YouTube SEO: Rank #1 on YouTube (Complete Guide)
You see this video? We are ranking number one on the search term "WooCommerce SEO". Or how about this video? We are ranking number one on a search
term "Google Discover tutorial". Or how about a more competitive keyword
like "How to do keyword research for free". We are ranking at the top, "How to choose a profitable blog niche" and we have
similar results on many other videos. But we are not showing you this to brag, but to show you using these YouTube SEO
tips I'm about to share with you will give you a great chance to rank
your videos at the top. Let's go. Hey, it's Jack from Rank Math, the one WordPress SEO plugin
that constantly strives to provide you with the fastest and the most
cutting-edge SEO tools. And this channel is all about
helping you grow your search traffic. So if you're new to us,
consider subscribing. So, SEO simply is the acronym
for Search Engine Optimization. And YouTube is a search engine by nature, which means when someone searches
for a keyword or key phrase on YouTube, the most relevant videos will
appear on the search results.
Now, YouTube SEO is more than just optimizing your video title
and description for relevant keywords. Though important, they are not
the only YouTube ranking factor. And in this era, getting your business, be it online or offline,
on YouTube is a necessity, not a luxury. You might argue that the cost of creating
those videos outweighs its benefits, but I think it is the other way around
if you find a unique angle that works. Now, before even talking about optimizing
your videos for SEO, you've got to understand something
about YouTube to be successful in it. The thing you've got to keep in mind
before creating videos is that YouTube is a business and their
goal is to make money. And what helps them make money,
it is the viewers'attention. Because the longer a person watch
the video, the more ads they can serve. So if your videos are interesting,
it grabs people's attention. People find your video useful and anything
that can attract more people to watch your video and keep them on YouTube,
your videos would naturally rank higher on competitive search terms and they
will even promote your videos (suggested videos).
So no matter what YouTube SEO tips you're
going to implement, if your video does not align with YouTube's goal,
it can hardly get any traffic. Keep that in mind when
producing your videos. And just like the other search engines,
your video will not rank for one keyword. It ranks for many different
searchable keywords. For example, this video ranks
for the keyword "WooCommerce SEO". It also ranks for "WooCommerce SEO settings", "WooCommerce SEO tips",
"WooCommerce SEO guide" and many others. Every searchable keyword comes
with its own search volume. So if your video ranks for these keywords, there is a possibility that you will
have this amount of views every month. And one more thing you need to know is that there are billions of keywords
being searched every single day. And you don't have to rank
for every one of them. You just have to rank for keywords
that matter to your business or channel. So there are three main steps
to rank well on YouTube.
They are picking the right keywords,
getting people to click on it and keeping them watching your video
for as long as possible. Let's start with picking
the right keywords. Keywords are simply words or phrases that people type into the YouTube search
box to find relevant videos to consume. For example, someone searches for the keyword YouTube
SEO and they found a video like this. Or they search for keyword research
for free and they found videos like these. So every keyword typed
into YouTube comes with an intent. And it is YouTube's job to find
relevant videos to satisfy that intent. And it is your job as a video creator to help YouTube understand
what your video is about. Now, there are different
types of keywords. There are trending keywords like "Who won
the Oscars", "NFL playoff schedule". And these trending keywords
will always change.
But if you catch it at the right time,
your video will gain lots of views. Trend will always change. So the traffic for these
keywords are not sustainable. Then we have the product update keywords. For example, if WordPress were to go from version six to version seven,
if you create a video before or at the time of release,
it will get tons of traffic. But these traffic are
not sustainable as well. And there are evergreen keywords, keywords
that people constantly search for. For example, "yoga for beginners", "how to cook pasta", product
reviews, comparisons, etc. These are the keywords we want to optimize for YouTube SEO so that your channel
will have a constant flow of traffic. As I said earlier, you don't have
to rank for every keyword under the sun. You only have to rank for keywords that matter to your channel
or your business goals.
If you have a small business that sells
security locks and it has a YouTube channel, you want to create videos that
will bring either sales or credibility to your business,
such as targeting a keyword like "Are combination lock safe" or
"Best Smart locks for home". You won't target a keyword
like "Yoga for beginners", right? That just doesn't make sense
for your channel or business.
At the same time, you want to target every type of keywords related to your channel's
or business goals such as the trending keywords, product update keywords
and evergreen keywords in the security lock niche, but for the longevity of your
channel just so that people will continue to watch your videos even if you do not
publish new videos, you want to target evergreen keywords and
that's where YouTube SEO comes into play. So to be successful with YouTube search,
you need to first find keywords that aligns with your channels or
business goals and validate them. Let's start with finding keywords. If you are looking for trending keywords, the best place to do
that will be on Google trends. Just type in your niche. For example, social media marketing. Assuming you want people around the world to watch your videos,
you want to select "Worldwide".
