as for the structure of your script,
let's keep things simple and talk about them as they come – the intro,
the body, and then the outro. For the intro, you'll want to keep it short and
sweet and grab the attention of your viewers. You want to give them a reason
to keep watching. For example, in this video's intro, I showed
you that we rank #1 for the most coveted keywords in our niche and
showed you proof of our traffic. That's probably something that a
viewer searching for a YouTube SEO tutorial would want to learn too. As for the actual body of your content,
this is where you need to deliver on your title and intro. And there are two things you should master:
the technical aspects and the engagement factors. Let's talk about the technical stuff first. Throughout your video, you'll want to say
your target keyword and related entities to your topic.
In fact, Google has officially said that
they extract audio from the video file to understand what words are being spoken. And that's probably why all of your videos, at
least in English, are automatically transcribed when you upload a video. Now, much of this should come naturally
because they'll need to be mentioned in a comprehensive tutorial. So, there's no need to stuff in a bunch
of related keywords just for the sake of it. Now, in that same statement from Google,
they said they extract visual information such as objects, animations or motions. And this means that you should show
matching visuals on your screen to your spoken words if applicable. For example, if you're making a video on
making a perfect cup of coffee and you might say: "Heat your kettle to 185 degrees
Fahrenheit," and show a matching visual. Now, if you're in a niche like ours where
it's harder to show visuals that match the words being spoken, then use text
screens like this, or screencasts.
As for the engagement aspects, this is quite
easy because you'll be scripting your content. This allows you to add hooks throughout
your video to keep your audience engaged. For example, you might say "Check this out"
or briefly mention an interesting point and follow it up with "More on this later." It helps retain people's attention if they're
truly interested in what you have to say. Another thing you can do is ask for engagement
metrics like likes, comments, and shares. For example, I might ask you: "If you want to
see a video on getting more suggested views, then let me know in the comments." And for people who genuinely want
to know how to do this, they might actually leave a comment.
Alright, the final part of
your script is the outro. Just like the intro, you want to keep it
short because people will click away if they know the video is coming to an end. Another thing worth doing is recommending
other related videos towards the end of your content. And if people click and watch these
videos, then your videos are creating longer session watch times which is what
YouTube wants at the end of the day. Alright, after you've finished scripting
your content, you'll record your video, edit it and then we're on to the next step
which is to optimize your video for YouTube. So there are 7 things you'll need
to do to optimize your videos. And these include your video file name,
your video title, tags, description, thumbnail, closed captions, and cards and end screens. It sounds like a lot, but some of these
take no longer than five seconds. So, first, you'll want to change your
video filename to your target keyword. So this video's file is called youtube-seo.mp4.
Easy. Second, is the title. And there are a few things
you'll want to do here. #1. include your target keyword in it, which
you can see we've done in our video's title; #2. Try and keep your title under
60 characters to avoid truncation; and #3. Create a title that'll
complement your thumbnail. And we'll get to the thumbnail in a bit. The third thing is to fill in your tags. Now, personally, I don't really think tags
do that much for YouTube SEO, but it only takes a few minutes to do
so here's how we do it at Ahrefs. Our first tag is almost always
our target keyword. Then we add a few more
related keywords. Then we'll continue to go broader. Both Tubebuddy and VidIQ are
great for generating tags. They show you suggestions in YouTube studio
and you can also research your competitors tags by visiting one of their videos.
The fourth thing is the description. Here, you'll want to write a brief summary
on what you'll talk about in the video. And while I doubt this is a big ranking factor,
we include some of the tagged keywords if it makes sense in context. Another thing worth doing is to add
timecodes to different parts of your video. And this helps with video SEO so you can
capture key moment in Google search. We have full video on doing video SEO,
so I'll link that up in the description. The fifth optimization tip
is for the thumbnail. Now, because this video isn't about how
to make a good thumbnail for YouTube, I'm going to leave with two high-level
tips to create great thumbnails.
