YouTube SEO: How To Optimize YouTube Videos

In this post, I’m going to show you how to optimize your youtube videos.

We’ve covered why optimizing your YouTube videos for search is so important. Now it’s time to get into how to optimize YouTube videos for SEO and search rankings. More views—and comments, subscriptions, and shares—mean more engagement and potentially more conversions and sales. But first, you need viewers to find your videos.

In part, YouTube tracks your videos’ performance via their click-through-rate, or CTR. The CTR is a percentage of people who click on a result, which in this case, is your video. The higher your CTR, the more people who are clicking on your video. Conversely, your rankings will drop if people are skipping over your videos.

Today, a comprehensive content strategy includes written work like blogs and ebooks, as well as media like podcasts, visual assets, and videos.

YouTube is effectively the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google). With video becoming more and more important, now is the perfect time to start optimizing your YouTube Channel and begin reaping the benefits of a strong video strategy, including connecting with new potential customers, getting a better search presence, and building your brand.

More than a billion people watch videos on YouTube. That is a good third of the global internet users who play a billion hours of video content every day. Also, the YouTube search is the second largest search engine in the world – after Google. How can you optimize YouTube Search? Not only well-written blog articles and eBooks are useful ways to market your product. Video content, moving images (GIFs), photos, and podcasts make it much easier to understand complex issues and, above all, address the brain region, where purchasing decisions are also made.

The same requirements apply to videos as virtual reality or social bots: Take your customer on the journey during his customer journey, let him experience your product, and convey the “why” of your product to you. Tell a detailed and appropriate story that puts your service in the foreground. Also, use different onesVideo formats such as live videos or videos with a 360-degree view to highlight the added value of your product even better.

But how does YouTube SEO work? What are the steps you need to take to optimize your YouTube channel for search? We’ve outlined some major tips below.

How To Optimize Your YouTube Videos:

YouTube has a slightly different algorithm than Google when it comes to SEO. But if your videos rank well on YouTube, they will do so on Google. By now, you may be obsessed with how to get your YouTube video to rank high—that’s fine; just realize you need to start somewhere.

Push your metadata: from title and description to tags and background information –

• Title – Keep it short and catchy. Make sure your title is at least 5 words long and includes your keyword or keyword phrase.
• Description – This is the place you shouldn’t be afraid to get long-winded. Include as much information as you can about your video in your description (including your keywords!). Put a few summary sentences at the top that will grab a scroller’s attention and encourage them to want to click through.
• Thumbnail –  The thumbnail you choose for your video is your first impression to your viewer; make it visually appealing, interesting, and clear. Always use custom Thumbnail Maker, and keep the visual theme (colors, fonts, etc.) similar to enforce branding and create a cohesive feel for your channel. There’s also an opportunity here to use graphic overlays to mention your keywords, especially if you’re posting a ‘how-to’ or informative video.
• Transcript –  Using transcripts on your videos will help you rank for your keywords, but it will also give you the ability to translate the language of your video to appeal to a more global audience. The more viewers who can understand and enjoy your video = the better your chances of ranking for them.
• Tags – Tagging is probably the easiest way to make YouTube aware of which keywords you’re trying to rank for. Tags can be up to 120 characters long, and it’s best practice to use at least 10 tags. Consider using your keywords along with other relevant topics.
• Links – It’s a good idea to add links to your description or even inside your video. This will help drive viewers to other places you want them to go, like your website, social media channels, or an offer page.

Describe your video briefly and concisely and include your CTA –

But not only the title is important, but also the description of the video. YouTube doesn’t show the full text above the comments, but first the first three lines. Describe as concisely as possible in these three lines what the video is about. Possible call-to-actions and inbound links should also be considered here before describing your video in more detail. 

After all, the rest of the text has to be opened first, and which user does this normally? Make sure that the text doesn’t get too long. The viewer wants to watch a video and not read the video description. Do you also have great text that is optimized for search engines and wants to insert it in the description? This is nice, but not necessary because YouTube does not measure the video ranking based on the text itself.

Use tags as keywording –

There are three input fields for each video in the video manager. Use the third for entering tags, they are only visible in the background anyway. Choose a good mix of short and concise tags and keyword combinations from several tags. Let off steam and set up to ten tags and tag combinations. However, before you simply enter keywords randomly, you should be aware that YouTube will warn you if you use inappropriate keywords that have nothing to do with the video, title, or description. Stay on topic!

An example: You would like to publish a contribution for “Social Media” and optimize it. Then take different tag combinations from “Use Twitter hashtag sensibly”, “Facebook links” etc. Look outside the box and enter suitable tags. A bad example would be to enter “car” or “music” here just because posts with these tags are going well and you want to benefit from them. YouTube punishes its lack of relevance and the video portal even reserves the right to block the channel for such reasons.

When uploading a video, you should also select a category in which your content fits thematically. You can also add the location where you shoot your video. Are you referring to another person or source in your clip? Then pay attention to preserve the license and property rights. In such a case, be sure to use “ Creative Commons – Attribution ” to be on the safe side. So the more you fill in, the more precise the end result will be for the user. Not only through YouTube’s organic search, but also through related videos, users can find you more easily if metadata is similar.

Define a meaningful thumbnail –

The thumbnails you use for your videos will look relatively smaller and indiscernible on mobile devices when compared to desktops. Hence, make sure that they are sharp and crisp even when viewed in tiny size (especially if you’re using text in the thumbnail)

Cards and ending screens to increase coverage –

With “Cards”, an application provided by YouTube in the backend, you can use various tools to convey more information about your company or to refer to other interesting content. Link “Cards” to your channel or website, for example, to ask the user to take action. But don’t overdo it, otherwise, the viewer will close the video faster than you’d like. “Ending screens” also work, with which you can link to your own videos and with which you can also promote the reach of other videos. The same applies to playlists, in which you summarize relevant videos and thus refer to the next video.

Feel free to ask your visitors to comment on your contribution. This is the actual currency that YouTube uses to measure the success of your video. The more positive criticism you get for your content, the better your clips “rank” on the video platform. This includes the likes and dislikes of viewers who rate your video. The more positive you stand out here, the sooner you will be found. Contrary to general expectations, the view and subscriber numbers are not relevant for a high ranking on YouTube. User interaction with the video is much more important.

YouTube SEO is worth it –

It is definitely worthwhile to optimize your posts because YouTube and video marketing are a current and relevant topic to stay on the ball. You can attract an audience from which your company can only benefit. Videos contribute to lead generation and thus help new businesses.