That is, unless your videos are
targeting a specific country or region. Then select either past seven days or 30
days to see what is trending recently. If you want more specific categories,
you can select them. And most importantly,
you want to select "YouTube search". And then with the data, scroll
to the bottom to the related queries. The rising queries are keywords
that are rising in popularity. And if you select top,
you will see the most popular related search queries throughout
the existence of YouTube search. So if you want to leverage on trend
keywords, you want to select rising.
So people want to learn more
about social media analytics. Social media marketing for businesses,
the best social media marketing tools. These are trending keywords
that relate to social media marketing, if that is what your channel is about.
Let me share one more trick with you. Let's say that your channel is about teaching people how to do
social media marketing. The search term you want to add here is how to and in the categories you
can find one of the most relevant. So when I search "marketing", I can see
the advertising and marketing category. So in the related queries, people want to know how to promote their
YouTube channel, how to get emails for email marketing,
how to do sponsored ads on Instagram. These are what's trending. So that's finding trending keywords. Now let's find evergreen keywords. The best way to find evergreen keywords is directly from YouTube using
its autocomplete feature.
For example, I need keywords
related to digital marketing. I can add that keyword and you will
immediately see some suggestions. But what you want to do is to run
through the alphabets starting with "a". These are the suggested keywords and they are what people are searching
for on YouTube I would take note of those keywords that align
with my YouTube channel.
Then I would change "a" to "b". Take note of related keywords, then rinse
and repeat this method till you reach "z". You can also add different modifiers. For example adding the word "for" after digital marketing, then rinse
and repeat A-B-C, etc. How about adding "how to" in front
of digital marketing and then a-b? You get the idea. And one more trick is to add either
a * or an _ to the keyword. For example "how to * digital marketing" and you will find many unique keywords
because it will fill in the middle part of the suggested key phrases
and changing the position of the star. Maybe remove "how to". You will get many different
suggestions as well. So have fun with this. I'm pretty sure you will find some
awesome keywords for your channel. Now the next step in the process is
to validate if there is search volume for the keywords you have identified
and their level of competition.
And the way to do it is with tools like
Tubebuddy or VidIQor you can use both. They are free to use anyway. What you want to do is to install either
Tubebuddy or the Vidiq's chrome extension. You can search for "Tubebuddy Chrome extension",
visit this page, add it to your chrome, create a free account
if you don't have one. The same goes for VidIQ. Search for "VidIQ Chrome extension"
and add it to your chrome extension. We have left links to these pages
in the description in case you need them. Then once they are installed. When you visit YouTube and search
for a keyword, say "digital marketing for financial advisors" on VidIQ it
shows there is moderate search volume. The average views for this keyword is 2000 plus per month and there are not a lot
of people targeting this keyword. As you scroll down there are more
related keywords you can target. Then on Tubebuddy it will give you more detailed information such as
the average search volume per month. This search term has about
1000 search volume every month. Now check this out.
Search traffic accounts for about 30% of traffic for most YouTube channels
and the click through rate which is the percentage of people who saw
the thumbnail and title of your video and they actually clicked it
to watch it is about 2% to 10%. So if we look at the views from the top results this is 3.5k views
and it was published a month ago. So we can say that 30% of this 3.5k views
which is about 1050 search traffic meaning out of this 3500 views,
about 1000 of it is from search traffic.
And since this video is about a month old,
it is hard to gage the actual search volume for the keyword because YouTube
will usually promote new videos. We need time for the traffic to settle
down to have a gauge of the search traffic. A better and more accurate gauge
would be the second result. This was a year old and 30% of 6.7k views which is about 2000
divided by twelve months. And you will see there are about 168 search traffic every month
for this particular keyword, if you are ranking at the second place. And remember the search volume suggested
by Tubebuddy is 1000 per month. If you take 10% click through rate meaning out of the thousand searches there are
only 10% who actually watch a video. It will be 100 search volume per month which kind of aligns with the
stats for the second video. I'm showing you this to share with you
how to validate search volume. This is for you to gauge if it is worth your time creating a video
that targets this keyword, knowing that not many people
are targeting this keyword.
But if you think 100 search volume per
month justifies the time and effort you put into creating the video,
then this is a good keyword for you. Otherwise it is not. So we have found a list of keywords to target for your YouTube channel
and we have validated them. The next step is this. I know the process is supposed to create the video and then optimize
for YouTube SEO, but when it comes to ranking your videos,
the click through rate is a key factor.