Tip #1. Your thumbnail should
complement your title. And these two things alone will play the
greatest role in your click through rate, which is insanely important to get views
from any organic YouTube traffic source. For example, this video is titled "How
to speed up your WordPress website." And our thumbnail in my opinion, perfectly
complements the title with a before and after picture of our website's speed and a
little fun with me at my night job as the Flash. The second tip is to try and draw curiosity
with a few words in your thumbnail. For example, we created a video on how accurate
Google Keyword Planner is and the thumbnail text text says: "Is keyword planner accurate?" For those that are interested,
they'll have to click it to find out. The sixth optimization you should
make is to add closed captions. These are files that you can upload to
YouTube to caption the audio in your video. And we do this for all of our videos because as
I already mentioned, YouTube uses the words we speak to understand the video's content.
Plus, for non-native speakers, it's helpful to
better understand the content as reading is sometimes easier than listening. This can help to improve your
average view duration metric too. YouTube has a built in tool for adding
closed captions, and because you've scripted your content, it's super-easy to do. And the last YouTube SEO tip for optimizing
your video is to add relevant cards and end screens to your videos. YouTube wants people to stay on their
platform for as long as possible. And if your content is responsible for
fulfilling their objective, then they're going to promote your video to more people.
For example, I didn't want to expand on video
SEO when I was talking about key moments. So I added a card for those that
want to watch and learn more. As for end screens, it's almost always
worth adding relevant videos at the end of your video. This creates a better user experience
for the engaged viewers that make it to the end and want more from you. By successfully executing on these 7 YouTube
SEO tips, you've covered all of the essentials to optimize your videos for YouTube search. Here's a quick checklist of the tips we just
went through, take a screenshot and let's move on to the last step of our tutorial
and that's to promote your video. Now, the strategy you use will
depend on your circumstances. And you'll likely fall into
one of two categories. Category #1. You have an existing audience
outside of YouTube like blog readers, social followers, email subscribers, and customers. And if you have all of these things,
then promotion is pretty easy. Start by embedding your video in relevant
blog posts, send an email to your subscribers, and share your video on
other social platforms.
We'll touch on a few more tactics in
a second because they apply to you and those that are in category 2. And these are people who don't
have an audience on any platform. The truth is, it's going to be a grind to
rank your videos on YouTube simply because of the way YouTube's algorithm works. But all hope is not lost. There are three promotion tactics you
can use to drive views to your video and grow your channel's authority which
will help you in your YouTube SEO efforts. #1. Share your videos on sites
like Reddit and Quora. Now, rather than just spamming video
links, it's best if you provide some value, seeing as your video will likely be
educational to a certain extent. And again, you'll want to make sure that
they're added in relevant subreddits and answers because the people who
click it, actually need to watch it.
#2. Consider running YouTube
search ads for your target query. Basically, you just need to set up an ad
campaign and bid on your target query. And with a budget of $5 to $15 per day,
you can actually get quite a significant number of views for the money. And even though we're over 300,000
subscribers today, the views are so cheap that we continue to do it. On average, we pay around $0.01 per
minute watched through search ads. And there is no other marketing medium
that compares from a paid ads perspective. If you're interested in using this strategy,
then I highly recommend watching our full tutorial on using this
YouTube ads technique. I'll link it up in the description. And the third tactic is to pay
for sponsored newsletters. Now, we've only done this a couple of
times, but we had some decent spikes in subscribers for a pretty low cost. The key is finding relevant sponsored newsletters
that have your target audience and promoting a video that will appeal to the majority. For example, if you have a YouTube channel
on toddler parenting, then you might consider reaching out to sites like
Baby Center or The Bump.
And the video you promote, might be one on how to
deal with tantrums because it's a common struggle that parents with toddlers go through. There are no hidden secrets to YouTube SEO. You just need to do keyword research,
pick a topic, create a high retention video, do the basics of video optimization using
the YouTube SEO tips I showed you earlier, and then promote it to relevant audiences. That's it! Do these things better than the top ranking
videos, and I hope you'll be able to dominate YouTube search for your niche..
