Youtube SEO: Step-By-Step Guide

Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine, with over 70 percent of the search market share. This is the reason why most of the organizations focus their SEO strategies to move at the top of the respective search engine result page to generate maximum organic traffic. Even if you are doing well on Google, there can be chances that you are missing out on a specific part of your targeted audience. Here is when Youtube SEO comes into the picture. With Google as its parent company, Youtube became the second-largest search engine platform for videos. The platform is growing at a rapid rate, with 500 hours of video uploaded on it every single minute. Yes, that is quite whopping. You can now imagine the level of competition you have to face on Youtube to protect yourself from getting lost in the crowd.

To survive and succeed as a Youtuber, the first and most important thing you must do is creating and publishing quality videos after optimizing them for search. Video optimization can be done by incorporating effective & proven video SEO practices. To help you make your videos perform better on the platform, we are sharing some tips that you can use, but before that, please have a look at the brief explanation of Youtube SEO.

What is Youtube SEO?

As we know that SEO is a practice that involves making changes in your website design and content in a way that your website can increase its online presence to attract good quality and quantity of website traffic. In same way, Youtube SEO is all about optimizing your channel, metadata, description, playlists, and videos in a way that they appear on top whenever a person searches with a keyword related to the subject of your video. The Youtube SEO will help you to attract the necessary traffic and grow a following.

How to make better visibility on Youtube?

Youtube is the search engine for videos and has its own SEO practices. As you put all your efforts to make your website rank higher on SERPs, the same thing you need to do for your videos to make them move higher on Youtube SERPs. Before informing you about the steps required to boost the online visibility of your videos, let us make one thing clear that Youtube SEO is way different from regular SEO.

To help you cross every hurdle that comes in the path of your videos online presence, we have created a list of techniques that you can use to get the visibility you need on YouTube.

• Search for video keywords: The Youtube SEO process begins with finding the right keywords for the videos. Keywords that you find on Youtube will be different from what you can see on search engines like Bing or Google. One of the best ways to search for potential keywords is through using Youtube’s search suggest feature. You just need to type a word or phrase in Youtube’s search box, and it will show you the list of all the top-rated keywords related to what you typed. Pretty easy, right?

The suggested keywords are the best because they are the phrases that people usually type to find what they want. If the platform suggests those keywords, this means they are popular and mostly used by customers. 

Another way of finding the right keywords is by searching for a popular video in your niche and copying the keywords around which the video is optimized. Don’t miss out on a single keyword that the popular video uses in its title, description, and video tags.

You can also use Ubersuggest to find how many searches a keyword gets in a month. When you type in your keyword and click search, there will be an option appear on the left sidebar named “keyword ideas.” Click on the option and review the keyword results. This way, you can go for the keywords that bring the maximum number of searches in a month.

To get hands-on the keywords that you cannot possibly think about, you can go for the “Traffic Source: YouTube search” report. This report will provide you with the list of all the potential keywords that a user can type to reach out to your videos. 

Once you have all the keywords on your table, you can select the ones with the least competition. The low-competition keywords will help you to get enough subscribers on your Youtube channel. Don’t go for high-competition keywords at the initial stage, as this can make your videos get buried under the search results.

Keyword optimization is the most crucial step in a Youtube SEO process and lays the foundation for the success of your videos’ content.

• Time to optimize the video title: Don’t you remember how you optimize the headings in your content to get the right traffic at your doorstep. Now the same you have to do in Youtube SEO. To get your videos the attention you want them to get, it is essential to use the keyword in the video title and that too in a way that it seems to solve a problem. 

When users read your video title, it must compel them to click on it and watch the video. Therefore, it is critical that you remain clear with your title.

• Don’t miss to optimize the tags: Tagging is one of the best features that Youtube offers. With Tagging, you can add all the relevant and top-rated keywords to fetch more views for your videos. 

Use tags that hold relevance related to your niche. But make sure the number of tags you use in a single video must not be more than 10 or 12.

• Ask people to comment: When people comment on your videos, it brings more engagement. The more the comments a video will get, the more popular it becomes.

Similar to Google, Youtube also prioritizes videos that receive immense popularity. Comments are a way that will tell you what people liked in your videos. You can take their feedback and implement them in your coming videos to get more subscribers to them.

End your videos with a question to make people answer them through commenting in the comment box.

• Make people hit the bell icon and subscribe to your videos: It is not at all easy to make people subscribe to your videos on Youtube. Subscribing is one of the major factors that Youtube’s algorithms use to rank your videos. 

When people subscribe to your videos, they can see your content on a regular basis and get notifications if any new video is uploaded. Subscribing is way better than liking and commenting on a video as they are only a one-time action.

The more people subscribe to your Youtube videos; the more value will be added to them. To bring more subscribers, ask people to like, comment, and subscribe to your videos at the end of every video you create.

• Publish a high-quality video: If you want to get your videos a higher rank, then its important to keep viewers engaged till the end of a video you post. And the simplest way to do so is by publishing high-quality videos.

We know that it is not possible for all of you to set up a high-level studio, but this doesn’t mean that it becomes the reason for your video rankings to take a dip.

In the present era, we all have smartphones with a recording feature, which is enough to get started. You only have to make little investments for:

• A tripod stand that adds stability to your videos.
• A backdrop for creating a professional background.
• Spotlight (you can even use house lamps) that highlight the subject in your videos.
• Lastly, a microphone to deliver a better audio quality than your phone’s microphone will be unable to provide.