Because if no one is viewing your video, how can we even talk
about retention, right? So that's what we are talking about first. As I said earlier, click through rate is the percentage
of people who click to watch a video after seeing them, be it on YouTube
Search, suggested videos or whatever. And what gets people to click it is
the thumbnail and a title for suggested videos and you can add the description
for YouTube search on desktop. So let me first share with you some
tips to optimize for your thumbnail.
Tip number one for optimizing your
thumbnail for YouTube SEO is you want to zero in on a particular format,
style, personality and topic. In short, when people who watch your
videos before and they see a new video thumbnail from your channel,
they know what your channel is about. Think about it, why do people watch,
subscribe and comment on your videos? There is always one special element
that draws them in and if you utilize that special element to its fullest,
it will naturally increase the click through rate for all your videos on your
channel, which means your videos will get a higher chance of ranking
for search terms. An example would be from our channel. We always use the same format of thumbnails and we only talk about
anything that relates to SEO and we always have a big title and a
face in the thumbnail.
So the same format helps people take notice of your videos
when they are on YouTube. Tip number two is to add
a face to the thumbnail. It is proven time and time again that adding a face to the thumbnail will
help improve the click through rate. It doesn't necessarily need to be your face, but having a human face
in a thumbnail creates a connection with the viewer and makes them more
interested in watching the video. And tip three is to make
your thumbnails intriguing. You want your thumbnail to be a visual question mark that leaves
viewers itching to find out more.
Think about images that provoke
thoughts like what is that? That guy or girl did what? How did that happen? I want to find out more, etc. It takes about 3 to 5 seconds for someone to decide if they should watch
your video or save it for later, and these thought-provoking thumbnails
will help with your viewers' decision. So take a glance at your thumbnail and ask yourself, does it instill
a thought to your mind? If yes, then there is a high chance
that your video will be clicked. In the past, when YouTube's algorithm was not that sophisticated yet,
they relied a lot on the title as well as the tags you add to know
what your video is about. But that has changed.
YouTube has included the 5000 character
video description as well as auto generated captions
to understand your video. So the tag is not that important anymore, but the video title
and description still do. So we will not talk about the tags because nowadays tags are used for certain words
that auto caption will likely miss. For example, your brand name. YouTube's autocaption will usually pick up
"Rank Math" as "Rank Map", and that's the purpose of having a tag that explains
to YouTube, "Rank Map" is Rank Math".
Anyway, first thing first,
the content of your video must match the video title and description because if
they don't match, no matter how captivating your title and
descriptions are, your video won't rank. We recommend adding the targeted keyword within the first hundred
characters of the description. Because when you do a search on YouTube, the video description will be
cut off at about 100 characters. And if the keyword you add to the description and title matches
the keyword, people are searching for your video will likely rank higher,
assuming all else remains equal. On top of that, to potentially increase the click through rate, you should
consider adding power words to your title. Power words are persuasive words that triggers a psychological
or emotional response. For example, the keyword Google discover traffic is not as enticing
as boost your traffic.
With Google Discover where "Boost" is the power word, we have a huge list
of power words available for you to use. We have left a link in the description. Now, how do you write captivating
YouTube titles and descriptions? Quickly, let me share
with you a free tool. This free tool is available for WordPress users who have installed the free
Rank Math plugin on their site. If you have installed it,
hover to Rank Math SEO, click on Content AI and you will
see a huge list of over 40 AI tools. Search for "YouTube" and you will see
the "YouTube video description" tool. Let's say that the topic I'm targeting
is "Google Discover traffic".
You can select relevant audience,
such as on top of the general audience. We can select bloggers because Google
discover traffic relates to them. If you don't find a suitable audience,
you can customize it. For example, site owners hit a comma
and a tag will be created for it. For the focus keyword, I will add
Google Discover traffic, hit comma or tab. You can select one or more appropriate
tones that match your speaking style.
Are you friendly? Maybe you want to sound informal? That's totally up to you. Select the number of generated outputs you
desire and it will start writing highly relatable YouTube
descriptions for your video. You see, this is the suggested title. It has a power word in it and then
the focus keyword Google Discover and traffic in the first hundred
characters of the description. So the YouTube video description tool
can speed up your publishing process. But the question is, how is the tool free? Well, if you have a free Rank Math account, which you can visit our website,
"My Account", and you can create one without any hassle, and you connect your WordPress
site to the account and we will add 750 credits to your account
every single month, forever.
With the credits, you can generate SEO
optimized YouTube descriptions easily. If you need help setting it up,
you can watch this video. Now, in addition to the generated description
or the description that you wrote, it is recommended to optimize it
with descriptive timestamps so that you can not only help viewers navigate
the video, but also give more context to YouTube to describe what
that part of the video is about. For example, on all of our videos we
always have descriptive text beside the timestamps to let viewers know
what that part of the video is about.
