YouTube has over a billion users that watch 250 million hours of video each day, making it the second largest search engine. But how do you optimise your videos and get them ranking higher than everybody else’s?
Watch our 3 minute video now to find out how:
Here are our 5 tips on how to optimise your YouTube videos for SEO.
- Content
- Keywords
- Title, description, tags, thumbnail, links
- Captions
- Engagement
Tip 1 – Content
Planning your videos is a vital part of YouTube SEO. You need to ensure your content is relevant, detailed and follows best practice.
Make sure that you have done your research before you even think about picking up a camera.
In terms of relevance you can use websites such as Exploding Topics to find out what people are currently searching for. These websites allow you to discover what topics have a high demand for content.
Be aware that popular topics are more competitive meaning they will be more difficult to rank for.
YouTube rewards longer content. The longer you can keep a viewer on YouTube, the higher your videos will rank.
YouTube wants people to stay on their site for as long as possible and there are a couple of ways to do this.
One way is to make long videos, the preferred length being around 10 minutes.
Another way is to make a YouTube channel/playlists or videos that follow on from one another. This means the viewer will keep clicking on suggested videos instead of only watching one video before leaving the site.
Tip 2 – Keywords
Whilst planning your content you also need to think about keywords. Ideally you want around 4 to 6 keywords, including a main one that will be used more frequently than the rest.
Your main keyword should be included in your title, thumbnail and multiple times throughout your description. It is important, however, that they are used naturally.
The reason for deciding your keywords before you film is to allow you to actually say them throughout your video. This means they will appear in your captions and you will have a higher chance of ranking for those keywords.
Tubebuddy is a free browser extension that the marketing people use to check our keywords. It displays how competitive keywords are and how often they are searched for. If you are looking for a tool to check your keywords this is definitely one to try.
Top tip – Remember it’s not just about monthly search volume. User intent and search relevance are factors to think about as well when thinking about your video content.
Tip 3 – Optimise your Title, Description, Tags and Thumbnail
Your title, description, tags and thumbnail are all extremely important when it comes to YouTube SEO.
Your title needs to:
- Contain your main keyword
- Be short/to the point
- Explain the content of your video
Your keyword research will come in handy for this step as you will discover what questions people are searching for based on your chosen topic. Remember – questions make great video titles!
Your description should be detailed and contain all of your target keywords.
Editing the video transcript into short paragraphs will help you add detail into the description. (Make sure you insert timestamps at certain points so the viewer can easily navigate through the video).
The first line of your description should include the main keyword, and don’t forget to include links to your website and social pages.
Video tags give YouTube context about your video, meaning you should use up to 10 tags to make sure the context of your video is clear.
Top tip – Keyword-rich tags are important but remember they can also look spammy, so a good balance is needed.
A mixture of specific and broad tags is preferred, as long as they contain relevant keywords in your description and title word-for-word.
Remember that your thumbnail needs to:
- Grab viewers’ attention
- Stand out from similar videos
- Make the user want to click on it
Viewers most often look at your thumbnail before reading your video’s title.
Extra tip – Implement the title of your video into the thumbnail but use minimal words.
Tip 4 – Captions
Captions are essential.
They make your videos more accessible, and they also allow search engines to fully understand the context of your video, meaning it will rank higher.
Use the subtitles tool in YouTube Studio to easily manage and create captions for your videos.
Captions are also crucial for social media as 85% of people watch videos on Facebook without any audio. So if you’re posting you videos on other social platforms as well as a blog post, it is essential that they have captions.
Tip 5 – Engagement
The final tip is to get your viewers to engage with your videos by getting them to like, comment and subscribe.
You can do this by asking them to during your video, using info cards throughout the video or asking them to in the video description.
When viewers do comment, it is vital that you reply to their comments and engage further with them. Some content creators will ask their viewers a question at the end of their videos to get more engagement.
These tips are an essential part of YouTube SEO and getting your videos to rank higher.
If you have any questions or need any help with your videos, then give the marketing people a call on 01543 495752.