You can get all the things mentioned above in minimal investment to create videos that are rich in quality. The better the quality of the videos, the better they will rank on Youtube.

• Create an attention-grabbing thumbnail: Although thumbnail isn’t considered a ranking factor by Youtube, it can still impact the ranking of your videos.

By creating a creative and eye-catching thumbnail, you can invite more clicks on your videos, that will directly boost their rankings. Make sure that the thumbnail you create represents what your video is all about. As per a report, the majority of people click on the video links by getting attracted to their thumbnails. Therefore, it is a crucial step in Youtube SEO that one should not miss if he/she wants more views.

• Add closed captions: This step will give you a competitive edge on the respective platform. Youtube videos support closed captions, and by incorporating them in your videos, you can make people better understand what you say.

The captions are mainly for people who are deaf and dealing with any other hearing problem. These captions are even crawled by search engines, which means they can boost your SEO efforts. 

Youtube also offers automatic captioning, but it is more prone to errors. You can use your own or also the one the platform offers after ensuring accuracy.

• Along with building links for your videos, build them for your channel too: To increase the efficiency of your Youtube SEO, it’s essential that you build links for your videos as well as for your channel. The links represent you as an authority in your respective domain. 
• Edit your filename: This tactic may not have a big influence on your SEO process when it comes to being the best, why to leave even a single step.

Rename your raw file in a way that it showcases what the video is all about. You can also add your targeted keyword in the filename.

• Sharing on all possible social media platforms: The majority of internet users actively use different social media platforms for socializing. To add rockets to your Youtube SEO and visibility, make sure that you share your videos on all possible social media channels. 

Share on Twitter: Do you know that there are more Youtube videos shared on Twitter than the number of videos uploaded directly on it. By sharing your videos on this social media platform, you can significantly boost engagement.

Share on Facebook: Around 80 percent of internet users actively use Facebook. The platform can drive loads of traffic to your Youtube videos. By sharing videos on Facebook, you can easily boost your reach.

Share on Quora: One of the best places to share videos. People generally visit Quora to get in-depth information regarding the doubts or questions they have. By sharing videos and satisfying their curiosity about your niche, you can increase the number of subscribers.

Share on LinkedIn: Now, people are more engaged on LinkedIn as compared to any other social platform. If your video content is all about your business, then no other platform is better than Linkedin to share your videos. You can improve the number of views of Youtube with the help of this platform.

• Embed your Youtube Videos: Embedding your Youtube videos offer you two benefits. 

First, it increases the visibility of the videos in front of more and more people. You can embed your videos anywhere, but the most recommended place is the blog posts.

Secondly, it will boost user engagement by bringing more people to watch the videos.

• The email list: Sending an email to people out there in the online world, you can increase the number of views on your videos. It is one of the most effective ways of marketing. With the advanced technology, you can seamlessly send emails to thousands of people within seconds and get countless eyes on your videos within a few hours.

Emailing your videos to more people, you can increase the number of views and hence boost your overall Youtube SEO.

• Have eyes on the competitors: It is near to impossible to be a Youtube pro at the start. To grow on the platform, you must see what your competitors are doing and for what keywords they rank. Use those certain keywords in your videos and content to steal the major part of the target audience. 
• Use focus keywords in the description: When writing the video description, ensure to mention the focus keywords in the initial lines without making them look unnecessarily stuffed.  

This will help the Youtube bot to identify them immediately and crawl them, resulting in a higher ranking of your videos.

• Increase the watch time: Watch time is the time actually spent by people watching your videos. This metric is considered by Youtube to improve its ranking. If people tend to spend more time watching your videos, then it means that they are liking what they are watching. By creating engaging videos, you can increase your watch time, which positively affects the ranking of your videos.

You can add suspense in your videos that will help engage your customers till the end of your video or create something that meets their interests. 

• Make use of engagement reports: Youtube offers reports that can help you measure your Youtube channel’s overall performance. The subscriber report helps you find how many subscribers you are gaining each day, and with a share report, you can check which videos you share and what still needs to be shared.
• Mark your presence on the different channels: This can be a little tricky as you are risking your customers to move on to the different channels. But, this risk factor can be eliminated. By choosing a channel different from your niche, you can save your customers from moving on to your competitors. 

You can send a request to other channels to feature you in their videos in return for something they want. Don’t forget to get a link to your channel. 

• Make your video of optimal length: There is no ideal length of a Youtube video. The length of the Youtube videos entirely depends on the time of content you are showing to your viewers. If the content does not involve in-depth information, try to make the video shorter, and vice versa.
• Improve the quality of content: The good content quality, you can make your viewers recommend your videos to their friends and family. This way, you can increase views on your videos, resulting in an improvement in your SEO rankings.

Good quality and engaging content is the key to the success of any SEO strategy. By serving customers what they want can help you to add value to your Youtube channel.

Wrapping up

If you want to increase your Youtube views by significant percent, then make use of the tactics mentioned above. In the highly competitive digital business world, it’s crucial to get the targeted traffic from whichever platform possible. Youtube is one such platform that can help you generate leads for your business by boosting your online visibility. Business working in any niche can make use of this platform to maximize return on investment.