And on a live video you will
see something like this. So we highly encourage that you do so. Alright, we have talked about the keywords and optimizing your video
for click through rate. Now, the third element for YouTube SEO success is keeping your
viewers' eyes glued to your video. So audience retention is a measure of how
well you are keeping your viewers hooked. It is about the percentage of your video that your audience watches,
which means if you check your video stats on YouTube, this will be
the average view duration. Take this number divided by the length
of your video and you will have the average percentage view,
which is the number we are looking for. The higher the retention rate, it gives a strong indicator to YouTube
that the viewers are enjoying their video and the video is what
they are looking for. Picture this.
Someone searches for a specific keyword or key phrase out of all the videos he
or she watched the first three videos. Assuming all these videos have the same video length, the top video has
an average view duration of 10%.
Video two has around 15%. But your video ranking at number three
has an average view duration of 70%. It means the longer people watch your video, the more opportunity
YouTube can show ads. And because people watch your video as
a result of a search term, YouTube will rank your video higher than
the others over time for that search term. So how do you improve the average
view duration or audience retention? There are a couple of things we can do. Number one is to align your video
with the search intent of the keyword. This circles back to what we
have talked about earlier. If the search intent of the keywords is to solve a problem, you want to structure
your video to help solve that problem. If the search intent of the keyword is
to learn something, make sure that you are giving actual value by teaching a lesson
that they have not learned before.
It is about crafting your video around
what your viewers are looking for. This way, when someone clicks on your
video, they will keep watching because they know they are going to get something
out of it, some value out of it. Next up is to provide
value throughout the video. Do not ramble.
Do not waste your viewers time. If the viewer needs to solve a complex problem, show them at the start that you
have a solution for them and break them down into smaller steps so
that the content is easily digestible. If your video intends to teach people
something, structure your content to instill a thought in your audience
mind, maybe a question that they want to know, and you answer it as quickly as
possible, but after answering the question, you instill another thought
if possible, so that throughout the video you are leading viewers
with value one step at a time.
The best way to do this is to plan your
video beforehand with a clear outline. Script it if you need to, but the video
needs to progress in a palatable way. If you have problems coming up with a
script, we have a tool for you as well. Pretty sure you have saw it earlier. It is our "YouTube video script" tool. Simply add your topic, which is
the keyword your video is targeting. Add visual elements if you want,
such as knocking a big mixing bowl with a spatula or whatever visual
elements or props you want in your video. Leave it empty if you want the tool to suggest visual elements for you, add the key points you want to talk about
if the video topic is "best AI tools" you want to add all the names of AI tools in
this view and separate them with a comma. Keep this within 400 characters. Add a call to action this is what you want your viewers to do after
watching your video. We have a list of CTAs, but you can customize it,
such as "Subscribe to our YouTube channel".
Similarly, you can add more
relevant audience or audiences. Select the tones,
choose the number of outputs and it will generate a script that will help
kick off your video creating journey. Next, increase engagement by asking people
to comment on your video because the more people commenting positively,
the more social proof you have. This group of people said that the video
is good, so it must be good. I will watch the video longer. These are all psychological factors. Better yet, reply to your
comments with additional value. Not just a simple thank you or welcome, but in depth replies
that sparks conversation. That way, not only do you foster a stronger bond with your
viewers and subscribers. When new viewers see that you are actively
replying and chatting in the comments, they will be enticed to write a comment
and start a conversation with you.
To assist with getting
those initial comments, instead of just blindly asking people
for comments, maybe you can help them out by asking a simple question that relates
to the topic or seek help from your audience by asking them what
they want to know from you. What topics should you
cover on your channel? Following that, the next tip is you may want to group your videos into a playlist
and give it a searchable title. Doing so will allow your audience
to find your videos easily. For example, if we search "Rank Math Technical SEO", you will see a playlist
from us with the title "Technical SEO tutorials" and sometimes if a subscriber
really likes your content, they may spend a whole day watching the
entire playlist to learn more from you. This helps increase audience retention,
which may lead to higher rankings. And let's not forget the visual elements
that will increase the viewers attention, which is to mix up your camera
angles, graphics and music.
Keep it fresh and engaging. Monotony is the enemy. Variety keeps the eyes on the screen. So there you have it. Pick the right keywords to target by identifying and validating keyword
ideas, optimizing your click through rate through thumbnail title and description,
and finally, increase audience retention by providing as much value
every minute of your video. With this, I hope your videos will have a great chance of ranking high on YouTube
search if you are getting value from this, we hope you can smash
that thumbs up button, if you haven't done so.
And if you haven't subscribed to our
channel yet, we hope you can consider doing so to keep yourself up to date
with the right SEO knowledge. This is Jack from Rank Math. Stay awesome. I'll see you in the next video..
